Cashmere wool
Animals in Iran, Afghanistan, New Zealand, and Australia are typically shorn of their fleece, resulting in a higher coarse hair content and lower pure cashmere yield.
Mongolia follows with 8,900 tons (in hair) as of 2016,[8] while Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan[9] and other Central Asian republics produce lesser amounts.
Pure cashmere, resulting from removing animal grease, dirt and coarse hairs from the fleece, is estimated at 6,500 tons (5,895 tonnes).
Ultra-fine Cashmere or Pashmina is still produced by communities in Kashmir but its rarity and high price, along with political instability in the region, make it very hard to source and to regulate quality.
Pure cashmere can be dyed and spun into yarns and knitted into jumpers (sweaters), hats, gloves, socks and other clothing, or woven into fabrics then cut and assembled into garments such as outer coats, jackets, trousers (pants), pajamas, scarves, blankets, and other items.
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.
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.
[14] Ali Hamadani brought some raw goat wool from Ladakh and suggested the king to start shawl weaving in Kashmir.
[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.
[21] In 1799 at his factory in Reims, William-Louis Ternaux, the leading woolens manufacturer in France under Napoleon, began to produce imitation India shawls (cachemires) using the wool of Spanish merino sheep.
By 1811, with government assistance, Ternaux also began experimenting with the production of real India shawls using what he called laine de Perse, i.e., the down (duvet) of Tibetan-cashmere goats.
A famous expedition to Persia was organized, led by the orientalist and diplomat Pierre Amédée Jaubert, to be financed in part by the French government.
[23] Although Ternaux had little success getting small farmers to add cashmeres to their sheep herds, a few wealthy landowners were willing to experiment with the goats.
Tower purchased two female and two male goats and took them back to England, wherein 1828 he was awarded a gold medal by the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce for rearing a herd of cashmeres.
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.
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.
The high demand for cashmere is causing grasslands in China and Mongolia to disappear, air pollution to increase and the herds to starve.
[6][7] Factories in Alashan are forced to close several days a week due to water rationing as the deserts there expand by 400 square miles per year.
[6][7] 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.
