I didn't come to silk with a romantic story. There's no anecdote of a grandmother's blouse, no specific memory attached to it. I just knew it was deemed as fancy and it was the kind of fabric you saved for something. My thinking has changed significantly since working with it.
I have a striped silk blouse from our first collection that has traveled with me ever since we launched. I've packed it into suitcases, worn it to meetings and dinners, carried it across more cities than I can count. Serendipitously, it also happens to be in our local high school's colors, so I've even worn it to the Homecoming parade. Every mom wanted one, which might be the highest compliment a piece of clothing has ever gotten me. That blouse isn't a statement piece. It's just something that keeps showing up and keeps earning its place.
— Eleanor
What Is Silk?
Silk is a natural protein fiber, produced by silkworms as they spin their cocoons. Mulberry silk, the variety we use, comes from silkworms fed a diet of mulberry leaves. It’s a controlled process that produces the longest, most uniform, and most lustrous fiber of any silk type.
Unlike cashmere, scarcity isn't really the issue within silk. Production is consistent and well understood. The real issue is something else: silk might be the easiest fabric in fashion to fake, and one of the hardest to evaluate without it in your hands.
Why Silk Is Complicated to Buy
The number of synthetics that can pass as silk is surprising. Two garments can both carry the word "silk" on the label and feel like entirely different things. The difference comes down to yarn quality, weaving, finishing, and construction – which is challenging to highlight in a product photo, and most of which a brand isn't especially eager to tell you about.
The biggest tell is hand feel. Real silk has fluidity and substance. Inferior silk, or synthetics made to mimic it, feel slick rather than soft. There's a difference, once you know what you're feeling for.
A simple test: crumple the fabric gently, then let it go. Good silk recovers beautifully while holding its fluidity. Temperature matters too. Exceptional silk feels cool against the skin, then gradually warms as you wear it. It responds to you.
How We Source It
Our silk yarn is 100% silk, spun by an Italian silk mill with generations of experience behind it. From there, it's knit in northern Italy, just outside Venice, by a family-owned factory whose work you've likely seen even if you don't recognize the name. They've produced some of the most exceptional houses in the world.
We knit our Mulberry silks at 18 gauge, one of the finest gauges possible. The result is a fabric with a careful balance of sheen and matte, not high-shine, which means it moves easily from day into evening without ever looking like it's trying too hard. We'd like to think the same is true of us.
Where We Stand on Blends
As with our cashmere, we won't cut corners with synthetics. Our silk is pure, and finished without the shortcuts that make a fabric easier to produce but less honest to wear.
We may occasionally weave silk with other pure materials in our knitwear, but never with anything synthetic. The fiber doesn't need reinforcement. It needs to be sourced and made correctly in the first place, which sounds obvious and somehow isn't, industry-wide.
Why We Choose Real Silk
Eleanor Leftwich is a small, founder-led brand. We don't carry the overhead larger companies do, and we aren't beholden to outside investors or shareholder margins. That gives us the freedom to source based on conviction, not efficiency, and to choose materials because they're right, not because they scale well.
Explore Eleanor Leftwich Silk
The same standards above guide every piece we make. Our silk is sourced for fiber quality, hand feel, and construction, so each piece earns its place the way Eleanor's blouse has: worn often, for years, as an everyday item or for a special occasion.
Shop Our Mulberry Silk Knits →
