BrainStuff Classics: Why Does Cashmere Cost So Much?

Cashmere can be more expensive than other wools because producing it is such an intensive process -- for the goats that grow it and the humans who care for them. Learn more in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/why-is-cashmere-so-expensive.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
I'm Lauren Vogelbomb And this is a classic episode of
the podcast. In this one, we explore the fine fibers
and excellent animals that make cashmere possible and so pricey.

(00:23):
Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogelbaumb And if you were
to ask Wendy Pia, a goat farmer in bred and Maine,
to name what she likes most about her work, she'll
tell you it's the individual personalities of the goats for
which she cares. She said, think of the word capricious,
that comes from the word caprine, which is Latin for goat.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
They're like that. They'll jump and dance, and they'll climb
on anything. They're affectionate. Pia's particular type of goats, forty
to eighty of them, depending on the year, are also
some of the providers of a valuable product for humans, cashmere. Yes,
in case you didn't know, your favorite, softest and probably
most expensive sweater, it comes from the fur of the
cashmere goat. And once you know what's involved in making

(01:04):
a cashmere sweater, the price might not seem so exorbitant.
The goats are one of at least eleven wool producing animals.
The list also includes sheep, rabbits, and lama. There are
several varieties of kashmir goats and a number of farms, factories,
and conglomerates around the world using various production methods to
make cashmere. The first goats purported to be used by

(01:25):
humans to produce fabric to keep warm are said to
be the Pashima goats. They are found in the super
high altitude regions of western and northern Tibet. The goat's
soft and dense underfur is built to withstand extreme temperatures
as low as negative forty degrees fahrenheit or celsius. The
wool from these bucks and nannies, favoured by British Royalty,
eventually came to be processed in cashmere in northern India,

(01:48):
hence the name. Various bloodlines of kashmere goats have, with
human help, spread around the world. Australia has a particular
breed that provides luxuriously soft threads, and North American kashmere
goat are found in the colder regions of the US
and Canada. North America is where pia and her husband,
Peter Goff, come in. They have run Springtide farms since

(02:10):
nineteen ninety seven. Pia bought goth eleven goats for his
birthday in part to help clear their farmland. It has
been a learning experience since then. Pia estimates its Springtide
is one of two hundred to three hundred cashmere goat
farms in North America. Most cashmere goat farms in the
US are small in size, less than sixty goats, says Paya,
who is also the president of the Kashmir Goat Association,

(02:32):
a nonprofit whose website claims it brings together breeders, fiber artists,
and others interested in these charming animals and the fiber
they grow in March and April. You know, early spring
is when the goats start to naturally shed their winter
wool and when production begins on the farms. Few US
farms shear these cashmere goats, though, because of production laws

(02:53):
and the high cost to weed out the valuable downy undercoat. Instead,
most facilities hand comb the w That means workers often
the farm owners themselves sit with each animal and slowly
tease out the fur that creates the fine wool for
Kashmir with a dog rake up to an hour and
a half per Goatpaya explained, when you look at these goats,

(03:14):
you see the long draping fur. That's the guard hair.
The Kashmere hair is under that. The crimp in Kashmere
is three dimensional, and that's part of what makes Kashmir
so incredibly soft. An average goat provides just three to
four ounces of cashmere that's about eighty five to one
hundred and ten grams. That means it typically takes about
six goats to make enough fiber for just one cashmere sweater.

(03:39):
Once the Kashmir fur is separated, samples of it are
sent for quality testing to one of two labs in
the US, one in Texas one in Colorado. Most legitimate
US kashmere farmers have made a commitment to provide only
high quality fiber, outlined in the Kashmir Goat Association standards
and backed by organizations like the Kashmir and Camel Hair
Manufacturer's Institute. That means consistency or uniformity in the fiber.

(04:04):
Each follicle should be at least one point twenty five
inches that's three point two centimeters in length in its
relaxed or unstretched state, and no bigger than nineteen microns
in diameter. If wearing wool makes you itch, that's actually
because the woolf fibers have an uneven thickness. The standard
thickness of wool is twenty eight microns. Cashmere is much finer.

(04:25):
That standard of less than nineteen microns is why cashmere
can feel less scratchy. Cashmere that fails to beat these
standards inevitably creates quality problems like pilling in the final product,
and there are plenty of examples of bad cashmere out there.
While the Federal Trade Commission enforces the Wool Product Labeling
Act in the United States, it gets murky on the
international market. Even the FTC says quote routine testing of

(04:50):
fiber contents by a qualified, independent testing lab is the
best way to assure accurate labels. That means it's hard
for consumers to determine where the cashmere there by comes
from and specifically how the goats are treated. Cashmir demand
is one of the problems. It reportedly far exceeds how
much goats could produce every year. That means less scrupulous

(05:11):
producers may turn to inhumane methods to produce more wool
or lesser operating costs. The organization PETA has accused Chinese
conglomerates of shearing the goats midwinter, when the animals need
the fur to keep warm. Pias says that some farms,
to save production costs, have even experimented with restricting goat's diets.
But aside from compromising the animal's health, it also directly

(05:32):
affects the quality of the cashmere. She said. If you
starve your animals, the hair will get finer and shorter
and more brittle. You can't spin it. They call it
hunger fine. So if you wear cashmere, Pia recommends buying
directly from the source or choosing very carefully. Cashmeer will
consist of about one percent of a goat's total wool production.

(05:53):
For apparel, so the fabric and those sweaters should have
a price to reflect the scarcity. Even for farmers like Pia,
who sells her cashmere online and at fairs and festivals,
it's difficult to tell if it's the real deal. Pia
herself has been fooled. She recalls a time when she
found kashmere sweater at a store for less than one
hundred dollars she bought it. It turned out to be

(06:14):
a crylic. Another time, she and her husband were visited
by a group of people who said they were interested
in getting into the Kashmir industry. They brought with them
samples of Kashmeir they had bought at trade shows in Italy.
Pyah recalls they had this one shawl. It was shiny,
and Kashmere isn't shiny, so we had to say to them,
you know, this is really nice. I don't know what
it is, but it's not Kashmir. Today's episode is based

(06:41):
on the article why is Kashmir so Expensive? On how
stuffworks dot Com, written by Jamie Allen. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com
and is produced by Tyler Klang.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.