Special Note: Over the ages, India was considered to be the topmost producers of cashmere products. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. By Angela Jey January 25, Spread the love. The fitter the goat, the finer the hair, preferring the climate whilst roaming the Gobi desert. They might look fat and content in the Australian bush but they are happiest in the cold Himalayas. Once the harsh winter is over, and spring has arrived the goats start to naturally shed so they are herded down the mountains by the nomadic goat herdsman.
There is a misconception that combing rather than shearing the goats to obtain the hair is a lot kinder to the animal, this is not true. The goats can suffer when being combed by hand as it constantly pulls at their coat and can be quite painful, whereas shearing is quick and painless when done by experienced shearers.
Once they have been sheared the cashmere fibres must be separated by combing out the soft undercoat and separate the guard hair. The longest, finest down is used in knitted cashmere garments and the shorter down in woven cashmere items. The separated guard hairs go into rugs. Fleece is only harvested once a year and a full grown adult buck will yield as much as 2. Average cashmere percentages are in the 20 percent range of the total fleece.
The fleece can be sold to wholesale buyers, or it can be de haired and sold to hand spinners. But what is cashmere, where does it come from and what are its benefits? Read on, as we unravel the secret life of this much-desired yarn. Cashmere is made from the processing of the hair of Capra Hircus goat that lives on the Tibetan highlands, in the Himalayas and principally in Mongolia.
Because the processing of the wool was first developed in the region of Kashmir, the name of the region has thus become the generic name of the fabric. The uplands of Ladakh and Tibet are the most authentic regions for cashmere wool. The Capra Hircus lives at an average altitude of 4, meters, an animal that, now domesticated in Mongolia, is also known as the Pashmina goat.
Cashmere wool for clothing is obtained from the neck and underbelly region of Cashmere goats. Cashmere goats produce a double fleece that consists of a fine, soft undercoat of hair mingled with a straighter and much coarser outer coating of hair, called guard hair. For the fine undercoat to be sold and processed further, it must be de-haired, which is a mechanical process that separates the coarse hairs from the fine hair.
After de-hairing, the resulting cashmere is ready to de dyed and converted into textile yarn, fabrics and garments.
The remaining long, coarse hair is typically clipped from the goats and is often used for brushes and non-apparel use. It is said that in the 13 th century in some caves in Mongolia, Marco Polo discovered representations of wild goats, domesticated by man. When this happens, the goats get shorn at times when they need their fleecy protection. Goat herders are suffering as a result as well. They need more goats to increase the demand for cashmere, which they must now sell at a lower price.
These herders are overworked, underpaid, and have more to worry about with their flock than ever before. They either end up losing more goats in harsh winters or have too many mouths to feed within a fairly arid landscape. The goats are eating these once-lush places down to nothing, causing a natural imbalance in the region.
Many companies have also seen the light and decided to stop using virgin cashmere fiber in their fashion lines. Online retailer Asos, which sells more than labels as well as its own clothing and accessories lines, did this in January of when it confirmed a ban on cashmere, silk, down, and feathers across its entire platform, as per Vogue. Green Matters is a registered trademark.
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