[7] Cambric is a finely woven cloth with a plain weave and a smooth surface appearance, the result of the calendering process.
[8] Batiste is a kind of cambric;[9] it is "of similar texture, but differently finished, and made of cotton as well as of linen".
[14] The alleged[15] invention of the fabric, around 1300, by a weaver called Baptiste or Jean-Baptiste Cambray or Chambray, from the village of Castaing in the peerage of Marcoing, near Cambrai, has no historic ground.
[14][16][17][18] Cambric was a finer quality and more expensive[19] than lawn (from the French laune, initially a plain-weave linen fabric from the city of Laon in France[20]).
[10] Though the term generally refers to a cotton plain weave with a coloured warp and a white weft, close to gingham, "silk chambray" seems to have coexisted.
[29] Technical use sometime introduced a difference between cambric and batiste, the latter being of a lighter weight and a finer thread count.
[32] In the 19th century, the terms cambric and batiste gradually lost their association with linen, implying only different kinds of fine plain-weave fabrics with a glossy finish.