Alpaca
On the table was the same plate of marchpanes that was always there; my uncle wore the same alpaca coat as on other days; but opposite to him, in a pink silk dress with a great necklace of pearls about her throat, sat a young woman who was just finishing a tangerine.
Uncle Adolphe wears alpaca, one of the most remarkable fabrics that appears in this novel. Alpaca is made from the wool of the camelid alpaca. This species has been bred in Southern America for over 5000 years, but its wool was only introduced in Europe in the nineteenth century. The fabric is soft and luxurious. The wool was worked into a soft fabric in Europe in 1836 for the first time, and later on a gown was made from this fabric which was presented to Queen Victoria; this event drastically increased the interest in this special fiber.
Adolphe is adventurous and curious about foreign countries and cultures: he eats exotic foods such as tangerines, and the ceilings of his drawing room were “painted with a blue that was meant to imitate the sky”, which expresses Adolphe’s wonder for the wider world (Proust 75).
Adolphe’s alpaca coat may also symbolize his adventurism. Since South American alpaca wool only became popular in Europe in the nineteenth century, it is likely that alpaca was still associated with the exotic when Combray was published in 1913.