Textiles and fashion: fabric, fit and the collection

One of the shortest words in this list hides a number. Der Zwirn is thread made by twisting two or more yarns together, which is why it is stronger than das Garn and what a tailor reaches for when a button has to stay on. The word goes back to the same Germanic root as zwei, and its English cousin is twine: both began as the name for a doubled thread. English let its word drift towards string and parcels; German kept it at the workbench, and zwirnen is still what a mill does when it twists several yarns into one. The same root sits in der Zwilling and in English twin. Everything else here is the vocabulary of a trade rather than of a family history — the weave, the cut, the fitting and the calendar of a collection — but all of it rests on thread of this kind.