FABRICS OF AUTUMN-WINTER SEASON 2011/12 : PURE CASHMERE, WOOL-CASHMERE BLENDS, FLANNEL&CHECK PRINTS

This Autumn-Winter season emphasizes natural, comfortable and tactile fabrics, cloths that just begged to be touched, stroked, caressed and admired. That’s why Autumn-Winter 2011-2012 is going to be particularly pleasing for anyone who appreciates gorgeous luxury fabrics such as pure cashmere, wool-cashmere blends and flannel. 

A jewel among fabrics, cashmere is unique and luxurious. Cashmere is fine in texture, strong, light, and soft. Garments made from it provide excellent insulation. Owning a garment made of cashmere is a fashion treat to be truly treasured - after all, it takes one little goat four years to produce enough wool to make just one cashmere sweater.

This season we witness the triumphant return of flannel, this quintessential suiting material. With its slightly raised surface or ‘nap’, flannel feels warm, and flannel suit is the perfect choice for a cold winter. As well as for suits, flannel is very well suited for trousers. 

Grey flannel is the classic variation of the cloth, but there is also the newly fashionable blues and browns, plus appealing checks and stripes.     

Fall-Winter 2011-12 welcomes color with some caution. Black and grey dominates with accents of beige, camel and brown colors as well as blue in various shades. 

This season, a mixture of checks, the Glen plaid (or Glen Urquhart plaid) has risen to become the most fashionable of all suit fabric patterns. It is actually a fabric of patterns, meaning that it can be woven into a great many color and pattern size combinations. Of those, the Prince of Wales pattern is amongst the most popular, and like so many things sartorial derives its name from Edward, Prince of Wales. 

Glen plaid tends to work best in grey tones, with the checks in lighter shades currently amongst the most popular. But even more eye-catching this autumn and winter are the checks, which are a little larger and bolder that normal.