Brocade Fabric: A Complete Buying Guide From Someone Who Sells It Every Day

Brocade is figured cloth in which the design is put there by a second weft thread, normally zari, which the loom lays in only across the parts of the width where the motif appears and leaves hanging free behind the rest. Every peculiarity of brocade traces back to that one structural decision, including the ones that frustrate people most.

I sell brocade six days a week in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi. What follows is the guide I wish every customer had read before walking in, arranged roughly in the order the decisions actually come up.

First, know what you are holding

The reverse side is where a fabric stops being able to lie to you, so start there.

Threads hanging loose across the back, bridging between motifs, sometimes clipped short. That is brocade, and those threads are the second weft idling between the places it was needed.

A tidy reverse with the pattern showing in inverted tones and nothing hanging. That is jacquard or damask. Genuinely woven, genuinely a motif, but built out of the base yarns rather than from anything added. Lighter, more fluid, and in the case of damask usually wearable either way round.

A back that shows almost nothing while the face carries a sharp design. That is print. Prints are perfectly good things to own. They should simply not be priced as woven cloth.

The whole check takes about as long as reading this paragraph, and it tells you which price band you should be arguing inside.

Second, decide the weight before the design

This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that decides whether the finished garment works.

Up to 160 gsm, light brocade. Blouses, sleeves, yokes, cuffs, kidswear, dupatta borders. It sits close to the body and does not add bulk at the shoulder.

160 to 280 gsm, the middle band. Kurtas, anarkali bodices, lehenga kalis, sherwanis, jackets, waistcoats. This is where most real usage sits, because it has enough body to hold a line while still being wearable for a full evening.

280 gsm and above, up to roughly 400, heavy. Reception gowns, groom sherwanis, structured bridal panels, formal jackets. Heavy brocade holds a silhouette with no canvas, no interlining and no stiffener underneath, which is exactly why it is worth its price.

The bands run continuously, so a 170 gsm cloth is not in a gap, it is at the light end of the middle band. If a shopkeeper cannot tell you the gsm, feel the difference by lifting a metre off the roll and letting it fall. Light brocade collapses on itself. Heavy brocade folds in wide arcs and holds the fold.

Third, match the motif scale to the garment

Motif scale decides how the finished piece reads, and it is not a matter of taste.

Small buti, repeating every one to two inches. The safe choice for anything small. A blouse, a sleeve, a child’s kurta. Because the repeat is frequent, wherever the tailor cuts the panel still shows complete motifs.

Medium jaal, an all over vine or trellis at three to five inches. Kurtas, sherwanis, anarkali bodices, lehenga kalis. Visible across a room, small enough that seams do not destroy the design.

Large motif or heavy border. Lehenga skirts, dupattas, sarees. These need surface area to complete themselves. On a blouse you get one motif cut by the armhole and another sliced by the neckline, and the result looks accidental rather than designed.

Direction. If the motif has a defined top and bottom, all panels must be cut facing the same way, or the back of your kurta will have upside down motifs. Buy half a metre extra to give the tailor room to do this properly.

Fourth, understand what you are paying for

Brocade pricing is driven by three things and almost never by the design itself.

Zari grade. Film based polyester zari is the cheapest, extremely shiny, and it sheds glitter and cracks along folds. Tested zari, a copper core electroplated with silver and finished gold, is the sensible middle and what most good commercial brocade uses. Real zari, a silk or cotton core wrapped in silver wire and gilded, is heirloom material and priced accordingly.

Base fibre. Polyester base is cheapest and does not breathe. Viscose blends feel much better against skin. Silk base is the most expensive and ages best.

Motif density. A dense jaal covering most of the surface uses far more zari and runs slower on the loom than a scattered buti in the same quality. Density, not beauty, sets the price gap between two pieces that look similar.

Four counter checks narrow the grade down quickly. A nail dragged across the motif tells you whether the surface scuffs. Two zari faces rubbed together tell you whether the coating sheds, since glitter on your palm means it will keep shedding forever. A corner crushed in your fist tells you whether the zari is film, because film crackles faintly and recovers stiffly while metal bends quietly. And a single selvedge thread held to a flame tells you metal from film, since metal chars and leaves a residue while film melts to a hard black lump. What that last test cannot do is separate real zari from tested, since both are metal. For that you are relying on price, on weight and on the seller.

Fifth, get the yardage right

All figures below assume 44 inch width, which is standard for most Banarasi brocade.

Upper body pieces. A regular sleeve blouse takes 1 metre and a full sleeve takes 1.25. A waistcoat takes 1.5 and a Nehru jacket 2. A knee length kurta needs 2.5 and a long one needs 3.

Full length pieces. A six kali semi flared lehenga skirt takes 3 metres, and a full flare with eight to ten kalis takes 4 to 4.5. A dupatta is 2.5. A sherwani needs 3.5 to 4, more than a long kurta, because the collar, the placket facing and often a bandhgala structure all eat into the length.

Then apply the adjustments in this order. Subtract roughly 20 percent if the cloth is 58 inch wide, though keep the full figure for a genuinely full circle skirt where the extra width buys you less than you would expect. Add half a metre if the motif is directional. Add 10 percent on top of everything if you are buying dyeable stock, since dyeing pulls woven fabric in by around 3 to 5 percent.

And buy the whole requirement at once. Woven stock varies between production lots in both base colour and zari tone, so coming back next month for one extra metre very often means a visible mismatch.

Sixth, brief your tailor properly

Brocade behaves differently under the needle and most problems come from treating it like plain fabric.

• Finish every raw edge on cutting day. The supplementary weft is not locked into the structure, so an unfinished edge starts shedding within hours and a set of panels left sitting over a weekend loses a visible amount of zari.
• Specify a fresh needle and a change schedule. 80/11 for light brocade, 90/14 for heavy, replaced every two garments. Zari blunts a needle quickly and the failure mode is not a skipped stitch, it is a dragged float that leaves a pulled line running through the motif.
• Keep stitch length at 2.5 to 3 mm. Below that you perforate the float weave. Above it the seam slips.
• Treat lining as part of the pattern, not an extra. Mulmul for warm weather, satin where the garment must travel over a petticoat, crepe where drape outranks slip.
• Write the pressing rule down. Reverse side only, low heat, cotton cloth in between, because heat applied directly to the zari face flattens the metal permanently.

Seventh, look after it

Brocade almost never wears out from being worn. It dies from washing and storage.

Send it to a dry cleaner and say the words “zari work” out loud, so nobody puts a steam press flat onto the motif. Keep it folded inside muslin or an old cotton dupatta rather than a plastic cover, since silver darkens through a reaction with sulphur compounds in ordinary air and a sealed plastic bag full of warm damp air accelerates that considerably. And move the folds around once a year, because a crease that never shifts eventually cracks the zari along its line.

Where to start

If you are looking now, the Banarasi brocade collection runs from small buti blouse cuts through to bridal weights, and Imperial Brocade holds the heavier structured stock. For the lighter woven look without zari floats, All Jacquard gathers the silk, georgette, organza, crepe and tissue based options. The fabric estimator page is a faster reference than working the metres out from scratch.

Read the reverse. Ask the width. Finish the edges on cutting day. Those three habits will improve every brocade purchase you make from here on.

Sneha, Paras Gallery Fabrics, Lajpat Nagar, Delhi.