A fine, lightweight fabric with a plain weave and a soft, often semi-sheer appearance.
Batiste is a fine, soft, sheer cloth in plain weave, the simplest weave, in which each warp yarn passes over one weft and under the next. The Getty vocabulary allows it in any of the principal fibers, including cotton, linen, silk and wool. The SILKNOW silk thesaurus records that it began as a linen cloth, was made in cotton from the 19th century, and is now also woven from manufactured fibers such as polyester. The name therefore describes a fineness and a hand, not a fiber. It is used especially for clothing.
The usual confusion is with other sheer plain weaves. Organdy, in the Getty definition, is also a sheer plain-woven cotton, but crisp, where batiste is soft.
In job listings
Batiste is rarely named in luxury listings. The roles that handle fabrics like it are in fabric development, where developers and interns run trials and sampling with mills, keep swatch libraries, and record each fabric’s composition, price and lead time for the design and product development teams. See current fabric development roles.
