The origin of Cashmere

The authenticate wool of cashmere can be only found on the Himalayan and Ladakh and Tibet high plates of and of Tibet. Á an average altitude of 4.000 meters you can see the Capra Hircus, a goat now domesticated, more known under the name of Pashmina. This animal, whose size is between the European domestic goat and the dwarf goat, produces the invaluable wool which made the term "cashmere" famous in the world.

However, if it is in the area of the State of Kashmir that the famous Shatuch shawls are sold, so fine that man can pass them in a ring, it is not from the North of India that come the largest part of the exports. Today, the three quarters of the raw material distributed in the world come from China and Mongolia. Iran and Afghanistan produce a large part of what remains. But the quality of the hairs of their Pashmina goats differs from the hairs of their Himalayan cousins. 80% of the Mongolian production is mainly exported towards China, Japan, Europe and the United States where the wool is carded, spun and transformed the way the creators desire. But, once per year, the Fair of Canton becomes the principal platform of sale of the cashmere raw material.

The search of the precious fibre

To protect itself from the lasting and hard Mongolian winter where the temperatures reach -40 degrees, the animal cover itself with a thick wool fleece covered with long hairs. In spring, the goat moults and its wool can be collected. The hairs of the animal are cut before being combed.

In a hard process, the wool is removed from the remaining hairs. The matter is sorted according to its natural colour and of its quality, the softest wool being located on the belly of the goat. Then the fibre is passed in a kind of blower which removes them from their last impurities: this operation is called plucking.

This great cleaning followed by the washing of the hairs provoke a lost of more than 80% of the gross weight of the mowed matter. Given that only the precious woolly fibre is exploited and that a goat produces approximately 100 grams of this fibre, it needs six goats to knit a pullover in pure cashmere !

Quality comes from natural colour

The four natural colours of hairs, white, average gray, dark gray and camel, are thus ready to be dyed. There are several processes to give its colour to the cashmere :
- dye the raw material when it is only hairs
- dye the wire
- dye the pullover

To obtain a colour of wire as purest and shining as possible, the best is to dye the raw material before extracting the wire from it.

Cashmere House selects its raw material among the hairs of a diameter lower than 15,5 microns and carries out its treatment in Scotland, the land of spinning of wool and of industry of the pullover. The ancestral knowledge of this country combined with the best qualities of wire give to the creations of Alexandre Savin a unique glare and a large panel of colours, from dark tones to pastels, in a quality of wire today unequalled.