This fashion article from the 1930s perfectly encapsulated some of the heady excitement that filled the air when “a new crush-resistant, non-wrinkling, packable, ultra-fashionable velvet” hit the market. This scientifically updated, new-fangled and re-packaged version of velvet was immediately swooped-up by the glam squads in both Hollywood and Broadway. Velvet, depicted in many a Renaissance portrait, had it’s roots in Ancient Persia:
“The Persians, as far back as 2000 B.C., started the vogue for velvet, and from them the Arabs at El Fustade, near Cairo, took up the art of weaving the royal material. They passed it on to the Spaniards of Granada who traveled northward through Sicily into Italy in the Sixteenth century, and then to France, where in the Musée Historique des Tissus at Lyons, is one of the greatest collections of velvet in the world.”
Read about the other miracle fabric of the 1930s: RAYON.
