Thread Count and GSM: Claims India Can Test
Four claims carry this category. Two are measurable against a named Indian test method, one is a document you either hold or do not, and one is a provenance story with no Indian test behind it.
- IS 1963 counts threads as they lie in the woven cloth and reports them per centimetre or per decimetre, by direction. IS 171 defines a two-fold yarn as one yarn, so counting plies produces a figure the method cannot yield.
- IS 1964 has two methods for mass per unit area. It names the oven dry method as the reference in a dispute, and IS 15798 pins the declared GSM to that method, which is why retests come back lower.
- No Indian Standard defines Egyptian cotton and no Indian rule requires fibre provenance on a label. The only proof is a lot specific document chain, plus fibre testing if someone pushes.
- Combed against carded is marked on the yarn cone under IS 171 clause 6.1. Buy fabric rather than yarn and you do not hold that document, so you should not make the claim.
Thread count is counted per centimetre, and only once
A number on a listing becomes a claim the moment somebody can test it. Thread count can be tested, which is the problem, because the test and the marketing figure measure different things.
IS 1963, second revision of 1981, gives two procedures for threads per unit length in woven fabrics. You set a counting glass on flat fabric and count units, each unit being one thread and one space. The gauge length follows the density: 50 mm up to 20 threads per centimetre, 20 mm up to 100, 10 mm above that. You repeat at five places or more, never within 50 mm of a selvedge or two metres of the piece end, and average. The result is warp and weft threads per centimetre or per decimetre. Two numbers, metric, one per direction.
The retail figure is a different construction. It adds warp and weft together, restates them per square inch, and in the inflated version counts each ply of a two-fold yarn as a separate thread. IS 171:1993, the specification for ring spun grey cotton yarn for weaving, defines a two-fold yarn as two single yarns twisted together, which is to say one yarn. IS 1963 counts what lies in the cloth. A 20s/2 warp end is one end.
IS 745:2003 makes the argument for you. Its fifteen handloom bed sheet varieties are built on two-fold yarns, and the standard still reports ends and picks per decimetre. Nobody inside the standards system ever doubled anything. What you can hand a buyer is an IS 1963 result in threads per decimetre, split by direction. You cannot hand over a thousand.
GSM is the better number, and it has two methods
On a towel, mass per unit area is the more honest figure, because a towel exists to hold water and mass proxies for the pile. It is testable, and the test has a fork most specifications never name.
IS 1964:2001 gives two methods. Method A conditions the specimen to moisture equilibrium at 65 percent relative humidity and 27 degrees Celsius, for a period set by the regain band, then weighs it. Method B dries the specimen at 105 to 110 degrees Celsius and adds back the commercial moisture regain. The standard names the oven dry method as the reference in a dispute. IS 15798:2007, the labelling standard for consumer textiles, goes further and pins the declared mass in grams per square metre to Method B.
Cotton carries water, so a figure weighed unconditioned in a humid shed is neither of those numbers, and it is the higher one. When a buyer retests and comes back low, your supplier is usually not lying. They measured something else. Name the method and lot beside the number in your specification, and ask your mill for the method on its report, not just the figure.
IS 7056:1989 gives you a floor to argue from. Terry towelling carries a minimum mass of 390 grams per square metre and a minimum terry ratio of 6 to 1. Huck a back carries a minimum of 290. It also sets a minimum mass per ten finished pieces, a third number, because a towel includes hems and a heading.
None of this is the declared weight problem. Net quantity, and what lands on a buyer’s kitchen scale, is a separate mechanism set out in declared weight against delivered weight. GSM is a fabric property measured to a named method, not a quantity declaration.
Egyptian cotton is provenance, not a fabric property
This claim has no Indian test behind it. No Indian Standard defines Egyptian cotton. No Indian labelling rule asks you to declare where the fibre grew. Country of origin on a pre-packaged article is where the article was made, usually Panipat or Karur, and that declaration can be true while the fibre claim is unsupported.
What is left is documents, and they have to be lot specific, because that is what a challenge asks for. The chain runs fibre to yarn to fabric to finished lot. If you use the Egyptian Cotton logo, the Cotton Egypt Association owns it as a registered trademark and licenses its use against a verification programme it says rests on DNA testing, so the licence belongs in the file. Laboratories sell DNA and isotope testing on fibre, yarn and fabric, so anyone can check you.
Somebody did. In August 2016 Target said it would stop selling Welspun India bedding after finding that sheets sold as Egyptian cotton were not, as Fortune reported. Welspun appointed EY to review the lapses, per Business Standard. No regulator started that. A customer did, with a test.
Combed is a document you either hold or do not
Combed against carded is real and measurable, just not in your fabric. IS 171 sets a minimum single yarn tenacity of 12.0 centinewtons per tex for carded yarn and 14.0 for combed, for counts of 98 tex and finer. Those are yarn tests, run on the cone. Once the yarn is woven you cannot run them.
The same standard says where the proof lives. Clause 6.1 requires every cone or cheese to be marked with the source of manufacture, the count of yarn, and the words carded or combed, or the initials K or C. That marking, the yarn invoice, and the mill’s issue record against your lot are the file. Buy fabric rather than yarn and you hold none of it, which makes the claim your supplier’s word in your voice. Either write the yarn documents into the fabric purchase order or drop the word.
What gets asked for when a claim is challenged
The general framework is in the substantiation file, and the artwork discipline is in front of pack claims. What follows is the category list, one row per claim per SKU.
Thread count: an IS 1963 report giving ends and picks separately, per decimetre, with the counting convention stated and the lot identified. GSM: an IS 1964 report naming Method A or Method B and the conditioning, plus the terry ratio on a towel. Combed: the cone marking and the yarn invoice for that lot. Origin: the purchase chain and any licence. Each report belongs to an edition of a standard, so record the edition you tested against.
Then check where the claim sits. A title that reads 1000 TC is the claim. A detail page that quietly says 300 threads per decimetre is a correction nobody reads. When the two disagree, the title is what you will be asked to defend.