Cashmere Sweaters – Why Goat Hair Is So Expensive

You’ve got two of them.  Maybe more.  They are your favorites.  Of course I’m talking about your cashmere sweaters.  Have you ever worn or owned anything that is so soft and so warm.  You know you always stand out in a crowd one you have one of them on.  They scream soft buttery luxury and they were worth every penny you spent on them.

And you spent a lot of pennies didn’t you.

Did you ever wonder what the real reason for the high cost of cashmere is?

Well the major reason is scarcity.  Like all other fabrics and yarns, cashmere comes in a variety of quality.  The best comes from hand combed Kashmir goat hair found in the goats raised in Mongolia and the border areas of Pakistan and China.

These rugged and beautiful animals have to survive some of nature’s coldest weather.  As a result, nature has provided them with a super fine and soft “underhair” that acts as insulation, covered by a layer of longer coarse hair known as “guard hair”.  It’s the underhair that eventually is spun into yarn or woven into a cashmere fabric.

Harvesting this hair is no simple task.  For starters, they are hand combed and only when the goats are molting and that only occurs once a year.  Combing the goat is an art form in itself.  The idea is just to pull away the fine underhair and not the longer coarser top layer.  This little job can last as long as three days per goat!

And you know how much “wool” they get from a goat?  They get a whopping 150 grams or less than 5.5 ounces.  Compare that to a sheep who, depending on breed, can produce 100 – 300 pounds of wool a year.  On an annual basis worldwide about 6.5 tons of cashmere is harvested.  That’s a drop in the fabric bucket when you think of the thousands of tons of wool that is brought to market each year.

Once this hair is harvested, it has to be separated, cleaned and dyed.  It is then spun into yarn or woven into fabric.  This used to be done mostly by the Scots and Italians because of their famous skill.  Recently however, China started getting into the act and now does most of the production.

So when you look at those cashmere sweaters hanging in the closet just think of that handsome goat somewhere in Mongolia who stood there patiently getting combed so you could look great.  Why is it so expensive?  Gosh just the airfare would be too much!