Woven, not printed: what tapestry fabric actually is

Almost every graphic garment you own is printed. A finished piece of cloth goes through a press, ink sits on the surface, and that ink is the first thing to crack, fade or peel. It is fast, it is cheap, and it is why most printed pieces look tired after a year.

Tapestry is made the other way round. The artwork is woven into the cloth itself, on a jacquard loom, thread by thread. There is no ink and no surface layer. The design is structural — the fabric is the image.

What that changes

It cannot crack or peel. There is no ink film to fail. The image wears the way the fabric wears, evenly, over years.

It has weight and texture. Our tapestry pieces run 18 oz for shirts and shorts and 28 oz for jackets and cardigans, in a 60% cotton / 40% polyester blend. The tapestry pants are woven at 450 GSM. For comparison, an ordinary t-shirt is around 5 to 6 oz. A tapestry jacket carries roughly the heft of outerwear, because structurally that is what it is.

The back is as considered as the front. On a woven piece the artwork continues through the cloth rather than stopping where the print stopped. The Ghost, Revenge and Family Ties pieces all carry different artwork front and back.

Why it takes longer to make

A print run can be set up in an afternoon. A tapestry design has to be translated into a weave structure before a single metre exists, and the loom produces a fixed quantity. That is why tapestry pieces arrive in runs rather than as open stock, and why a colourway that sells out is genuinely finished.

How to recognise it

Turn the garment inside out. A print shows a blank reverse and a faint outline. A woven piece shows the design again in negative, because the threads carrying the image run through the whole cloth.

The full range is in Tapestry — jackets, shirts, cardigans, pants and shorts.