The real price of cheap cashmere
Cashmere is all over the high street, from Gap to Primark, you can pick up a cashmere jumper for under £50 and Japanese retailer Uniqlo charges just £29.99 for its 'cashmere' jumpers. Until recently, cashmere had a luxury, high-end market brand image, so how are the shops managing to deliver cashmere products at rock bottom prices? It looks like cashmere, it feels like cashmere, but is it?
Goats in China and Inner Mongolia are the world's biggest suppliers of raw cashmere. The cashmere fibre comes from the goats' underbellies which is encouraged to grow in these cold climates. The longer and finer the yarn, the better the quality and the fibre must be less than a certain diameter and more than a certain length to be considered genuine cashmere.
Traditionally, the raw fibres were shipped to Scotland or Italy to be processed; spun, dyed and milled. When the EU import quotas were relaxed in January 2005 the doors were opened for competition from China. For the past two years, China has increased its cashmere manufacturing market and began its low cost cashmere business with Europe and America.
Up goes cashmere in fashion and down goes costs in China, leading to high demand for a now affordable product. There has to be a catch somewhere, and it comes in the loss of quality for the consumer.
The European demand cashmere products has meant a big increase in the number of goats herdsmen rear in order to meet buyers' needs. In turn, this has massively damaged grazing land in China and Mongolia causing dust pollution on a large scale. Laws were put in place to try and recover ruined land and reduce pollution by rotating grazing areas and limiting herd numbers.
Quality control isn't an easy task when the goats are reared in far away deserted spaces. So what does the struggling herdsmen do? He has had to limit the number of goats he has but the demand is still there for his product. There are concerns that cross-breeding is going on. Also mixing cashmere with other fibres, even dead goat hair or rabbit fur, creating watered-down cashmere from a rougher, shorter fibre. A lot of the high street cashmere may hold a label stating 100% cashmere, but the likelihood is that it is a cashmere mix.
China and Mongolia are producing the highest quality cashmere, but it can be sourced from other places such as Iran and Afghanistan, so again this is where the quality can drop.
The next problem is production: the movement of manufacture from Italy and Scotland to China has effected the quality of what we see on our shelves. Cashmere should develop and grow with age and wear, however,the cheap imitations are pilling and bobbling after a couple of washes and this is due to over-milling.
In an effort to pull production back to Scotland, acclaimed yarn spinners Todd and Duncan of Loch Leven have put £2m into the company to revamp, and recently unveiled a new cashmere yarn which they can knit at high speeds. It can knit at a rate of 1 metre per second and without waste. That is 50% faster than some other yarns and will reduce costs dramatically and so allow them to compete with Chinese producers.
With all this going on it isn't easy to know what we are buying: a pedigree name and a ''Made in Scotland'' label is a pretty good sign you are buying the real thing. Gail Downey, co-founder of designer knitwear label Weardowney, believes that the quality of the goats' lives as well as their wool is being compromised. "They are breeding the cashmere and alpaca goats in places where they are not indigenous so the animals do not have the same quality of life. This basically means they and the yarn wool are inferior." Weardowney will not include cashmere in its mainline collection because, Gail tells us, "we haven't found cashmere of satisfactory quality. People should be aware" she says, "that just because it is called cashmere doesn't mean its a luxury garment. I'd trust Scottish labels like John Smedley and Pringle or Rowan for handknitting because they've worked with cashmere for a long time
Gail also points out that as well as the wool itself, spinning also crucially effects the quality of the garment. "If cashmere isn't spun correctly it ends up piling," she says. "It should be produced by experts".
High quality, expertly-manufactured cashmere, is a durable textile, and, as well as feeling amazing, it should last for years. So the likes of Topshop and Primark are offering us our touch of luxury at these low prices, but be warned you might not be getting what is says on the label and be prepared to bin it after a season.
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