On Cashmere: Grades, Origins, and What Quality Looks Like
Most men own a cashmere garment. Few can, on inspection, tell whether the garment they own is good cashmere or merely cashmere. The fiber has been so democratized — by the mall brands, by the e-commerce labels, by the seasonal sale racks — that the word itself has lost most of its meaning. The original meaning is recoverable. It requires a small vocabulary and a willingness to handle the cloth long enough to read it.
Cashmere is the undercoat of certain goats native to the high, cold plateaus of Central Asia. The goats grow the undercoat in winter against temperatures that fall well below zero, and shed it in the spring, when it is collected by hand or combed out by the herders. A single goat yields some four ounces of usable fiber a year — enough, after sorting and processing, for part of a sweater. The fiber is short, fine, and exceptionally warm relative to its weight. The whole trade is built on those three qualities.
The provenance question
The finest cashmere comes from the high steppes of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, where the climate is harshest and the fiber the goats produce is the finest. The Kashmir region of northern India still produces cashmere — the fiber takes its name from the place — but the volumes are small. Most of the world’s cashmere now passes through Mongolia, where production is still largely nomadic, and Inner Mongolia, where it is industrialized at much higher volumes. China sells widely at every price point, and the quality varies dramatically with the grade.
Provenance alone is not enough. A Mongolian operation can produce excellent fiber or poor fiber depending on its sorting. The European mills at the top of the market — Loro Piana, Cariaggi, the small specialists in Biella — buy by grade and origin together, and the best of them buy named lots from specific cooperatives. Most of what reaches the consumer never carries that level of disclosure. The silence is part of why the fiber so often disappoints.
Fiber length and ply
Two numbers describe a cashmere garment. The first is fiber length. Longer fibers produce stronger, smoother yarn that resists pilling and holds its shape across decades. Short fibers — broken, abraded, or harvested young — pill almost immediately and wear thin within a season.
The second number is ply: how many strands of yarn are twisted together to make the thread used in knitting. A single-ply cashmere is the lightest and most fragile, used for the most luxurious thin sweaters that wear more like a heavy silk than a knit. Two-ply is the standard for serious cashmere — sturdy enough for daily wear, soft enough to remain a pleasure to wear. Four-ply and above is reserved for the heavier garments: overcoats, robes, the country sweaters built to be worn over a shirt and tie.
How to read a cashmere garment
The hand tells most of the story. Good cashmere is cool to the first touch, warm against the body within seconds, dense rather than fluffy, with a perceptible weight in the hand for its size. Cheap cashmere feels light, dry, and airy; it has been carded to fake softness without the substance behind it. Within ten minutes of wear it sheds visible fibers. Within ten days it pills at the friction points.
The visible test is the surface. Long-fiber cashmere has a uniform, almost matte finish, with very little fuzz lifting from the cloth. Short-fiber cashmere lifts a halo of loose fibers when held to light. Pressed with a thumb, a good garment leaves the surface as it was; a poor one carries the impression of the thumb in displaced fiber.
What to ask for
The most useful question to ask of a cashmere garment, before buying it, is where the fiber was sourced and what the grade was. A serious house will know the answer. A less serious house will deflect, and the deflection is the answer. A garment whose label says only 100% cashmere is, in this trade, telling the buyer almost nothing.
Good cashmere does not need to be expensive in the absolute. It does need to be expensive relative to its alternatives. A two-ply crewneck under three hundred dollars is, with very few exceptions, made of fiber too short to last. The serious end of the market begins somewhere above that and runs into the territory of the lifetime sweaters — a smaller, quieter trade, and the one worth learning to recognize.
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