Cashmere choosing advice

Cashmere garments and home textile furnishings are long term investments. Besides being soft, warm, light and beautiful, cashmere garments don’t wrinkle and are easily wearable. Whether you travel, go from work directly to social occasions, or lead an active lifestyle, your cashmere garments will always look good and keep you comfortable without bulk. Cashmere is a natural product and a renewable resource. To make the most of your investment, choose your cashmere carefully. Good quality cashmere will get softer with age, will rarely pill, and should last a lifetime with proper care and storage.
When shopping for garments, pay attention to the quantity of cashmere used in knits. A ‘bargain’ sweater may contain half as much of the precious fiber as a high quality sweater of similar design. The real test will be in the weight of the cashmere, but if you hold a sweater up to the light and you can see through it, it is likely that it will not last a very long time. Good cashmere is soft to the touch and has an almost buttery handle. It is never scratchy or rough. If a cashmere product feels dry, brittle, or rough, it is most likely inferior fiber, incorrectly processed, or mislabeled. Durable cashmere knits depend on strong yarns. The longer the cashmere fibers are to begin with, the more durable the yarn will be. For this reason, most knits contain some percentage of Mongolian cashmere, which is naturally very long. Beware of ‘bargains’. Many cashmere garments sell at retail for considerably less than what it would cost just to purchase the raw material that goes into them. If the price of a cashmere sweater simply seems too good to be true, it probably is!