Wrap Yourself In A Warm Cloud
The Age
Tuesday August 28, 2007
Caring for cashmere is a ritual that pays plush dividends.
READERS may recall that I am a cashmere tragic, acquiring mine from op shops. It is the world's second finest animal fibre after vicuna, which is only available raw from the Peruvian government. Then comes mohair and alpaca. The animals are combed during moulting, requiring intense cheap labour. I don't include possum because they are killed, usually by rectal electrocution to protect the fur.Cashmere feels like wearing a warm cloud. Time was people owned lovely cashmere that their children inherited. That was when we knew how to care for fine things and didn't demand new clothes every five minutes. Labels such as Pringle, Ballantyne and Braemar all came under the house of Dawson International, and like their fine Italian counterparts, were produced by artisans with hundreds of years of experience and many secrets.Such was the cachet of the Scotch House in London that people actually thought cashmere came from Scotland. Now we know it mostly comes from China, where the industry has exploded over the past 15 years to the point where even Dawson's has gone Chinese. The good thing about this is that more people can now afford cashmere. The bad thing is that standards have gone down (shorter fibres, less yarn twist) and people don't know how to care for it. The labels say Dry Clean Only for self-protection. You should never dry-clean cashmere, but hand wash often in pure soap (no eucalyptus), spin dry on the wool cycle and steam press.You can double a garment's life by steam pressing between wears, as this beds down the fibres and reduces pilling. If your jumper starts feeling a little coarse, you can add a touch of hair conditioner after the soap wash, and rinse of course.It is a myth that moths attack only dirty garments. Moths attack new, spotless garments as well, so defend yourself. Lavender alone is unlikely to be sufficient. Trust me. I have done a lot of research on this.I spoke with an old mate in the US who set up a cashmere dehairing factory (separating down from guard hairs) in Lhasa, breaking the government monopoly forcing Tibetan nomads to sell only to it. People tell me he was brave to do that. But the Chinese factories just got bigger and bigger and he too was forced out. I also spoke with Trish Esson, who has the largest cashmere goat herd in Victoria, and Jim Browne, who supplies Melbourne knitter Angela Padula with yarn from Australian goats. Dr Bruce McGregor has spent 30 years studying fine animal fibre. He told me Aussie cashmere is the softest and has the longest fibres (staple) of any in the world.Fellow tragics can find Padula's fabulous gossamer baby blankets from undyed yarn at the Royal Melbourne Show.Esson and Avtar Singh, who worked for Dawson's, have set up a dehairing factory in Bacchus Marsh. The descendants of those goats left in Western Australia by the Dutch and the Portuguese, long before Captain Cook, have come a long way.
© 2007 The Age