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Sharkskin describes a specific woven or warp-knitted fabric with a distinctive sheen. Sharkskin is a twill weave fabric created using acetate, rayon, worsted wool, lycra, and other plastic fibers.
The arrangement of darker and brighter threads in a twill weave creates a subtle pattern of lines that run across the fabric diagonally and a two tone, lustrous appearance. Primarily a suiting material, the fabric is sometimes seen in light jackets and non-fashion items such as curtains, tablecloths, and as a liner in diving suits and wetsuits.[1][2][3]
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Sharkskin has historically been made with different types of natural fibers, including either mohair, wool and silk. More expensive variations, often demarcated by fabric content labels bearing "Golden Fleece", "Royal" or the likes, indicated an extremely rare and costly "sharkskin" of yester-year. These fabrics produced in small quantities, were manufactured in South America (Peru and Argentina: by transplanted German/Italian weavers) from the 1950s and 60s and were known to include, in some instances, small percentages of vicuna, guanacooralpaca in such blends. Inclusion of silk was even more common among the "natural sharkskin" whereas "artificial sharkskin" is a fabric variant that was often found from that period and could contain synthesized or synthetic fibers that were developed contemporary to those eras.[4]
Artificial sharkskin variants used for suiting first appeared in the 1950s. These variants made more significant use of wool and synthetic fibers in their construction. The addition of synthetics can create a heightened metallic-like sheen, and/or added flexibility. Artificial sharkskin, in part for its comparably low price point, gained traction as a clothing material in the early 1960s and the disco era of the late 70s. Its popularity waned, but enjoyed brief fashion resurgences in the mid-1980s, mid-1990s and late 2000s.
British diplomat Sir Terence Clark in the 1950s served in Bahrain. He reminisced that the requisite winter evening wear for a diplomat was a white sharkskin dinner jacket.[5] Lucette Lagnado in her prize-winning memoir about her childhood, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World uses the imagery of the white sharkskin suit to evoke the glamorous evening life in Egypt in the 1950s. Early in Justine, Lawrence Durrell mentions the heroine sitting in front of a multi-panel mirror trying out a sharkskin dress; the book is set in the high society of diplomats and businessmen in Alexandria in the 1930s, a city where Durrell spent much time during World War II, a few years later.[6]
