CREPE DE CHINE. A very light and fine plain woven dress fabric, produced either with a fine warp and weft of all-silk, or else with a silk warp and hard-spun worsted weft. As the name implies, a crepe de Chine texture has a slightly crepe character, a feature which is developed entirely from the employment of weft yarn spun with the twist running in reverse directions and known as "right-hand" and "left-hand" twist, respectively, and as also observed in the manufacture of voile textures (q.v.). Thus, during weaving, the picks of weft are inserted in the order of "two-and two," i.e., with two picks of weft with a "right-hand" twist, and two picks with a "left-hand" twist, uniformly, throughout the fab ric. Hence, during the finishing operation, owing to the abnormal amount of twist in the picks of weft, these tend to untwist and recover their normal condition, thereby causing the character istic effect of typical crepe de Chine.
Crepe de Chine textures of artificial silk are now common and are often difficult to distinguish from the true silk.