When you are paying a huge chunk of money for something, you will want to make sure it is genuine as well. Large marketplaces like Amazon is flooded with cheap items that claims to be genuine silk. When prices are marked below the cost of production of genuine silk, these products are clearly fake. We will guide you through how to determine genuine silk. Hope this helps :)
1. Price
The cost of making real silk items is more than 10x of making a silk substitute. If you have done your comparison you will realise that, in Silkrush we are able to sell our silk products more affordable compared to most of the companies out there. There’s a hard limit to how low you can price a silk item and you can still make a profit. Our mission is to provide you the best silk with the best balance of strength, aesthetics and affordability. Some of the things that we have done to make the price affordable is, cutting down on the cost of packaging, woven label and also embroidery logo on the pillowcase. Fret not! We have not given away the quality. In Silkrush affordability and quality stands at the same level for us.
2. Burn test
This is perhaps the best and most definitive test to find genuine silk. We would advise you not to try this because you wouldn’t want to end up burning your silk products.
Genuine silk burns with smell of burnt hair. When you burn the edge of real silk fabric, the flame is invisible and it will stop burning as soon as the flame is removed. The ash produced hence, is black, crispy and brittle. It turns to powder when twisted in fingers. With the artificial silk, it is quite the opposite. When synthetic silk is burnt, there is a flame and smell of plastic. No ash is produced. Needless to say, you might need to exercise caution with this step.
Be careful if you decide to employ this test because fake silk can burn surprisingly quickly when exposed to real flame and it can be very dangerous.
3. Lustre
Silk is especially known for its lustre. The lustre is usually because of the combination of threads which gives a particular sheen to the material. The colour on the surface appears to change as the angle of the light changes. Artificial silks, however, gives a white sheen no matter what the angle of light falling on it.
4. Ring test
If the silk that you are planning to buy is not very heavy, this test is perfect! Genuine silk of lower ply can be easily threaded and pulled through a wedding ring because silk is naturally flexible and smooth. On the other hand, artificial silks would scrunch up and would be impossible to pull through.
5. Touch test
Rub the silk with your hands. If you feel warmth on rubbing it, It's genuine. With artificial or synthetic silk, it is impossible to experience warmth on rubbing.