Madras fabric: history, care and how to wear it

What madras fabric is

Madras is a lightweight cotton cloth woven in a plaid of brightly colored checks, traditionally by hand, and named after the port city of Madras in southeastern India, officially renamed Chennai in 1996. The yarn is spun from short staple cotton that can be carded but not combed, which leaves small thick spots called slubs. Those slubs, together with slightly irregular checks, give madras its soft, uneven texture, very different from the crisp regularity of a machine woven shirting check.

In authentic madras the colors are dyed into the yarn before weaving, so the pattern looks the same on both sides of the cloth, and small flaws are a sign of hand production rather than a defect. Traditional madras used dyes that were not colorfast, so the colors run and soften with every wash. Today much madras is woven on power looms with colorfast dyes, and some cheap versions simply print a madras style check on the surface of the fabric, leaving the back pale.

To judge a madras shirt, turn the fabric over. If the plaid is equally strong on the back, it is woven. Look for slubs and slight irregularities in the checks, a very light, airy hand, and bright colors that have a slightly muted or blended look where they cross.

From Chennai to the Caribbean and the Ivy League

Cotton checks from the Madras region were traded long before the British arrived. The Fashion and Race Database notes that the cloth was being traded to North Africa and the Middle East at least by the fifteenth century, and that the Kalabari people of southern Nigeria adopted it, calling it injiri or George after Fort St. George, the British trading post at Madras. For the Kalabari it remains an important cloth for dress and ceremony.

Through colonial trade, madras also became central to the dress of the Caribbean. It is part of the traditional or national dress of islands including St. Lucia, Dominica, Martinique and Guadeloupe, and in Martinique the way a madras headwrap was tied could signal information such as marital status. Madras reached North America early too: in 1718 Elihu Yale, a former governor of Madras, sent bolts of it among his gifts to the Collegiate School in Connecticut, which took his name as Yale.

In the United States, madras became a status symbol in the 1930s, when affluent Americans brought it home from Caribbean holidays. Its biggest moment came around 1958, when a textile importer bought madras for Brooks Brothers without passing on the instruction to wash it gently in cold water. Customers complained that their shirts ran. The advertising executive David Ogilvy turned the problem into a slogan, guaranteed to bleed, and bleeding madras became a mark of authenticity. Through the 1960s it was a campus staple of what is now called preppy style, and a character's blue madras shirt even appears in S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders.

Madras vs plaid and tartan

Madras is a plaid, so the question is really what kind of plaid. Most plaids you meet in flannel shirts or tartan skirts are woven from wool or heavy cotton, often in fairly regular setts and deeper colors. Madras is lighter, brighter and less regular: short staple cotton, a very open plain weave, vivid colors that soften over time, and checks that can vary slightly across the cloth.

Tartan is the Scottish system of named patterns, often associated with clans, regions or institutions, and usually woven in wool. Madras patterns are not registered or named that way, and the same maker may weave dozens of variations. If you want to untangle the vocabulary further, our guides to plaid versus tartan and gingham versus plaid cover the neighbors. Patchwork madras is simply several madras fabrics cut into squares and sewn together, a thrifty way of using remnants that became a style of its own.

How to wear madras

Madras is a hot weather cloth, at its best from about 75°F (24°C) upward, and it works best as the one patterned piece in an outfit. A madras shirt for men, short sleeved or long sleeved with the cuffs rolled, goes with khaki or navy chinos, white trousers, or plain shorts, and with loafers, boat shoes or canvas sneakers. Pick one color from the plaid, often the navy or the khaki, and repeat it in the solid pieces.

Madras shorts are the other classic, and they suit a plain white or navy polo or a white oxford shirt. A madras sport coat, usually unlined, is a bolder summer jacket for garden parties and resort evenings; wear it with a white shirt and plain trousers, and skip the tie or choose a solid knit. Avoid a madras shirt with madras shorts unless you are deliberately making a statement, since two different loud plaids fight.

For women, madras works as a shirt dress, a sleeveless shift, a button down shirt knotted at the waist, shorts or a skirt, and in accessories such as headbands and bags. Wear it with white, denim or a solid color picked from the check, and with flat sandals or espadrilles. For more ideas on hot days, our guide to what to wear in 80 degree weather gives full outfits.

How to wash madras, including bleeding madras

Read the label first, because modern madras varies. Colorfast machine made madras can often go in a normal cool cycle with similar colors. Traditional or vintage madras, and anything described as bleeding madras, should be washed in cold water, alone or with other madras, on a gentle cycle or by hand. The colors will run into one another slightly each time, which softens and blends the plaid. The blending is intended, but the same dye will also stain anything light in the load.

Hang madras to dry or tumble it on low, and iron while slightly damp with a medium hot iron if you want a crisp collar; the thin cotton wrinkles easily but presses quickly. If a madras shirt has already turned a white load pink, our guide on removing dye transfer explains how to rescue the other clothes, and separating laundry explains how to keep it from happening again.