From the April, 2010 Smithsonian. Gene Kranz, many years flight director at NASA, wore a vest, a new one for every mission, sewn by his wife, Marta. There were three mission control groups, red, white and blue and Kranz's team was the white one, so his vests were always white. When the costumers of Apollo 13 wanted to duplicate the original vest for the movie, they were stumped because the original vest was faille, and no one had heard of it. . They finally did find some faille for the vest.
But here's the kicker... the magazine article says that faille is a "fine grained fabric of silk, satin or cotton , particularly popular during the
1950s".
Aargh!
Kay