textile, usually black in colour, with a silk warp and worsted weft, or filling, woven in either plain or twill weave. Cheaper grades are woven with a rayon warp and worsted or cotton weft. Bombazine was originally made exclusively of silk and in a variety of colours, but the usual colour gradually became standardized as black because of its principal use in garb of mourning and of persons in religious orders. It was woven with silk warps and worsted wefts.

Bombazine was produced in ancient China and Japan, Elizabethan England, and in Italy, France, Spain, and England during the 18th and 19th centuries. Mantillas for winter wear in Spain and Latin America are frequently made of black bombazine.