Rt Labung: Silk, Chiffons & all the other fancies

A tiring day visit to central London all for the purpose of fabric research. The plan was to head to Goldhawk road to begin with as it's a long stretch of a road filled with exciting textiles shop. Mostly Asian so great when it comes to haggling, esp for poor students like myself! haha. lets just say I wasted time (40 precious minutes) on the tube getting to Hammersmith from Waterloo. However only to find that both the Hammersmith & City line and the Circle line were both closed due to engineering works so there was no possible way of getting to Goldhawk either. HUGE disappointment! So the official fabric hunt started at Liberty's top floor (Regent street, closest tube station being oxford). They didn't give any samples for furnishing fabrics, however a sample order service was available. Other fabrics and yarns were placed on the third floor of the store. As a student, I was entitled to 5 free small samples there which was quite nice as the fabrics were bit pricey and the minimum amount you had to purchase was half a meter.

I then moved on to Berwick street to find the famous "Cloth House". on this street i came across a few silk shops and other fabric places too. Certainly my first time touching expensive luxurious fabrics! average prices were £145 per meter. Hope your jaw didn't drop open like mine at the time. Whole day was spent in various fabric shops collecting free samples where possible if not buying the minimum amount which added up to a fairly large amount. Luckily I was sharing with two other friends, so it did work a bit cheaper. Notes: for those of you that cannot tell the difference between fake/real fur...look at the back of the fabric if its woven its obviously FAKE if on leather then real. Also real fur isn't available on rolls as its almost impossible to produce that way!!