Home / Xiangyunsha
The cloth that
is made by weather.
Xiangyunsha — 香云纱 — is the only silk in the world dyed with plant sap and cured in river mud. Our own label, operated separately from the contract business, takes it from raw cloth to finished Chinese-style womenswear.
National intangible cultural heritage · 香云纱染整技艺
The cloth
Thirty passes.
Sun, tannin, mud.
A bolt of Xiangyunsha takes weeks and cannot be rushed. The silk is steeped in a liquor of yam root, spread flat on grass to dry, coated with iron-rich river mud on one face, washed, and cured again under the sun. What comes back is a cloth with a lacquered brown face and a soft, breathing reverse.
- HandCool, dry, faintly crispBreathes like linen in humidity, softens against the skin as it is worn.
- FaceTwo-sided by natureGlazed brown outside, matte and pale inside — a collar turns into a design decision.
- AgeColour that deepensThe tannin keeps reacting with air and light; the cloth improves instead of fading.
01 — Process
Made by weather, not machines
Four stages, all outdoors, all dependent on the day. This is why the cloth is scarce and why it cannot be counterfeited by a printing machine.
Plant dye
Yam root (薯莨) is crushed and steeped into a dark liquor. The silk is soaked, wrung and dried — thirty times or more.
Sun cure
Each pass is laid flat on riverbank grass under direct sun. Overcast days stop production; the schedule follows the sky.
River mud
Iron-rich Pearl River mud is spread on one face. The iron reacts with the tannin and fixes the deep brown that gives the cloth its name.
Wash & rest
The mud is washed away in the river, the cloth is dried again, then rested before cutting. No two bolts are identical.
02 — Fabric library
What we hold
Solid, jacquard, roundel and floral grounds in the colours the dye bath allows: amber, ochre, cochineal, indigo, jade. Swatch cards available for buyers.
03 — The label
Chinese line,
international fit.
The Xiangyunsha label is built the way our contract work is built — on the pattern block. Mandarin collars, wrap closures and bias panels are drafted to sit correctly on European and North American bodies, not scaled up from a domestic size chart.
The result is quiet: a jacket that closes without gaps, a skirt that falls straight, a collar that stays where it was set.
Xiangyunsha is an own-brand label and is operated separately from the OEM/ODM contract business. Garment development runs to its own calendar; swatch cards and cut-to-order lengths are available to buyers and designers.
A cloth worth
waiting for.
Tell us the garment you have in mind and we will send the grounds and colours that suit it, with weight and width specifications.