How to tell if fabric is silk?

Do a Touch test. This is a quick spot test that one can do especially before buying a silk saree. The idea is to rub the silk with your hands. If you feel warmth on rubbing it, go buy it! It’s real. With artificial or synthetic silk, it is impossible to experience warmth on rubbing. One more thing, real silk sounds like walking on fresh snow. If you don’t know how that is supposed to sound like, go figure!

Perform a Wedding Ring Test. If the silk that you are planning to buy is not very heavy, this test is perfect! Genuine silk of lower ply can be easily threaded and pulled through a wedding ring because silk is naturally flexible and smooth. On the other hand, artificial silks would scrunch up and would be impossible to pull through.

Consider the price. Of course, genuine silk is almost ten times costlier than the synthetic ones. Sometimes the synthetic silk is priced much higher and looks like silk to an untrained eye but mostly low price is a very good indication of its poor quality.

Examine the Lustre of the material. Silk is especially known for its lustre. The lustre is usually because of the combination of threads which gives a particular sheen to the material. The colour on the surface appears to change as the angle of the light changes. Artificial silks, however, gives a white sheen no matter what the angle of light falling on it.

Look at the Weave. Hand woven silk boasts of uniqueness. There are minor variations in the evenness of the texture which is quite noticeable. But fret not! These are natural and expected. These imperfections are what lend distinction to the product. Machine woven silks look perfect. They are flawlessly even in texture and hence… lacks character! Synthetic fibres look perfect too even though sometimes slight imperfections are deliberately included so that they could pass off as real silk.