What Is Bouclé?

Where does bouclé come from?

Nobody knows who first made bouclé. The earliest firm evidence is the word itself, recorded in English for the fabric in 1886, according to Merriam-Webster. The name is French: bouclé means “curly”, from the verb boucler, “to curl”, which goes back to bocle, “buckle” or “curl”.

A surviving garment shows the cloth in use by the 1890s. The Maine Historical Society holds a woman’s bouclé coat from about 1895, with a bustle at the back, whose looped wool was used to give a simulated fur effect, the same job a faux fur does today.

Chanel used bouclé, but did not invent it. The V&A holds a Chanel haute couture coat from Spring/Summer 1961 in grey and white “bouclé wool tweed”. It is lined in shocking-pink quilted silk and fastens with bouclé wool buttons edged in pink silk. The museum’s wording treats bouclé as the yarn and tweed as the cloth, and one fabric can be both.

How is bouclé made?

Bouclé is made by twisting yarns together so that one of them, the effect yarn, is supplied faster than the core it is wrapped around; the surplus length has nowhere to go and buckles into loops. Merriam-Webster defines it as a yarn of three plies, one of which forms loops at intervals. The CAMEO materials database of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, says it is usually three-ply, with one thread looser than the others.

The three components

• Core: the twisted base yarn.
• Effect yarn: overfed relative to the core, so it forms the loops. Textile researchers call the ratio of effect length to core length the overfeed ratio; it is typically more than 110%.
• Binder (or wrapper): a third yarn that wraps helically round the core and effect yarn and fastens them together, locking the loops in place.

Fancy yarns of this kind can be made on hollow-spindle spinning machines using ordinary yarns as the inputs. The finished yarn is then woven or knitted into cloth with a rough, spongy face. CAMEO lists wool, cotton, silk, linen and synthetic fibres as the materials bouclé yarns are made from, and suits, coats, dresses and sportswear as typical uses.

What are the properties of bouclé?

Bouclé’s defining property is texture: a rough, nubby, spongy surface of irregular, semi-circular loops. Its other properties depend on both the fibres it is spun from and how the yarn and fabric are built.

The texture itself can be engineered. In a 2021 study of bouclé yarns made on a hollow-spindle system, Alshukur and Macintyre found:

• raising the overfeed ratio significantly increased both the number and the size of the loops;
• adding more binder wraps significantly reduced the size of the loops;
• at some settings the loops began to cluster, which the authors judged made the yarn less attractive.

Durability depends on the yarn settings and the fabric structure. In tests on knitted bouclé, Nergis and Candan (2006) found that overfeed ratio and binder twist changed the amount and height of the bouclé effect and also the fabrics’ thickness and abrasion behaviour. Single jersey knits resisted abrasion less well than rib structures.

How is bouclé graded or measured?

Bouclé has no official grade; it is described by the fibres it contains, which appear on the label, and by the geometry of its loops, which researchers measure and buyers judge by eye.

How does bouclé appear on a clothing label?

“Bouclé” never appears as a fibre on a legal fibre-content label, because it is a yarn structure; under US rules the label must list the generic fibre names and their percentages by weight, in descending order.

• Fibres under 5% are generally shown as “other fiber” or “other fibers”, not by name. Wool and recycled wool are the exception: they must be named with their percentage even below 5%.
• Recycled wool on a US label means wool returned to a fibrous state after being woven, knitted or felted into a wool product, whether or not anyone wore it.
• Extra descriptions on non-required tags must not be false, deceptive or misleading, the FTC says.
• Country of origin and a permanent care label are also required on garments sold in the US.

The percentages matter with bouclé because the word describes the yarn’s structure, not what it is made of: the same looped look can be spun from wool, cotton, silk, linen or synthetic fibres such as polyester. Only the fibre line tells you which.

How do you tell good bouclé from poor bouclé?

Good bouclé has loops spread evenly along the yarn, held by the binder, and made from the fibre the label promises. Check it in this order:

1. Read the fibre line first. Note every fibre and its percentage before you touch the cloth.
2. Look along the surface in raking light. Loops should be spread evenly. Clusters of loops next to flat stretches of bare core are the clustering that researchers found reduces the yarn’s appeal.
3. Look closely at one loop. In a three-ply bouclé a binder yarn wraps round the core and the base of each loop, fastening them together; the more wraps, the smaller the loops.
4. Check the knit structure on knitted bouclé. A rib made from bouclé yarn resisted abrasion better than single jersey in published tests, so on a jumper or cardigan the structure is part of the durability story.

Red flags: loops already pulled into long strands on a new garment; patches where the core shows through; a label that leaves out percentages.

How do you care for bouclé?

Care for bouclé by following the permanent care label first, because the right method depends on the fibres, and then by protecting the loops, which sit on the surface where they can catch.

• Keep it away from hook-and-loop fasteners, rough-edged jewellery and bag hardware that can hook a loop.
• If a loop is pulled, do not cut it. Ease the slack back along the yarn, or pull it through to the wrong side with a needle.
• Rest tailored bouclé on a shaped hanger and fold knitted bouclé, so the cloth is not stretched while it waits.

Is bouclé sustainable?

Bouclé is neither sustainable nor unsustainable in itself: it is a way of building yarn, so its impact follows the fibres it is spun from and how long the garment lasts. A wool, cotton, linen or synthetic bouclé carries the footprint of that fibre. On a US label, “recycled wool” is a defined term, so it is a checkable claim rather than marketing language.