According to a recent and deeply unscientific poll conducted by yours truly, some guys are confounded by corduroy. But they’re not quite sure how it figures into their wardrobes. This is a pity, because corduroy is great.
It’s warm, hard-wearing, delivers texture galore, and can work beautifully in the context of all different types of personal style. So, in the interest of getting these guys—and you!—properly outfitted, I’m offering this crash course in corduroy. It’ll give you the key information you need to understand the fabric’s history and how you can wear it now.
There’s a great story about the name “corduroy” being derived from the French phrase “corde du roi,” or “cord of the king.” It conjures up all sorts of noble associations and sounds cool, like so much menswear lore does. The problem is, it’s likely apocryphal. No one really knows the root of the word for sure. (But if you want to bust out that tidbit at a dinner party and let your friends believe it, we wouldn’t blame you.) What we do know is that corduroy traces its roots back to a category of fabric called fustian—basically heavy cloth, often used for menswear, that was usually woven from cotton (though there have been woolen and linen variations over the many centuries that fustian has existed).
The name might come from the city of Fustat, near Cairo, which manufactured that sort of cloth. What sets corduroy apart from other fustian cloths like velveteen and moleskin is its distinctive ribbing. That innovation is newer; it was developed in Manchester around the middle of the 18th century, when the city became a center of production for cotton fabrics like velvet and the modern iteration of corduroy.
The ribs are known as wales, and they’re created by weaving extra thread into the base fabric and then trimming them to created tufted, vertical ridges offset by channels between them. This “modern” corduroy quickly became a workwear staple thanks to its durability and warmth. It was only later that it migrated to British country clothing and, eventually, to the rest of the globe.
It slowly filtered into U. S. academia throughout the first half of the 20th century, eventually leading to the well-known stereotype of the college professor with the well-worn and elbow-patched corduroy jacket. It hit the counterculture in the ’60s.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
