bombazine

Bombazine comes from the Old French bombasin, from Medieval Latin bombacinum, from Late Latin bombyx—'silkworm.' The original bombazine was a silk fabric. But by the time it reached English in the 16th century, it had become a twill-woven cloth mixing silk warp with worsted wool weft—heavier than pure silk, lighter than pure wool, with a distinctive matte surface.

The fabric's matte finish made it ideal for mourning wear. In the 18th and 19th centuries, British and American mourning customs required the bereaved to wear specific fabrics during prescribed periods. Glossy fabrics were forbidden—they suggested vanity. Bombazine, with its dull black surface, was the fabric of grief. When Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert died in 1861, she wore black bombazine for the rest of her life—forty years.

Victoria's example codified bombazine as the mourning fabric. Drapers stocked it specifically for bereavement. Undertakers recommended it. Etiquette manuals specified it by name. Charles Dickens mentions bombazine in several novels, always in connection with death or mourning. Mrs. Joe in Great Expectations wears it. So does Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House. In Victorian fiction, bombazine meant someone had died.

When mourning customs relaxed in the 20th century, bombazine lost its market overnight. The fabric that had been worn by millions of grieving Victorians was suddenly obsolete. It is still manufactured in small quantities, mostly for historical costumers and reenactors. The silk worm that gave bombazine its name—bombyx—is the same creature that gave us the word 'bomb,' through a different etymological route entirely.