A durable, usually cotton fabric with a twill weave, often made with indigo-dyed warp yarns and lighter weft yarns.
Denim is a twill with a dyed warp and an undyed filling. CottonWorks describes cotton woven usually as a 3×1 or 2×1 twill, with indigo warp yarns and white filling; the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus calls it warp-flush, so the blue warp dominates the face. The warp is most often dyed on a rope range, many ends gathered into a rope and dyed continuously. The Japanese mill Kaihara describes the yarn leaving the bath green and turning blue as it oxidizes, and calls the undyed core of each yarn essential to the way jeans fade.
Selvedge denim is a matter of the loom. A selvage is the lengthwise edge of a cloth, closed by loops of weft. Kaihara weaves selvedge denim on about 200 old shuttle looms, less productive than the projectile and rapier looms it also runs. The word describes how the cloth was woven, not how it was washed or finished.
In job listings
Denim is a category of its own at some houses. Listings include denim product developers, who take styles from studio brief to showroom prototype, and a technical developer for denim who needs experience in a laundry or finishing laboratory. See current denim roles.
