page_title: Sharkskin
section_title: Composition
hierarchical_section_title: Sharkskin / Composition
caption_attribution_description: English: Double-breasted gray and blue sharkskin suit of Harry S. Truman
context_page_description: Sharkskin is a smooth worsted fabric with a soft texture and a two-toned woven appearance.
  Lightweight and wrinkle-free, sharkskin is ideal for curtains, tablecloths and napkins. Sharkskin fabric is popular for both men’s and women’s worsted suits, light winter jackets and coats. Sharkskin is commonly used as a liner in diving suits and wetsuits.
  Typically, sharkskin fabric is made with the use of rayon or acetate or as a blend of the two, and its two-toned woven appearance is achieved by basketweaving, thereby creating a pattern in which the colored threads run diagonal to the white fibers. Because both fabric options already have a relatively smooth texture, the combination results in the finish for which sharkskin fabric is known.
context_section_description: The finest "natural sharkskin" fabric has been historically made of all natural fibers, being some mixture of  mohair, wool and silk.
  More expensive variations, often demarcated by fabric content labels bearing "Golden Fleece", "Royal" or the like, indicate an extremely rare and costly "sharkskin" of yester-year. Those fabrics, produced in small quantities, were manufactured in South America (Peru and Argentina: by transplanted German/Italian weavers) from the 1950s and 60s and are known to include in some instances even small percentages of vicuna, guanaco or alpaca in such blends: inclusion of silk (then a very costly fiber) was even more common among the "natural sharkskins". Whereas, "artificial sharkskin", a much less costly substitute, is a fabric variant that is more often found from that period and can contain synthesized or synthetic fibers that were developed contemporary to those eras.
caption: President Harry S. Truman's sharkskin suit, 1950s.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "556", "Image ImageLength": "709", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image YCbCrSubSampling": "1", "Image DateTime": "2017:05:02 13:38:30", "Image Make": "Kodak", "Image Model": "DCS Pro SLR/n", "Image Software": "PaintShop Pro 19.00", "Image InterColorProfile": "[]", "Image IPTC/NAA": "[28, 2, 55, 0, 8, 50, 48, 48, 57, 49, 48, 50, 51]", "Image ExifOffset": "182", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4371", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3535", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0101", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "556", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "709", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:10:23 11:05:00", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/6", "EXIF FNumber": "16", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "2647/1024", "EXIF ApertureValue": "8191/1024", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "157/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF FocalLength": "50", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "160", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "50", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}