Real silk velvet?

For years and years I've read and been told that "silk velvet" is really silk/rayon velvet, with a silk (usually chiffon) base and rayon pile. 100% silk velvet, with a silk base and a silk pile just didn't exist. 100% silk velvet was an urban legend... or something that could only be bought in back alleys if you had the right connections and a lot of money.

This always seemed strange to me. Rayon hasn't been around for forever, so they couldn't have used silk/rayon velvet back in the day; it would have had to have been 100% silk velvet back then.

Today while watching and listening to Ian play his new video game (Borderlands - he likes it), I did a little searching for silk velvet. Apparently some places have started to produce 100% silk velvet over the last few years. The places I found all say that the 100% silk velvet has a silk backing and silk pile and that the fabric is very soft and drapey. Based on that description, it's entirely possible that they're selling actual 100% silk velvet.

I'm very excited about this possible find! I'm going to hold off giving you links to the actual fabric until I can verify that the 100% silk velvet fabric really is 100% silk velvet and not regular silk velvet. To that end, I ordered a small remnant of this 100% silk velvet and "regular" silk velvet (along with small, inexpensive remnants of some other fabrics I've had my eye on) from this one place. I'll let you know my findings once I know.

Can you imagine the yesterday's dress pattern made up in silk velvet? How gorgeous would that be?