Cashmere wool
Cashmere wool, usually simply known as cashmere, is a
A number of countries produce cashmere and have improved processing techniques over the years but China and Mongolia are two of the leading producers as of 2019. Afghanistan is ranked third.[2][3]
Some yarns and clothing marketed as containing cashmere have been found to contain little to no cashmere fiber, so more stringent testing has been requested to make sure items are fairly represented.[4][5] Poor land management and overgrazing to increase production of the valuable fiber has resulted in the decimation and transformation of grasslands into deserts in Asia, increasing local temperatures and causing air pollution which has traveled as far as Canada and the United States.[6][7]
Sources
Historically, fine-haired Cashmere goats have been called
Gathering
Cashmere wool is collected during the spring moulting season when the goats naturally shed their winter coat. In the Northern Hemisphere, the goats moult as early as March and as late as May.
In some regions, the mixed mass of down and coarse hair is removed by hand with a coarse comb that pulls tufts of fiber from the animal as the comb is raked through the fleece. The collected fiber then has a higher yield of pure cashmere after the fiber has been washed and dehaired than produced by shearing. The long, coarse guard hair is then typically clipped from the animal and is often used for brushes,
Production
Pure cashmere can be dyed and spun into yarns and
The town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, in the United States was an incubator for the cashmere wool industry. It had the first power looms for woolens and the first manufacture of "satinets". Capron Mill had the first power looms, in 1820. It burned on July 21, 2007, in the Bernat Mill fire.
In the United States, under the U.S. Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939, as amended, (15 U. S. Code Section 68b(a)(6)), a wool or textile product may be labelled as containing cashmere only if the following criteria are met:
- such wool product is the fine (dehaired) undercoatfibers produced by a cashmere goat (Capra hircus laniger);
- the average microns; and
- such wool product does not contain more than 3 percent (by weight) of cashmere fibers with average diameters that exceed 30 microns.
- the average fiber diameter may be subject to a mean that shall not exceed 24 percent.[10]
Types of fiber
- Raw – fiber that has not been processed and is essentially straight from the animal
- Processed – fiber that has been through the processes of de-hairing, washing, carding, and is ready either to spin or to knit/crochet/weave
- Virgin – new fiber made into yarns, fabrics or garments for the first time
- Recycled – fibers reclaimed from scraps or fabrics that were previously woven or felted and may or may not have been previously used by the consumer from various parts of the world.
The world cashmere industry
Mongolia supplies 9,600 tons of raw cashmere per year to the world. 15% of the total raw cashmere supplied by Mongolia is being used to manufacture finished goods whereas the remaining 85% is being exported in semi processed form. 70% of the total raw material used to produce finished garments in Mongolia is being procured by Gobi Corporation with the remaining 30% being used by other producers in Mongolia.
The global fashion luxury cashmere clothing market is expected to reach US$4.2 billion in 2025, growing at an annual rate of 3.86% per year between 2018 and 2025.
History
Cashmere has been manufactured in
Trading in commercial quantities of raw cashmere between Asia and Europe began with Valerie Audresset SA, Louviers, France, claiming to be the first European company to commercially spin cashmere.[16] The down was imported from Tibet through Kazan, the capital of the Russian province of Volga, and was used in France to create imitation woven shawls. Unlike the Kashmir shawls, the French shawls had a different pattern on each side.[17] The imported cashmere was spread out on large sieves and beaten with sticks to open the fibers and clear away the dirt. After opening, the cashmere was washed and children removed the coarse hair. The down was then carded and combed using the same methods used for worsted spinning.[18][19]
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Kashmir (then called cashmere by the British) had a thriving industry producing shawls from goat down imported from Tibet and Tartary through Ladakh. The down trade was controlled by treaties signed as a result of previous wars[20] The Shawls were introduced into western Europe when General Napoleon Bonaparte sent one to Paris from his campaign in Ottoman Egypt. The shawl's arrival is said to have created an immediate sensation and plans were put in place to start manufacturing the product in France.[21]
In 1799 at his factory in Reims,
By 1830, weaving cashmere shawls with French-produced yarn had become an important Scottish industry. The Scottish Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures offered a 300 pound sterling reward to the first person who could spin cashmere in Scotland based on the French system. Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane collected the required information while in Paris and received a Scottish patent for the process in 1831. In the autumn of 1831, he sold the patent to Henry Houldsworth and sons of Glasgow. In 1832 Henry Houldsworth and sons commenced the manufacture of yarn, and in 1833 received the reward.[27]
Dawson International claim to have invented the first commercial dehairing machine in 1890, and from 1906 they purchased cashmere from China, but were restricted to purchasing fiber from Beijing and Tianjin until 1978. In 1978 trade was liberalised and Dawson International began buying cashmere from many provinces.[16]
Many early textile centers developed as part of the American Industrial Revolution. Among them, the Blackstone Valley became a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, became an early textile center in the Blackstone Valley which was known for the manufacture of cashmere wool and satinets.
Austrian Textile Manufacturer Bernhard Altmann is credited with bringing cashmere to the United States of America on a mass scale beginning in 1947.[28]
Attempts to improve Afghanistan's cashmere industry by importing Italian goats in the 2010s have been criticized as wasteful.[29][30][31]
Criticism of industry
Part of a series on |
Clothing and the environment |
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Environmental impact of fashion |
The production of cashmere wool has been criticized for the detrimental
Air pollution, caused by the combination of industrial heavy burning of coal creating atmospheric particulates, and the desert dust storms resulting from disappearing grasslands in China and Mongolia, crosses the Pacific Ocean to the Americas. Health officials in Canada, China, Mongolia and the US have had to issue air quality warnings to the public.[6]
The demand for the fiber has caused some vendors, both knowingly and not, to sell yarns or textiles containing little to no cashmere[4] representing themselves as being composed of cashmere. Wool and other fibers have been mixed in by unscrupulous manufacturers, deliberately selling mislabeled items to well-known department stores. Complaints of mislabeling after testing for cashmere content were reported by the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute to the Federal Trade Commission, leading to more stringent examination of cashmere products.[5]
As part of achieving
See also
- Cameline
- Pashmina
- Shahtoosh
- International Year of Natural Fibres
- Environmental impact of fashion
References
- .
- ^ AP (2015-05-10). "Afghanistan's goat farmers find luxury niche in cashmere". Dawn. Archived from the original on 2015-05-14. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
- ^ "Taliban Takeover Puts Afghanistan's Cashmere, Silk Industries at Risk". Newsvot. Archived from the original on 2021-08-27. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
- ^ a b Browning, John (October 21, 2015). "A Yarn Spun, But Advertising Not Tailored to a Lanham Act Claim". The National Law Review. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
- ^ a b Beatty, Sally; Choi, Hae Won (December 23, 2004). "The Cashmere Police Crack Down". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
- ^ a b c d e Osnos, Evan (December 16, 2006). "Your cheap sweater's real cost". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
- ^ a b c Schmitz, Rob (December 9, 2016). "How Your Cashmere Sweater Is Decimating Mongolia's Grasslands". NPR. Retrieved August 10, 2019.
- ^ National Statistical Office of Mongolia, 2015.
- ^ Toigonbaev, Sabyr (18 March 2015). "The finer, the better". D+C Development and Cooperation. Vol. 42, no. 4. Retrieved 9 June 2015.
- ^ "Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939 (15 U.S.C. § 68)". Federal Trade Commission. Retrieved 13 January 2009.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (2008). cashmere.
- ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica (2008). kashmir shawl.
- ^ Sheraza Number (2004). Kashmir Academy Arts and Culture.(ed.), Jeelani Allaie
- ^ ISBN 978-0199089369.
- ISBN 8176255556.
- ^ a b McGregor, Bruce Allan (August 2002). Australian Cashmere Attributes and Processing (PDF) (Report). Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. p. 10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-09-26. Retrieved 2008-07-21.
- The New American Cyclopedia. Vol. IV. New York: D. Appleton & Company. p. 514. Retrieved August 17, 2010.
- ^ Newton, W. (1836). The London Journal of Arts and Sciences and Repertory of Arts And Sciences and Repertory of Patent Inventions. p.423.
- ^ Gilroy, Clinton G. (1844). The Art of Weaving, by Hand and by Power, With an Introductory Account of Its Rise and Progress in Ancient and Modern Times. New York: George D. Baldwin. pp. 270–71.
- ^ Bell, James (1829). A System of Geography Popular and Scientific or a Physical, Political and Statistical Account of the World and Its Various Divisions. London.
- ^ "Cashmere", The New American Cyclopedia, IV (1861), p.514.
- ^ Ternaux, William (1819). "Notice sur l'importation en France des chèvres à laine de cachemire, originaires du Thibet", Bulletin de la société pour l'industrie, XVIII.
- ^ Ternaux, William (1822). Recueil des pièces sur l'importation et naturalisation en France par MM. Ternaux et Jaubert des chèvres de race thibetaine, ou chèvres à duvet de Cachemire. Paris.
- ^ Southey, Thomas (1851). The Rise, Progress and Present State of Colonial Sheep & Wools. London: Effingham Wilson.
- ^ "On the Cashmere-Angora Shawl Goat", in American Journal of Science and Art, vol 25 (January 1834)
- ^ "Cashmere Shawls, Part II", Saturday Magazine, Vol 19 (London 1841), 13–14.
- ^ The Ministers of the respective parishes (1854). The New Statistical Account of Scotland, Volume VI. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & sons. p. 168.
- ^ "Vintage Fashion Guild : Label Resource : Altmann, Bernhard". vintagefashionguild.org.
- ^ Walker, Tim (2016-01-21). "Men who spent $6m on goats: US's failed cashmere plot in Afghanistan revealed". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2021-06-10. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
- ^ Gault, Matthew (2016-04-20). "Afghanistan's Failed Goat Farm Is the Perfect American Disaster". Medium. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
- ^ Toosi, Nahal. "'The Donald Trump of inspectors general'". Politico. Retrieved 2021-08-27.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-07-20.
External links
- Cashmere is Scottish (1973), an archive film featuring Scottish Screen Archive at National Library of Scotland