How Como silk is made: from weaving to finished scarf

By Oliver Charles Harry - Creative Director of Ghini Como, a Lake Como silk brand based in Argegno, Italy.

Quick Facts: How Como silk is made

• The silkworm responsible for all Como luxury silk is Bombyx mori, the mulberry silk moth, whose larvae produce a single continuous thread of up to 1,500 metres per cocoon.
• Raw silk thread requires between 2,500 and 3,000 cocoons to produce one kilogram of finished fabric.
• Silk twill - the weave structure used in luxury scarves - is defined by its diagonal interlacing pattern, which gives the fabric its body, characteristic sheen, and the ability to hold a knot cleanly.
• 14 momme is the standard weight for a luxury silk scarf: one momme equals 4.34 grams per square metre, and 14 momme provides the optimal balance of drape, opacity and durability.
• The dyeing and finishing processes in Como use Alpine water from the surrounding mountains - exceptionally low in calcium carbonate and other minerals - which produces colour depth and clarity that cannot be replicated using harder water sources.
• A Como silk scarf passes through the hands of multiple specialist artisans before it is finished: weaver, printer, dyer, finisher and inspector each contribute a distinct expertise to the finished piece.
• The entire process for a genuinely zero-mile Como product - from woven grey cloth to packaged finished scarf - takes place within the Province of Como, Italy.

How Como silk is made: from weaving to finished scarf

Lake Como produces an estimated 70-75% of the world's finest luxury printed silk.

The mills and workshops along the lake's western shore supply Hermès, Chanel, Prada and most other major fashion houses.

This is not a recent development, as the region has been making silk continuously for over 500 years, and the expert craft knowledge built up over the centuries is the reason it still dominates the top of the market today.

This article explains exactly how a Como silk scarf is made, from raw thread to finished scarf.

The raw material: why mulberry silk is in a category of its own

Every stage of the Como silk process depends on the quality of what enters it, and the foundational quality decision is the choice of fibre.

All Como luxury silk begins with Bombyx mori, the mulberry silk moth, whose larvae produce a thread that is categorically different from those of every other commercially reared silkworm species in three critical respects: consistency, fineness and length.

The Bombyx mori larva feeds exclusively on the leaves of the white mulberry tree (it will accept nothing else) and this dietary specificity produces a thread of remarkable uniformity in both diameter and protein composition.

The fibroin protein that forms the structural core of each silk filament is coated in a second protein called sericin, which acts as a natural adhesive binding the two filaments of each thread together as the larva spins its cocoon in a continuous figure-of-eight motion over three to four days.

The resulting cocoon is a structure of extraordinary engineering: a single unbroken filament, between 600 and 1,500 metres in length, wound in overlapping layers into an oval shell that is simultaneously strong enough to protect the pupa within and fine enough to be reeled off as a continuous thread.

It is this continuity that distinguishes mulberry silk from every other natural textile fibre.

Cotton, linen and wool are all spun from short fibres. They derive their strength from the mechanical interlocking of relatively short lengths. 

Whereas silk derives its strength from the unbroken length of the filament itself, and it is this structural difference that produces silk's characteristic combination of tensile strength, flexibility, and the smooth, uninterrupted surface that catches and reflects light in the way no spun fibre can replicate.

Reeling and throwing: transforming the cocoon into thread

The process of converting cocoons into useable silk yarn begins with softening.

Cocoons are immersed in hot water at precisely controlled temperatures, which dissolves the sericin coating sufficiently to allow the thread to be unwound without breaking it.

This stage, called degumming or reeling depending on how completely the sericin is removed, requires both speed and delicacy: the thread is extraordinarily fine at this stage (between 10 and 13 microns in diameter, finer than the finest human hair) and any mechanical tension that exceeds its breaking strength destroys the very quality that makes it valuable.

During reeling, the filaments from multiple cocoons are combined and wound together to form a thicker thread of workable weight, a process requiring constant monitoring because cocoons exhaust themselves at different rates and must be replaced continuously to maintain thread diameter.

The number of filaments combined - typically between three and eight for luxury weaving yarn - determines the final thread weight, and the skill of the reeler in maintaining consistent thickness throughout determines much of the character of the finished fabric.

Throwing follows reeling: the combined filaments are twisted together under controlled tension to bind them into a cohesive yarn, with the degree of twist (measured in turns per metre) determining the finished fabric's texture and drape.

High-twist yarns produce fabrics with a slightly rough, matte texture; low-twist yarns produce the characteristic smooth sheen associated with luxury silk.

The throwing stage for luxury scarf yarn is calibrated with considerable precision, because small variations in twist angle produce measurable differences in the way light interacts with the finished surface.

The silk weaving process:

Warp preparation

• Threads are arranged vertically on the loom — these are the load-bearing warp threads
• Tension is calibrated to the specific weave structure required

Weft insertion

• Horizontal weft threads are interlaced with the vertical warp threads
• The pattern of interlacing determines the weave structure of the finished fabric

Silk twill weave

• Each weft thread passes over 2 warp threads, then under 1
• Each successive row is offset by one thread from the last
• This creates the characteristic diagonal rib visible on the reverse of the fabric
• Silk twill is the standard weave structure used in luxury scarves worldwide

Inspection

• Every metre of fabric is examined during weaving for irregularities
• Warp breaks are repaired immediately — any interruption becomes visible in the finished cloth

Output

• The finished woven fabric is called grey cloth — undyed, unfinished, and ready for printing

The weave structure of a finished silk scarf determines almost everything about how it will behave in use: how it drapes, how it holds a knot and how it ages over decades of wear. 

Silk twill, the structure used in virtually all luxury square scarves, is defined by its diagonal interlacing pattern, in which each weft thread passes over a fixed number of warp threads and under one, with each successive row shifted by a single thread to create a diagonal line across the fabric surface.

This diagonal structure performs three functions simultaneously.

Firstly, it increases the surface area of thread visible on the face of the fabric, which intensifies the sheen. It also creates a slight dimensional texture that gives the fabric body and makes it resilient to deformation, and produces a weave that holds printed colours with exceptional clarity by presenting a consistently smooth, uniform surface to the printing process that follows.

The tension at which the warp threads are held during weaving determines the handle of the finished fabric as decisively as the thread weight or the weave structure.

A loom calibrated to produce luxury scarf fabric must maintain tension within narrow tolerances across the full width of the weaving width (typically between 90 and 140 centimetres) while accommodating the natural variation in thread diameter that is inherent even in the finest reeled silk.

Managing this variation is learned knowledge, transmitted through observation and practice rather than from written specification, and it is one of the reasons that Como's weaving expertise is so difficult to replicate convincingly.

Printing: the science of colour on silk

The printing of a woven silk cloth is where Como's technical distinction becomes most immediately visible in the finished product, and where the region's accumulated expertise over the past century has produced capabilities that are genuinely without peer.

The depth, accuracy and stability of colour in a printed Como silk scarf - the way a navy remains precisely navy rather than drifting toward purple or black, the way a cream ground holds its luminosity rather than yellowing over time - are not accidental properties of the fibre but deliberate achievements of a printing process refined to an extraordinary degree of precision.

The use of Alpine water throughout the dyeing and finishing process is not a romantic detail but a genuinely vital (and unique) technique with discernible results. 

Water high in dissolved calcium and magnesium carbonate (hard water) interferes with the bonding of dye molecules to silk fibroin, producing colours that are slightly duller, less saturated, and less stable over time than the same dyes applied in soft water.

The Alpine streams feeding Lake Como produce exceptionally soft water, and mills in the region have designed their dyeing processes around its specific mineral profile over generations. 

Attempting to replicate Como's colour results using water of a different chemical composition requires reformulating the dye chemistry - and the accumulated knowledge of how to do this for hundreds of specific colour references lives in Como's printing workshops and nowhere else.

Finishing: the stage that separates good from exceptional

Finishing is the final series of treatments applied to printed silk cloth before it is cut and hemmed into scarves, and it is the stage that most decisively separates luxury production from commodity production.

Why?

Because it is the stage most resistant to automation. 

The finishing sequence for a luxury Como silk scarf typically includes washing, steaming, stretching and calendering - a process in which the cloth passes through rollers under controlled pressure to improve its surface smoothness - and a final hand inspection that examines every metre of fabric for printing irregularities, weaving faults, or finishing defects before it proceeds to cutting.

The hand inspection stage deserves to be singled out for particular attention because it represents a human quality threshold that no camera system currently installed in any textile mill can reliably replicate. 

An experienced inspector examining a length of silk twill against a light source is evaluating simultaneously the evenness of the weave, the accuracy of the print registration, the consistency of the colour depth, the smoothness of the surface finish, and the way the fabric moves when handled - five independent quality dimensions assessed in a single continuous visual and tactile evaluation that takes a matter of seconds per metre.

Training this capability takes years. Maintaining it requires working with silk every day. It is among the most concentrated expressions of what accumulated craft knowledge actually means in practice.

What zero-mile production actually means

For a Como silk scarf to be genuinely zero-mile (i.e. produced entirely within the Province of Como from woven grey cloth to finished packaged product) every stage described above must take place within a relatively small geographic area: weaving, printing, finishing, hemming, and packaging, all within the same province, ideally connected by relationships of trust and technical understanding that have been built over years of working together.

This is not merely an ethical preference or a marketing claim.

It has practical consequences for quality, because the ability to move fabric between specialists quickly - to return a misprinted length to the printer the same day, to adjust a weave structure in response to how a printed fabric is handling during finishing, to discuss a colour reference in person rather than across a complex supply chain - allows a level of iterative refinement and quality control that extended logistics chains cannot support.

The characteristic consistency of the finest Como silk - the reliability that encourages globally renowned fashion houses to return to the same mills season after season for decades - is in significant part a product of this geographic concentration and the relationships it enables.

When you hold a Lake Como silk scarf, you are holding the accumulated product of all of this: the continuous thread of the silkworm, the calibrated tension of the loom, the chemistry of Alpine water in the dye bath, and the judgement of the hand that held the finished cloth against the light and found it worthy of leaving the workshop. 

Oliver Ghini is the founder of Ghini Como, a luxury silk scarf brand made entirely within the Province of Como, Italy. He lives in Argegno, on the western shore of Lake Como, where the brand's scarves are designed and produced by artisan workshops operating in Como.