SILK : Savor your $9.95 T-shirts while you can. This rich fabric may once again become the cloth of kings.

It is as precious as gold, as strong as steel, as light as gossamer. And, as the label says, it must be dry-cleaned.

Now there’s a myth.

Silk has been around for 4,600 years, dry cleaning only since the 1920s. But it is exceptionally light, exceptionally strong, and it may be on the verge of once again becoming the cloth of kings.

For a decade, silk and silk garments have been flooding in from a newly industrial China, driving down prices to the humble realms of cotton and polyester. But that could change starting today when new U.S. restrictions on imports of silk apparel from China kick in. The days of the $9.95 silk T-shirt may be numbered.

Silk’s image has always been at odds with the casual, inexpensive merchandise worn by the masses in recent years to the grocery store or the movies.

“My grandfather, whose family made silk in Italy in the 1700s, associated silk with the age of Persian princesses,” says John Sullivan, head of American Silk Mills in Plains, Pa. “It’s regal and lush and special.”

Most consumers would agree.

“In the customer’s mind, silk has always been a prestige fabric,” says Patty Sapp, a buyer for the Broadway stores, where silk blouses have sold for as little as two for $30. Such low prices have raised the question, “Can this be real silk?”

Well, yes. But in many cases, it’s not the fabric it once was.

In 2640 BC, the legend goes, the young Chinese empress Hsi Ling Shi discovered a blight on the royal mulberry trees. Gorging on their leaves were white worms that later entombed themselves in cocoons. When one of the cocoons dropped into her tea, the empress watched, fascinated, as a delicate, shining filament unwound in the hot liquid.

In no time, she and her minions developed a process of reeling the cocoon filament into threads, weaving the threads into fabric and sewing the fabric into finery. Then, voila, they turned the whole business into a closely guarded industry.

At its core is the silk moth, Bombyx mori, which flies a little, mates a lot, and produces hundreds of eggs in its short moth life. The eggs produce caterpillars that eat their weight daily in mulberry leaves, growing about 70 times their original size. They then weave cocoons, extruding liquid silk and a gummy sealant called sericin at the rate of a foot a minute, and go to sleep--or whatever you call the suspended animation of a chrysalis, or pupa.

If left alone, the moth would break through the cocoon and repeat the whole cycle. But nature’s way would snap the single continuous thread--sometimes a mile long--and trip up production. So the chrysalis is killed by heat or steam, the cocoon is soaked in hot water to soften the sericin, and the silk thread is unwound and reeled off, together with the threads from several other cocoons.

Today’s process differs only in the quantities produced and in high-tech improvements made in the worms’ environment, incubation and feeding. Secrecy still shrouds rituals and “proprietary information known only to the Chinese and secret since the days of Marco Polo,” says Cass Johnson, assistant director of international trade for the American Textile Manufacturers Institute in Washington.

For 3,000 years, the Chinese trekked their silk cloth west over the deserts and mountains of the old Silk Road toward the gateways of the Mediterranean civilizations. Outsiders had no clues about its origin; some thought silk floss grew on trees. And its cost was great, controlled by Persian traders at the other end of the road.

But in AD 550, two spies sent by the Byzantine emperor brought back cocoons, and the secret was out. Tracing silk production from that point is like taking a subway ride through the ancient world.

By the 1980s, the business of weaving silk into cloth was dying out in many places, “killed off by the Japanese, who did it cheaper,” says Hans Baumann, executive vice president of the Rudolph-Desco Co., a New Jersey-based importer of silk yarns.

But not for long. China, dormant during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, was “opened” by President Richard M. Nixon in the early 1970s and granted “most favored nation” status for trade by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, giving it widespread access to U.S. markets. With production facilities and a labor force in place, it was soon supplying much of the world’s silk.

Chinese silk has been imported to the United States without quotas and with low or no duties because the silk industry here--unlike cotton or polyester--is very small. “The purpose of duties,” says U.S. Customs spokesman Greg Doss, “is to make money and protect what we make here. If we don’t make it, it comes free.”

The duty on finished apparel has been negligible, particularly contrasted with other fabrics--6% on silk sweaters and shirts, for example, 17% for wool, 21% for cotton, 34% for synthetics. Buoyed by investments and advice from business interests in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China last year sent us more than $1.8 billion in silk garments, or about 75% of the $2.4 billion worth we imported, reports the American Textile Manufacturers Institute.

“China is now the largest overall supplier of apparel of all kinds,” says Jim Langlois, director of the Seattle-based National Apparel and Textile Assn., representing importers and wholesalers.

Today’s Chinese silk may be plentiful, but much of it is not of the quality you’d offer Persian princesses. These are fast-production goods with a mass-market goal--heavy on plain, collarless, pocketless designs--the realm of the silk T. Many of the items are labeled “washable,” a confusing designation in that silk has always been washable if “you don’t get aggressive with it,” says Sullivan, who is also president if the International Silk Assn.’s U.S. chapter (See tips on care, this page.)

What’s new about washable silk is that it’s pre-washed and has presumably shrunk as much as it’s going to--up to 50%. It has already been dealt with aggressively, so it will probably take more of the same, including machine washing.

The very low-priced silk is almost always washable, says Roger Shatafian, president of Creative Natural Fabrics in Los Angeles, noting that “at those prices, it doesn’t pay to send it out for dry cleaning.”

Nevertheless, silk garments often bear “Dry-Clean Only” tags. In some cases, special handling is required, more likely because of the dyes involved than the fabric. In others, the company advises “Dry-Clean Only” to avoid returns, Baumann says. If something goes wrong, it’s the dry cleaner’s problem.

Popularly priced silk has been a boon for retailers over the last few years. Now, something “always hard to get and very pricey has become available,” says Sapp, of the Broadway. Chinese silk “went into blouses, jog suits, two-piece dresses, pants and tunics,” she says, “and the growth of the silk business in (moderately priced) clothing has been exponential. It used to be all polyester.”

The market for “all silk” businesses has also expanded. WinterSilks, a Wisconsin-based mail-order catalogue, was founded 14 years ago on knitted silk underwear, an upscale cold-weather accouterment appealing to skiers, outdoor types and the “dominant user”--urban career women.

“It’s lightweight, and insulates well and wicks moisture away from the skin,” explains John Jeffery, company president. With up to 15 Chinese factories under contract to supply garments, WinterSilks--now a $30-million business--has added another catalogue, Silk Collection, of dressier garments.

But Chinese dominance has also meant hard times for would-be competitors in the United States, which is lacking in silkworms and low-cost labor. The last of U.S. companies that made thread from silk fiber closed six years ago, and makers of silk fabric have bailed out of the apparel market.

“Our mill door cost (labor and materials alone) now is higher than the selling price of Chinese fabric,” says Sullivan of American Silk Mills.

His company--one of only a dozen U.S. silk manufacturers left--instead weaves its silk for home furnishings, such as upholstery and draperies. “Sadly,” he said, “the Chinese goods are as low-grade as possible. I feel for them--they need to employ people there--but it has caused the loss of a high art form.”

Other arms of the industry have their own troubles. Shatafian, who imports better-quality silk fabrics from South Korea and China, sells mostly to high-end clothing manufacturers.

“On the low end, our manufacturers can’t compete with the low-quality finished garments coming in,” he says. “In the last two or three years, China is actually selling garments cheaper than we can sell fabric.”

The quotas on imported Chinese silk, announced by Clinton Administration trade officials in January, will apply to finished clothing, not to silk fiber, thread or fabric. But U.S. makers and importers of silk say they didn’t seek the change and were not the primary concern.

Trade officials confirm that the quotas are designed to protect low-priced, non-silk apparel made here. In other words, Jeffery says, “(U.S. Trade Representative) Mickey Kantor was protecting cotton.” Or, others say, polyester.

The reaction is mixed. Speaking for manufacturers, Sullivan says it may “encourage more people to manufacture their garments here, if we could compete on price points. Maybe it will encourage Seventh Avenue to look to do more with American mills.”

Speaking for importers, Langlois of the textile association says: “We aren’t pleased because we don’t like to see any limits on the trade.”

No one is sure how much or how soon the quotas might affect prices here. But if ever there was a time to hoard silk Ts, it’s now.

Silk / The Delicate Cycle

A silk garment is the culmination of a long process that begins with a brightly colored caterpillar. Raised on farms throughout the world, the Bombyx mori, or silkworm, spins a cocoon that yields a strong, elastic, lightweight fiber. The thread is then dyed and woven into the cloth people love for its soft, luxurious feel.

1. A female silkworm moth lays 300 or more eggs in early summer, depositing them on strips of special paper, then dies. The eggs are placed in cold storage until the following spring, then moved to an incubator. After about 20 days, the eggs hatch.

2. The tiny worms, kept on trays, eat fresh mulberry leaves almost continually around the clock. After four to five weeks, they have grown about 70 times their original size and shed their skins four times. About 3 inches long and 1 inch thick when full grown, a worm has 12 body sections and three pairs of legs.

3. Now ready to make their cocoons, the worms creep into compartments containing twigs or straw. They attach themselves to the sticks, then--swinging their heads from side to side to release the fluid that hardens into silk thread--form cocoons. After about three days, the cocoon is completed and the worm changes into a pupa. Farmers allow a small percentage of pupae to develop into moths. The rest are killed.

4. The cocoons are shipped to a factory to unwind. They are placed in a basin of hot water to dissolve a gummy natural substance, sericin, that holds their threads together. The filaments are then drawn together and pulled through a tiny guide. The melted sericin binds several filaments into a single thread, which is wound on to a reel. The silk is later rewound into skeins.

5. Because the raw silk is still too weak for weaving, it must be strengthened through “throwing,” or the twisting of strands to produce specific weights of thread for weaving. After throwing, the silk is boiled in hot soap to remove the sericin.

6. Dyes are applied to silk either before (skein dyeing) or after (piece dyeing) weaving.

7. Silk yarns are woven into cloth on automatic power looms, which can produce designs and patterns.

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What It Costs

As import rules have relaxed, so has the price of silk. A sampling of blouses found around town:

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How to Keep It Clean

Although some manufacturers recommend dry-cleaning, silk can be hand-washed. Observe these guidelines for best results:

* Wash separately in lukewarm water with a gentle detergent.

* Rinse in lukewarm or cold water.

* Remove excess water by rolling garment in a towel.

* Hang in a cool, dark place to dry.

* Iron at low temperature on the reverse side while still damp.

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Other Tips

* Always apply perfume or deodorant before donning a silk garment

* Never expose silk to strong, direct light for a long time period.

* Never soak silk in water for a long time period.