About our material: raw silk

Raw silk is a favorite type of silk that is rustic, natural, luxury but nor fussy, offering very unique features such as: very airy, cool in summer, warm in winter, soft but durable, easy to bleach, clean and dry, especially not stick to people and not charged.

In the early 17th century, Japanese merchants traded with Cochinchina of Vietnam and brought back to their country a large amount of  raw silk that was considered as a precious fabric. In the following centuries, raw silk was so popular that in southern Tokyo, weaving villages have been established and existed until now.

For many years, although raw silk has not been as famous as some other agricultural products, this material has still silently exported to Europe, North America by the trade villages in Thai Binh, Ha Nam with a steady increase in turnover, even in the most difficult times when the Eastern European market disintegrated.

In recent years, raw silk has been used by famous designers in the country when making expensive fashion collections. It is considered as a new, modern style material, easy to create beautiful costumes, elegant, luxurious but still handy. With these distinctive features, TRANSS has chosen the material for the costumes combined traditional beauty and modern lifestyle, simple but no less delicate and highly applicable.

Raw silk is the biggest contributor to mark a foothold of Vietnamese silk products in the Asian market and in the world for centuries. In the context of the world’s advanced silk industry, with the features of the product as well as the production process only, raw silk promises to be the right choice for the silk villages and silk weaving in Viet Nam.

In addition, the need to improve quality as well as reduce waste products released into the environment has appeared very early in Vietnam. Previously, in order to weave, most of handicraft villages utilize silk waste from the nursery of the root (outer shell of the cocoon), or the discharge (the innermost layer). As a result, the fabric has a rough surface, less silk, so it is only available to low and middle income workers at that time.

In the early twentieth century, famous artisan Le Dong Loi, from Dong Yen silk village (Quang Nam), succeeded in utilizing the bad cocoons (cocoon, cocoon, cocoon) at the stage of incubation. These types of cocoons are mixed with good ones, when weaving will make a large and twisted silk yarn, moreover, when weaving on the fabric will create ripples and colors glistening. For a long time, Dong Yen raw silk was once fashionable with the nickname “white silk”, which was dedicated to tailoring vests to the well-off.

Over the past ten years, the craftsmen of Nam Cao village (Thai Binh) have made great contributions to the country’s silk industry when trying to turn the old cocoons with just short pieces of silk into high-value raw silk after going through the process of bleaching, spinning, dyeing.

However, achievements in the past are not enough to guarantee the survival of Vietnam’s silk industry in general and raw silk in particular, especially in the context of Asian silk industry (mainly China, India) have made miraculous steps that developed far more than the technology of silk production Southeast Asia.  That is not to mention the world’s leading silk producers such as Germany, Italy.

It can be said that the silk in general and raw silk in particular is a long-standing material, but raw silk has not been appreciated ever. Over the years, the craft of making silk in Nam Cao gradually became faded, not many artisans are attached to the profession. With our love and respect to this natural material, TRANSS has cooperated with the fabric production facility here with the desire to revive the tradition of the villages and develop together, so that Nam Cao villagers can have a good life from their own craft and let the world know about the values of culture and clothes as well as special skills of Vietnamese people.

With TRANSS, nothing is better than the natural materials derived from the country and people of Vietnam also the national pride originated from traditional villages.