Cashmere is probably the most luxurious of all natural fibres. It is soft to handle and both light to wear and warm. In hot weather a light cashmere sweater can keep you cool. In very cold weather a chunky 6 ply can keep you comfortably warm without the itchyness felt with other fibres, or the exadurated heat which can come with other wool sweaters. If you live in a cold climate you might have experience of wearing a chunky wool sweater which may be perfectly comfortable outside but the minute you walk indoors you have to take it off. Not with cashmere though. Somehow, you`ll feel perfectly comfortable indoor and out. It`s almost as if the sweater has it`s own air conditioning and climate control. Even in the heat of summer a pashmina can keep you comfortable in the evening nights, which can change from being hot to chilly with an incoming Mediterranean sea breeze.
What then makes cashmere so special?
The cashmere goat lives in the high plateaux of Mongolia and Xinjiang which is almost at the lattitude of the equator where the sun has it`s greatest strength. In contrast the high altitute can make the temperture drop dramatically to arctic conditions. The temperature can fluctuate to extreme highs to extreme lows in a matter of hours. The cashmere goat has to live with these extremes and the cashmere fibre has evolved over the years to cope with whatever mother nature throws at it. For generations the nomadic tribesman have learned the art of painstakingly combing the raw fibre from the wiry mountain goats that thrive in this inhospitable land to produce fibres of awesome quality.
