How a humble Indian fabric became a symbol of luxury in 1960s America

Madras became a staple of preppy American fashion in the 1960s after advertisers spun its tendency to bleed in the wash as a selling point.

On the cover of Lisa Birnbach’s “The Official Preppy Handbook,” a tongue-in-cheek 1980s guide to looking, acting and thinking like a US prep school elite, a pattern along the border depicts a fabric that has become synonymous with casual American luxury: madras. The colorful plaid cotton cloth has been used by brands like Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers for decades. Think light summer dresses, shirts and shorts worn at the country club or on sailing holidays in the Bahamas — the kind of attire that might be complemented by a pair of leather boat shoes. But this staple of preppy American fashion has humble origins, far from Martha’s Vineyard or the hallways of Yale or Harvard, in Chennai, India, the coastal city from which it takes its name. (Chennai was known as Madras during British rule.) Originally worn by Indian laborers, the cloth almost sparked a corporate scandal for American textile importer William Jacobson in 1958 due to its tendency to bleed when cleaned with strong detergent in high-powered washing machines. “The fascinating thing was that with every wash, the colors bled into each other. And they didn’t do it badly. They bled in a very ‘design’ kind of way,” said Bachi Karkaria, author of “Capture the Dream: The Many Lives of Captain C.P. Krishnan Nair,” a biography of the Indian textile magnate and hotelier who first sold Jacobson the madras, in a video interview with CNN. “This is what absolutely attracted Jacobson.” In her book, Karkaria tells the story of Jacobson and Nair’s meeting — Nair rattling off the unique selling points of the fabric, which was woven using lightweight 60-count yarn for the warp (thread held in place on the loom) and slightly heavier 40-count yarn for the weft (thread woven horizontally through the warp) before being dyed. The natural dyes were made from laterites, indigo blue, turmeric and local sesame seed oil, all of which gave the cloth a distinctive scent. Madras was, by the 1950s, already a hit in West Africa where it was used to make flamboyant gowns for weddings and other celebrations. But the most exciting quality Nair pitched to Jacobson, Karkaria said, was the fabric’s weakness-as-strength — it would bleed with every wash, creating a new kind of check and a “new” garment. The pair struck a dollar-a-yard deal (about $10 per yard in today’s money), with an immediate shipment of 10,000 yards that was entirely scooped up by Brooks Brothers and tailored into sporty jackets, shirts and shorts.