Silk Link

Simply touch your silk and get a good feel for the smoothness of it. Real silk is completely smooth to the touch, with a soft and almost waxy feeling.

Further to that, if you scrunch it up a bit in your hand, you should hear a crunching noise – that sound should tell you that it’s the real deal.

For extra peace of mind, rub the silk between your fingers for a little while. Real silk heats up and becomes warm to the touch – if it doesn’t change in temperature, it’s a fake.

Take any jewellery ring that you’ve got to hand, and place it on your fabric. Gently pull the silk through the middle of the ring and see how it performs.

Real silk should smoothly glide through the ring with no issues, whereas synthetic fibres will usually get caught on the ring or bunch up.

Note: The outcome of this test can also depend on the thickness of the fabric. Generally, thicker silks will be more difficult to pull through.

This isn’t a method that we’d really recommend unless you want to chance completely destroying your silk fabric, but the accuracy of the results can’t really be beaten.

Trusting your sense of smell, by carefully taking a lighter to your fabric you’ll be able to detect the differences between the smell of burning real silk, and burning artificial fabrics.

When burnt, real silk will smell similar to burning hair and produce brittle ash. Once the flame is removed, it’ll stop burning.

If there’s no ash present and it smells like burning plastic, it’s not real silk.