028. Shopping Resources: All About Cashmere
The Difference Between Budget And Luxury Cashmere. Where To Buy Cashmere. And More.
Today’s newsletter covers everything you need to know in order to make informed shopping decisions when buying cashmere. As always, the focus is on helping you getting the best value for every dollar you spend, whether your budget is $50 or $3,000.
What Is Cashmere?
Why Is It So Prized?
The Price Democratization Of Cashmere
The Difference Between Cheap And Expensive Cashmere
Is Cashmere Sustainable And Ethical?
What’s The Deal With Recycled Cashmere?
How And Where To Shop For Cashmere?
Along the way, I share the best tips I have learnt, as well as my personal experiences with it. I also discuss some common misconceptions and help you distinguish between real value and marketing ploys. I hope you learn some new stuff and enjoy reading!
1. What Is Cashmere?
Cashmere is an animal fiber derived from a specific breed of goat that lives in nomadic herds, primarily in the grasslands of Mongolia, Northern China, and its namesake, Kashmir, a Himalayan region of India. To survive the harsh climate they live in, including temperatures that reach -30°C in the winter, these goats grow a thick layer of guard hair: an outer coat that protects them from wind, rain, and snow. They also develop an undercoat of soft, fine, downy hair that keeps them warm. The goats grow the undercoat in time for winter and shed it naturally come spring. It is from that soft undercoat with superior insulating properties that prized cashmere fiber is collected.
Traditional practices of collecting cashmere fiber, which trace back to the thirteenth century, involve combing the goats in the spring as they go through their natural molting process. After it is collected, the raw fiber is processed and carded to remove impurities, dirt, coarse hair and animal grease. It is then dyed to the desired color before being spun into yarn. This process takes the fiber from a cotton candy consistency to long strands ready to be knitted or woven into a garment.
Further down, I explain how making cashmere affordable enough to commercialise to the masses has changed the way cashmere is collected and produced.
2. Why Is Cashmere So Prized?
Cashmere is widely recognised as the finest material to adorn yourself with. Until as recently as the mid-nineties, it was considered a status symbol, only accessible to the privileged few who could afford it. Despite the price democratisation of cashmere, it remains a hot commodity and makes up $4 billion out of the $60 billion global luxury market, with heritage brands like Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli leading the way with fully integrated production of the world’s finest cashmere.
Its unique properties are what make it so popular, starting with how soft it is. Its softness results from how fine the cashmere fiber is; a cashmere fiber has a diameter that is one-fifth of a human hair’s. It’s also a denser fiber, making it non-itchy compared to wool. Because it is grown by the goats to resist the temperatures of their harsh environment, it’s also more insulating than wool, some say three times as much. This means that a light gauge cashmere jumper will keep you as warm as a much chunkier wool one. From a styling point of view, this makes cashmere ideal for layering or for those who don’t love the bulky look of heavy knits. If you tend to sweat more than the average person, you will also appreciate that cashmere keeps you warm, not hot. In addition to these, if - and this is a big ‘if’ - it is washed and cared for correctly, cashmere is a very resilient fiber; it holds its shape, does not shrink, and is durable.
Unsurprisingly, the premium price you are paying for cashmere is linked to the law of supply and demand. Only 6,000 tonnes of pure cashmere are produced each year around the world, compared to 1.3 million tonnes of wool. That’s a pretty staggering difference. It also takes combing four goats to produce enough fiber to knit a cashmere sweater, whereas the wool sheared from one sheep will produce five wool sweaters.
3. The Price Democratisation Of Cashmere
I stumbled across a fascinating 1999 New Yorker investigation into the widespread commoditization of cashmere. It seems to pinpoint exactly the moment when cashmere shifted from being a hallmark of the elite to appearing in the collections of every contemporary and high-street brands like J Crew and the Gap. The report states that four and a half million cashmere sweaters were imported into the US in 1998, up from two and a half million in 1997. Interestingly, this coincided with a time in fashion when quiet luxury thrived: ‘a moment when a perfectly tailored but unobtrusive Jil Sander suit is better than a gold-buttoned Chanel two-piece’.
Since then, we have been able to find $50 cashmere sweaters that, from a reasonable distance, look identical to $2,500 ones. At one end of the spectrum are fast-fashion brands like Uniqlo, whose CEO Tadashi Yanai, the richest man in Japan, attributes the low price of their cashmere to ‘cutting out the middle-man’. At the other end are brands like Loro Piana, whose production process includes several rounds of meticulous quality control at the fiber level to ensure that only the finest raw material is used. The difference in price can be explained by a number of different factors: Uniqlo’s cashmere sweaters are made in China, where garment workers are paid a minimum monthly salary of $217 USD (49% of the local living wage), while Loro Piana’s are made in Italy, where garment workers are paid an average of $2,440 USD gross monthly salary. So, it’s not just the middle-man. Other factors include retail margins, which for high-end luxury can sometimes reach an exorbitant 5x. The question is, how much of this difference in price is accounted for by quality?
4. What Is The Difference Between Cheap and Expensive Cashmere?
You guessed it, not all cashmere is created equal. Whether a cashmere garment is good or bad quality boils down to two main factors: how long and how fine the cashmere fiber used is. There is an unofficial grading system to classify cashmere fiber, whereby the highest grade, Grade A cashmere, is made using fibers with a diameter that can be as low as 14-15.5 microns, with a length of 34- 36mm. Grade B and C cashmere are made using fibers that are as thick as or thicker than standard wool, respectively. The grading system itself is not regulated, so you will seldom see brands display the grade of cashmere they are using. Brands using grade B and C cashmere guard themselves from sharing this information. If a brand is using grade A, you’re more likely to find out, as they will leverage it as part of their marketing. For example, Everlane’s eponymous Grade-A Cashmere Crew is a best seller. This would make a smashing Christmas gift, by the way. The key information to remember is that a longer and finer fiber means that the quality is better, and you can expect greater softness and durability.
In response to the increase in Western demand for cheaper cashmere, new techniques for ‘extracting’ cashmere fiber emerged. Instead of combing their goats, and in order to increase speed, herders started shearring them, as is common practice to extract wool from sheeps (they shave them effectively). By shearing the goats, the outer, much coarser layer of hair is mixed in with the much finer fiber of the undercoat. This technique results in much lower quality cashmere.
The production of Grade A cashmere is a lot more labour-intensive as it implies meticulously sorting the finest hair from the coarser ones. The production of Grade B and Grade C cashmere is a lot more commercially minded, with methods like shearing that mix up the coarser hair. Therefore, as you’d expect, the higher the grade, the more expensive the raw material, and in turn, the more expensive the retail price. Most fast-fashion brands, like the aforementioned Uniqlo, will be using low-grade cashmere fiber, while high-end brands will be using prime quality fiber.
There are a few common misconceptions around what makes good quality cashmere. The first one is pilling. Pilling happens when loose fibers get rubbed out of the fabric and roll into little bobbles. All cashmere, even the most expensive type, will pill at first. Because it’s made of longer fibers, the best quality cashmere will be rid of this loose fiber after a few washes, whereas lower quality cashmere, made of shorter cashmere fiber, will continue to pill throughout its lifecycle. Softness can also be a misleading factor when purchasing budget cashmere. You are often told to try on cashmere against the most sensitive areas of skin on your body, like your neck or the inside of your arm. If you feel the slightest amount of itchiness when doing this test, it’s fair to assume that you are not dealing with the highest quality cashmere. However, this is not enough to guarantee quality, as high-street brands will treat their low-grade cashmere to mask its itchiness. This will wear off overtime, whereas high-grade cashmere will keep its softness over time.
This is not to say that low-grade cashmere should be avoided at all costs. From the above, we can conclude that low-grade cashmere is on par with wool in terms of softness and durability, and it’s something important to be aware of before deciding whether you wish to pay for the premium that brands charge for anything labeled ‘cashmere’. With the very important distinction that cashmere, of any grade, is a lot more high-maintenance than wool.
5. Is Cashmere Sustainable And Ethical?
Note: I share information about the industry’s impact on humans, animals, and the environment, not to deter you from buying certain things, but to give you agency over your shopping decisions. Simply by being alive in 2023, but especially as women, we are constantly ‘influenced’, conditioned, targeted, and sometimes shamed into consumption. The fashion industry is one of the most opaque when it comes to what goes on until the moment we click Add To Basket. I share what I have learnt from working brand-side and years researching the industry, again not to guilt you, but to help you make savvy, informed shopping decisions and get the best possible value out of every dollar you spend. I write this paragraph for those striving to understand the impact of their buying choices. If you choose to read it, please remember that, as I have mentioned before, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A 100% SUSTAINABLE FABRIC. Cashmere is more detrimental in some regards and a lot less detrimental than other fabrics in others.
Coinciding with the price democratisation of cashmere discussed above, Mongolian herders saw the price of raw material dwindle from $16 per kilo in the spring of 1998 to $8 per kilo in the winter of 1999. This had a major socio-economical impact in a region where populations rely heavily on cashmere exports. To survive, herders had to find ways to dramatically increase their yield by increasing the size of their herds. Between 1999 and 2019, the cashmere goat population has quadrupled from 7 million animals to 27 million animals. The multiplication of livestock has led to the destruction of entire regions of grasslands and their ecosystems. To put it into perspective, overgrazing by cashmere goats over the last three decades has turned a grassland area of Mongolia twice the size of Texas into a desert. These ruminant animals are also responsible for 472 million metric tons of CO2e each year. That’s equivalent to what 103 million cars produce yearly.
TW: The next paragraph includes description of animal abuse.
Increasing the yield of a herd also means increasing the output per animal. You can imagine that a scaled-up operation engineered for output efficiency looks very different from a farmer gently and patiently combing his goats and meticulously separating the soft hair from coarse hair. In addition to impacting quality as discussed above, this also impacts animal welfare. Whilst combing supposedly takes place during the goats’ molting season, increasing output means combing or shearing them too early leaving them unequipped to survive the extreme climate they live in and prone to freezing. In addition, as goats’ hair get coarser and yellower with age, older animals no longer able to produce bankable fiber are killed to mitigate the already extensive damage to the terrain they live on and the labour involved in keeping the rest of the herd. To add to this, these intensive breeding cycles are taking place in regions like China, where 60% of global cashmere production comes from, and where regulations around animal welfare are pretty lax, if not non-existent. I will spare you the pictures.
On a brighter note, cashmere is a natural fiber. This means that its end-of-life impact is a lot more eco-friendly than that of most other fibers assuming, of course, that it hasn’t been blended with other fibers. Cashmere will take mere weeks or months to biodegrade in the right environment, as opposed to synthetic fiber which may take hundreds of years to disintegrate, further contaminating the soil with chemicals in the process.
6. What’s The Deal With Recycled Cashmere?
In 2014, Stella McCartney reported that, despite cashmere representing only 0.1% of the materials they used, it accounted for 42% of their total environmental impact at the raw material stage. From this moment, they transitioned from using virgin cashmere yarn to recycled yarn. In the years since, a number of other eco-conscious brands have committed to only using the fiber in its recycled form (some brands will also use the terms ‘regenerated’ or ‘reengineered’ to describe the same thing).
Producing recycled cashmere consists of collecting either consumer waste, pre-loved cashmere no longer wanted, or production waste, unsold inventory from brands. Thirty percent of clothes made globally doesn’t get sold and cashmere is no exception. Once collected, the garments are broken down to fiber level, then sorted by color before getting respun into new garments. This makes recycled cashmere an ideal solution for conscious consumers as it consumes roughly 80% less energy, 90% less water, and 97% less CO2 than virgin cashmere.
That doesn’t make it a be-all and end-all solution, no fabric ever is, and it might not suit the most discerning consumers. If you have read the description of what makes great cashmere above, you can easily imagine that the method used to recycle cashmere means that the fiber collected is of uneven quality. The general feeling I have gathered among my industry peers reflects this; recycled cashmere garments don’t perform as well as the finest virgin fiber in terms of durability, resistance to pilling, etc. This is the case for most recycled cashmere on the market, even high-end brands like Stella McCartney, with a few exceptions, such as Loro Piana, who seemingly only recycle their own Grade A fiber.
I don’t count myself as a purist, and my personal opinion is that it is far better to buy recycled cashmere. It’s important however, for all consumers to understand what the quality and performance they can expect from the clothes they buy.
7. How And Where To Shop For Cashmere
Frustratingly, when shopping for cashmere, the quality you’ve been dealt oftentimes only reveals itself after a few weeks of use. It gets increasingly hard to assess garments for quality at the moment of purchase, seeing as brands treat their cashmere for a temporary boost of performance. Some reviews I read even mentioned a slight oil-like residue felt from said treatments upon inspecting Uniqlo cashmere. I used to take an excessive halo of fuzz around cashmere as a sign of low-grade quality. Now I know that this gets easily covered up. So is there anything left to look out for when shopping? Lift the knit to the light and inspect it for any irregularities. Gently stretch parts of the fabric and check that it bounces back into its original shape. Turn the jumper inside out to check for any loose threads or unfinished seams. Not all these tests directly inform the quality of the fiber used, but they attest of the integrity of the brand. The attention they pay to manufacturing the garment usually goes hand in hand with the quality of the raw material they use.
Don’t confuse information about fiber quality with information about yarn quantity and weight as expressed by ‘ply’ and ‘gauge’. Brands will use these terms as selling points, and whilst these are great, a high gauge means a heavier knit, and multiple plies make for a more durable garment, they don’t tell us anything about the quality of the fiber. Another common marketing ploy I see a lot of brands use is the term ‘Mongolian cashmere’. Whilst Mongolia largely remains faithful to traditional techniques of combing goats versus shearing them (a practice more common in countries like Afghanistan or Iran), it, once again, tells us nothing about the quality of the fiber or about the animals being treated more fairly.
Things to look out for instead are information about grade or fiber diameter within the 14 to 15.5 microns range. More generally, in the absence of those, the more information shared by the brand, the better. A brand that has a page dedicated to the origins of their fabrics and provides transparency shows that they have nothing to hide. I was giving Gigi Hadid’s cashmere brand Guest In Residence a closer look in preparation for this feature. There is no information at all about their cashmere on their site other than a mere ‘Premium Cashmere From Mongolia’ bullet point on their product pages. Even though it is hard to discern greenwashing from authentic information, I’d expect brands to at least try.
Conscious customers should look for recycled cashmere. Brands like Reformation, Patagonia, and a few of those listed below use it. You should also look out for certifications that guarantee values like traceability, animal welfare, or circularity such as Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), Recycled Claim Standard (RCS), Global Recycled Standard (GRS), The Good Cashmere Standard, or Sustainable Fibre Alliance (SFA). Brands I like who, for the most part, sell certified cashmere include Arch4 ($$$), Allude ($$), COS ($), Cuyana ($$), Gobi ($), Quince ($), Everlane ($), Extreme Cashmere ($$$), Le Kasha ($$$), Leret Leret ($$$) - I’m obsessed, Lisa Yang ($$), Loro Piana (), N Peal ($$$), Naadam ($), and Suzie Kondi ().
If you have a large budget to invest and want cashmere that will last you a lifetime: Buy from heritage brands with expertise in cashmere like Loro Piana or Brunello Cucinelli. If you only want the best quality but don’t have the budget to match: Loro Piana on Vestiaire Collective costs the same as Massimo Dutti. If your main priority is sustainability: Go for recycled cashmere. If you have a limited budget: Don’t bankrupt yourself to get to the top end of your budget just for the sake of it. An extra hundred dollars might not always afford you a large difference in quality and therefore might be best spent on something else. Use the information shared in this newsletter to find the finest quality you can get for the amount you’re comfortable spending. If you want something more low-maintenance: Have a look at merino wool. I personally prefer the heftier feel of it and the fact that I don’t have to be scared every time I wash it. Last but definitely not least, however much you spend, always keep in mind that a lot of the longevity power of your cashmere knit is in your hands. A low-grade cashmere given tender loving care will outlive a high-grade one that gets treated absent-mindedly.
I would love for you to share your favourite brands for cashmere in the comments. As well as any disappointing experiences you may have had with brands you don’t recommend. Every time I ask this community for advice, I always receive the cleverest tips and I would love for the comment section of these newsletters to become a resource for us to learn from each other.
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just a note to say that as I've scaled back my consumption, I find that much of the energy directed toward getting new things has been satisfied by taking care of my current things - in particular handwashing my cashmere and wool sweaters and depilling them. it's ...almost therapeutic. my sweaters are hardly high end but they're holding up very well so far. (that being said, I've been thinking of investing in one nicer knit for the season and this newsletter so was so helpful!)
Hi Liza! What an interesting piece, I love my cashmere sweaters from reformation! Do you have any recommendation for merino wool sweater brands? Thank you for your writing