Passement is an archaic term for both braids and laces that were applied flat to clothes or as a border to a curtain, etc. In particular the term was associated with a metal thread braid used to edge a garment. The term comes from the French word passement, and it was in wide-spread use in Britain from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, at what time the term passement was being replaced by dentelle (Fr: lace).