A crisp fabric, commonly silk, with noticeable irregular thick sections called slubs in its yarns.
Dupioni takes its texture from the yarn, not the weave. The Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus describes dupion as irregular, rough silk reeled from double cocoons, or from cocoons spun side by side that have interlocked. The reeled thread varies in width, and woven up it gives the cloth the uneven relief, the slubs, by which it is recognized; the Getty adds that this makes it hard to tell from wild silk. Dupion, dupioni and douppion all name it.
A newcomer may take it for taffeta, which the Getty describes as crisp and usually plain-woven, but with a smooth, lustrous surface on both sides. The slubs are the test. The V&A’s holdings show where dupioni goes: a 1993 wedding dress in smocked silk dupion, a 1996 Anya Hindmarch handbag in dupion silk, and a printed silk dupion furnishing fabric by Celia Birtwell.
In job listings
Dupioni is rarely named in listings. Silks of its kind pass through the hands of atelier seamstresses and the tailors who make samples and small runs, whose listings ask for experience with premium silks or advanced knowledge of how fabrics behave in construction. See current seamstress roles.
