Fabric Burn Tests of Vintage Japanese Kimonos & Obis

Hello, everyone!

Have you ever wondered how to tell the difference between different types of Japanese fabrics? Well, due to blending different types of fabric, the wide variety of dyes, and many mysterious chemicals applied to fabrics, it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge.

The best way to tell what the makeup of a fabric is is by performing a burn test. Yes, because of additives, burn tests aren't entirely perfect, but they can help you determine the type of fabric to a very high degree.

With vintage, traditional Japanese clothing, it's actually fairly common for synthetic pieces to be labeled as being pure silk not only from shops focused on the overseas market, but also domestically here in Japan. Now, usually this isn't done maliciously, but burn tests take quite a while and performing a burn test on each piece would make things quite unprofitable. We perform burn tests on a bunch of pieces each year in order to make sure that we don't mislabel the fabric content.

First up is a comparison between silk and rayon:

The silk is hard to burn and creates a sort of gravelly ash, whereas rayon burns quickly and produces a smooth ash.

We'll be updating this post with burn tests whenever we perform them, so please check back in the future.