More Than Denim — Herringbone, Hickory & Wabash: The Weaves and Stripes of Workwear

Denim is a twill woven from indigo-dyed warp threads and undyed white weft. The diagonal ridges running across its surface are a product of that weave. As the color wears, the tops of those ridges lighten first, and the resulting shadowing is what we call a fade — a mechanism covered in "There's No Such Thing as a 'Good Fade'".

But look across the older world of workwear and there are other "working fabrics" beyond denim. And here's the interesting part: they, too, develop a fade specific to their own weave or stripe as they're worn in. Here are three cloths long valued on the job, seen through their own aging.

First, the Baseline — Denim Is an Indigo Twill

Before the rest, it helps to fix denim as a reference point. Denim's fade looks so distinctive because of two things multiplied together: indigo sits only on the surface of the yarn (ring dyeing), and the 3×1 twill builds diagonal ridges. Friction strips blue from the ridge tops while the valleys keep their dye, producing three-dimensional contrast.

That lens — weave (how the ridges sit) and yarn (thickness and dye unevenness) together decide the look of a fade — applies just as well to fabrics that aren't denim.

Herringbone (HBT) — The Diagonal That Folds Back

Reverse the diagonal ridge of a twill at regular intervals and you get a chevron pattern of stacked Vs. That's herringbone — named for its resemblance to a herring's bones. Because the ridge direction switches back and forth, the cloth tends to weave up tightly and turns out durable. It has long been used where toughness matters: work garments and, notably, WWII-era military uniforms (HBT — herringbone twill).

The stacked V-shaped ridges of herringbone. As color lifts, the tops of these ridges whiten first — producing an arrow-feather shadowing distinct from straight-twill denim. (Editorial photo)

The fade follows the structure honestly. Each "peak" of the folding-back chevron takes friction and lightens first, so instead of the broad contrast of a straight-twill denim you get a finer, repeatedly reversing shadow.

Hickory Stripe — Blue-and-White Working Cloth

Hickory is a heavy cotton cloth with thin indigo-and-white stripes, long associated with American railroad workers, painters, and engineers. It hides dirt well, wears hard, and — crucially — its stripe is built into the weave. That's the decisive difference from wabash (below), which dyes and then removes: hickory weaves the stripe from differently colored yarns from the start.

The woven blue-and-white stripe. With wear, the indigo yarns lighten and the contrast with the white softens, mellowing the whole cloth. (Editorial photo)

As it fades, the blue stripe lightens while its contrast with the white eases off. Rather than denim's broad surface contrast, hickory ages by letting the crispness of its stripe gradually relax — a maturation particular to it.

Wabash — Dotted Stripes on Indigo

Wabash is an indigo-ground cloth carrying fine dotted pinstripes in white. It's generally described as a discharge print: chemicals remove color in spots from the dyed cloth to leave the white dots. It was common in early-twentieth-century American workwear.

Dotted white pinstripes on an indigo ground. On the back pocket, years of use have left faint impressions of stitching and construction. (Editorial photo)

If hickory is a "woven stripe," wabash is a "dyed stripe" — so its fade runs the opposite way. As the indigo ground wears and washes lighter, the contrast with the discharge-printed dots tends to grow more pronounced, not less.

Up close, each white stripe resolves into a row of small dots. The more the ground indigo fades, the more this stippled character steps forward. (Editorial photo)

Weave and Yarn Make the Character of a Fade

Even with the same indigo, a different weave moves the ridges and changes where the cloth rubs. Add the character of the yarn itself — slub yarn of uneven thickness, or cotton full of neps (knots) — and the landscape of the fade splits further from one piece to the next. (How yarn is spun is covered in "Spinning and Yarn Count".)

Cloth scattered with neps, plain and rustic. The character of the yarn becomes, directly, the character of the fade. (Editorial photo)

An eye used to reading cloth on the factory floor doesn't see these differences as better or worse. It just reads them: "this weave gives that shadow," "this yarn lifts that way." Denim, herringbone, hickory, wabash — none is above the others. Each one's way of working, and its time, leaves its own expression in the cloth.

For the structure of weaving itself, one level deeper, see "Denim Weaving and Selvedge". The fade of a working cloth is a collaboration of weave, yarn, and time.

Sources & References

• Tortora, P. G., Fairchild's Dictionary of Textiles (definitions of herringbone twill and striped fabrics)
• Standard textile-engineering texts (general descriptions of twill structure and discharge printing)
• General costume-history sources on twentieth-century American workwear and military uniforms

Related Articles

Articles in the same category:

• Why Denim Fades — Indigo Dyeing and the Ring-Dye Structure
• Denim Weaving and Selvedge — The "Ears" Old Looms Leave Behind
• There's No Such Thing as a "Good Fade" — The Longest Wearer Always Wins
• Spinning and Yarn Count — From Cotton to Thread