The English name for an iconic textile design motif of Persian origin and Indian, then European adoption, known elsewhere as boteh. It was named after the Scottish town of Paisley, which discovered the exotic boteh designs through imported 18thC cashmere shawls and promptly fell in love with, and began imitating them.
Paisley also describes any fabric in which this motif has either been printed onto or woven into it. The soft woven wools and/or cashmere fabrics that are traditionally designed with the paisley motifs all the way through, usually within a complex ground pattern, make up into really lovely, spoiling, curtains and bedcovers at the luxury end of the furnishings world