How Luxury Silk Scarves Are Specified: Weave, Momme, Print and Hem

The five specifications, and what each one decides

What follows is what each of the five means, what the trade actually uses, and where the ranges sit. The summary is below; each one is then taken in turn.

Weave: why the signature square is twill

The weave is the structure of the cloth, and it is decided before anything is printed on it. Silk twill is woven with a diagonal step between passes, which produces the fine parallel rib you can see and feel across the surface. That rib is what gives a twill square its body: it holds a fold at the neck instead of collapsing, it drapes in planes rather than clinging, and it takes a print with a matte depth that a satin surface cannot hold.

The other weaves do different jobs. Charmeuse has a satin face and a flattened crepe back, so it is glossier and more fluid. Crepe de chine gets its texture from twisted yarn rather than from the weave, which makes it lighter and slightly granular. Habotai and chiffon are plain, light and translucent. Jacquard is not printed at all — the pattern is woven in with coloured yarn, so it cannot wash out.

This is why the printed square is almost always twill. Hermès names its signature square by its dimension rather than by a marketing word — the Carré 90 — and the cloth under the print is silk twill. Loro Piana works the same fibre from the opposite end, from the raw material up. The weave is the first thing to fix, because every other number is measured against it.

Momme: the one number that tells you how much silk is in it

Momme is the traditional unit of silk weight. One momme is about 4.34 grams per square metre, so the number is a direct statement of how much fibre is in the cloth — not of how good it is.

Most quality silk scarves sit between 12 and 16 momme. In the scarf trade 14 momme is treated as the classic weight, and 16 momme is noticeably more substantial in the hand. Above that the cloth stops behaving like a scarf: a 22 momme charmeuse is beautiful and heavy, and it is a different product from a square you knot at the neck.

The practical window for a hand-rolled edge is narrower still — 12 to 18 momme, with 14 to 16 twill at the centre of it. Below about 10 momme the cloth is too sheer to build a rolled tube on, which is why you rarely see a hand-rolled chiffon. Above about 20 momme the problem reverses and the roll becomes bulky. So momme is not a score to maximise: it is a choice that has to match the hem, the format and what the scarf is for.

Format: the square is quoted in centimetres

The classic square is 90 × 90cm, which is why a 90cm square and a 36 inch square are treated as the same format in practice. The format sets two things at once: how much cloth the scarf contains, and how much edge has to be finished. Both of those move the cost more than the artwork does.

A 90 × 90cm square carries roughly six times the silk of a 36 × 36cm square and roughly three times the length of rolled edge. If you are specifying a first run, that is the single largest decision on the sheet — and it is the one buyers most often leave until last. The sizes we weave in, and what each is for, are set out in the size guide.

Print: one face or two

A single-face print puts the design on the front of the cloth; the reverse stays the ground colour. This is the usual choice, and for a scarf that is worn folded or knotted it is the right one — the reverse is rarely seen. Both methods are available on our printing programme.

A double-face print runs the design on both sides, so the scarf reads the same however it is turned or laid flat. It is a real technique at the top of the trade: Hermès sells double-face versions of its Carré 90, which is the clearest public evidence that the method belongs to the signature end of the market. It is also the more demanding order. The two faces have to register against each other, which means tighter print tolerances, more passes, and a higher rejection rate at the press.

Either way the file has to be built for print before production starts, not adjusted afterwards. Artwork needs a bleed of about 1.5cm on all four edges so the design runs off the cut line cleanly, and the colours need to be fixed as a count rather than as an approximate look, because each colour is a separate pass on a screen-printed run.

Hem: hand-rolled or machine-rolled

A rolled hem is the edge rolled over on itself and stitched, so no cut edge is exposed. How that roll is made is the clearest signal of what tier of scarf you are holding. The craft pages set out the full finishing menu; the two that decide the tier are these.

A hand-rolled hem — roulotté — is rolled and stitched by hand, one scarf at a time. The roll is softer, it varies very slightly along the length because a person made it, and the stitch disappears into the roll. It is also slow in a way that shows up in a quote: at the standard used for hand-finishing, one artisan completes roughly seven 90 × 90cm squares in a day. That is 40 to 60 minutes of finishing on a single scarf, against 20 to 30 minutes for a twilly, whose rolled edge is far shorter. Specify a finished tube of about 2mm to 3mm; tighter than that is hard to hold and looser reads as unfinished.

A machine-rolled hem is sewn by machine. The roll is even and consistent along its whole length, it sits slightly flatter, and it is the most economical of the rolled finishes. For volume orders, promotional runs and designs where the edge is not the point, it is the sensible choice and there is nothing wrong with it.

The two are not the only options. A dense overlock fully encloses the raw edge and is hard-wearing; a French seam hides both cut edges so no raw edge shows on either face; a short fringe keeps the rectangle clean while the edge stays soft. Each one solves a different problem, and each one is priced differently.

What the houses publish, and what they do not

It is worth being precise about this, because it is where most scarf writing goes wrong.

What the great houses publish is the format and the material. The square is named by its size — a Carré 90 is a 90cm square — and the fibre is stated as silk. What they do not publish is the operating specification: the exact momme, the number of screens in a print, whether a given edge was rolled by hand or by machine. Those numbers are not in the product description, and any article that quotes them as fact is guessing.

So a buyer cannot read a house specification off a label, and does not need to. The five things that actually decide what you are holding are all readable without a spec sheet: the format is in the name, the weave is visible as the rib or the sheen, the momme shows up as weight and opacity in the hand, the print faces are obvious the moment you turn the scarf over, and the hem tells you its own story at the edge. If you are buying rather than admiring, ask your supplier for those five in writing — a supplier who cannot name them is not making the scarf you think you are ordering.

The five-line specification to send with an enquiry

Fix these five and quotes become comparable. Leave any of them open and two suppliers will price two different scarves.

• Weave — silk twill (or name the weave you want), not simply "silk".
• Momme — a number, e.g. 14 or 16, not "good quality".
• Format — the finished size in centimetres, e.g. 90 × 90cm.
• Print — one face or two, and the colour count of the artwork.
• Hem — hand-rolled or machine-rolled (or the specific finish), and the edge detail you expect.

Add the packing and the labelling if the order is going to retail, and state the bleed on the artwork file at the same time. Those are not part of the scarf, but they are part of the order.

When a lighter specification is the better call

A hand-rolled 16 momme twill square is the reference point, not the answer to every brief. There are orders where specifying it is a mistake.

• Promotional and event scarves, where the piece is kept for a season and the artwork carries the message — a machine-rolled hem at 12 to 14 momme does the job at a fraction of the finishing time.
• Sheer and layered designs, where the whole point is that light passes through the cloth — chiffon or organza is the right cloth and a rolled hem is the wrong finish for it.
• A first run or a sample round, where you are testing whether the design works before committing to the cloth — start on a 36 × 36cm square and you spend roughly a sixth of the silk to learn the same thing.
• Scarves that will be washed hard in service, where durability matters more than the roll — a French seam or a dense overlock will outlast a hand-rolled edge that is going through a laundry every week.

The reverse is also true. If the scarf is going into a box, onto a retail shelf, or into someone's hands as a gift, the edge is one of the first things that hand goes to. That is the case for the slower finish, and it is decided at specification, not at packing.

Questions buyers ask about specification

The questions that come up most when a specification is being fixed.

Where to go next

For what each format does for an order, the size guide sets out the sizes in centimetres and what each is for. For how the fibre itself behaves, what silk is and types of silk cover the weaves and the momme each is normally woven at. For which silk claims survive scrutiny, read mulberry silk claims; for how a specification lands on the unit cost, read what your unit cost buys.

To see the finishes and weaves as products, the craft pages go through the production steps between artwork and a packed order, and the custom programme covers printing, logo scarves and private label, including MOQ and lead time.