Muslin

Velvet and muslin are two very different types of fabric.

[…] my pupils leave off their thick shoes and tight old tartan pelisses, and wear silk stockings and muslin frocks, as fashionable baronets' daughters should.

A bleached or unbleached thin white cotton cloth, unprinted and undyed. [Nineteen varieties are thereafter listed.]

It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. He wore shepherd's plaid trousers and the swallow-tail coat of the day, with a figured muslin cravat wound about his wide-spread collar.

Other very different styles of fabric are now indifferently called muslins, and the term is used differently on the respective sides of the Atlantic.

"That was a pretty bit of muslin hanging on your arm—who was she?” asked the fascinating student.