This column loves a genuine bargain, but it has been thinking long and hard and it has decided it’s giving up cheap cashmere for Lent. Yes, Lent: you can’t hurl yourself into self-denial without some preparation.
The thing is, your £22 cashmere is really only cashmere in the sense that Jordan is a singer. Put Jordan next to Annie Lennox or Beyonc? and, suddenly, she’s not a singer.
Admittedly, cheap cashmere is softer than a melting marshmallow, but that’s like drinking Mo?t because you liked Scarlett Johansson’s eye shadow in the ads. Softness is the very least you can expect from cashmere. These days, no one apart from lunatic Dan Brown monks puts up with scratchy next to their skin. But to get soft, you have to play the long game. Proper, top-end cashmere – the kind that lasts years and gets better with wear as opposed to staging some kind of nervous breakdown the moment anything is demanded of it, such as being worn – isn’t even that soft initially. I have a pricey Scottish cashmere cardigan that was about as cuddly as a draughty stately home when I first got it, but which has improved so much with age I think of it as the Kristin Scott Thomas of cardigans. The “bargain” fuzzy, soft-focus stuff you get now is only soft, according to Caroline Krieger, chief buyer at House of Cashmere, who has worked in the industry for 30 years, because it’s “slackly knitted and over-yarned to bring the shorter fibres to the surface and make the garment feel very soft. But it pills [bobbles] very quickly.” You have been warned.
The best cashmere is still harvested by hand (using combs to tease out the cashmere hair during the shedding season) by nomads in Mongolia, where exceptionally cold winters result in extra-fluffy goats. That sounds a lot nicer than hearing about goats that have been roughly shorn until they bleed.
According to Peta, many Asiatic goats live in horrendous conditions in factory farms and are so stressed they are dehorned to prevent fighting. But high-quality cashmere uses only the longer fibres from wild or free-range goats that are humanely farmed in a sustainable way. Brora prides itself on the sourcing of its cashmere, as well as its dyeing techniques to get its rich colours. Purecollection.com also promises its customers “the pick of the clip” – ie, the best fibres, farmed ethically.
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The good stuff is spun into yarn in Scotland, where apparently the water results in the highest-class cashmere (it must be true because this is where Hermès and Chanel, to name two who should know good from rubbish, get theirs). “The Scottish garment doesn’t initially feel as soft because it’s much more dense,” says Krieger. “But you’re getting more cashmere per square inch in each garment. This makes it much more durable.”
I don’t want to play the blame game here, although China doesn’t get a great score on any level of its cashmere production other than price. You see what just happened there? Cashmere got political, ethical and environmental. At least it’s not fluffy.