What Is Pashmina? The Fibre from the Roof of the World

The winters are harsh in the high Changthang plateau in Ladakh when temperatures drop to as low as forty and even fifty degrees below zero. No sheep's wool would be enough to protect the animal in those climatic conditions. And this is why the Changthangi goat, known as changra to the goat herders, has developed a double fleece of hair where the under-fleece is actually down, whose diameter is less than a fraction of the diameter of a human hair. And as soon as spring comes and the goat no longer needs insulation against the cold weather, this down sheds off naturally. This down is pashm. Yarn spun from it and cloth woven from it is Pashmina.

This is how the mystery of this fiber can be summed up and it deserves to be stated in as clear terms as possible, as there is probably no textile that has carried so many myths about itself. Pashmina is not extracted from bushes in the mountains. Neither is it the wool of any rare wild sheep, nor is it made from the feathers of any Himalayan bird, which is still a widely believed story for tourists visiting Srinagar. It is simply the combed under-fleece of a domestic goat, which is carefully collected each spring season by nomadic herders who have been raising these animals for ages and its quality depends entirely on the climatic conditions of an extremely cold environment in which these goats live.

How fine is fine?

Fiber fineness is measured in microns, which are thousandths of a millimetre. A human hair measures around seventy microns. The best merino sheep's wool lies in between sixteen and twenty five microns. The Pashm of the Changthangi goat lies between twelve and sixteen microns, making it one of the finest animal fibers ever spun by humans. As the fiber is spun into thread, air pockets form between its strands and these pockets are responsible for the amazing quality of being both highly insulating and light-weight at the same time, which means that a shawl of barely two hundred grams of weight keeps you warm during the whole mountain winter.

And for the hand-spinners of Kashmir, there is one more quality which is as important as fineness: staple length of the fibers which is the length of each fiber. Longer the fibers, finer, stronger and smoother is the yarn produced. And it is the extremely

It is the harsh environment of the upper pastures that results in the longest staple, and that is why the fibres of Changthang have always earned the highest esteem among Kashmiri traders.

The people behind the fibre

The changra goats are bred by the Changpa, nomadic pastoralists who live in yak hair tents moving throughout the Changthang plateau eight to ten times per year at altitudes ranging from 3,600 to 4,500 metres in search of grazing land and water sources. Their relationship with their animals is not merely economic. Families dedicate selected goats to the divine, animals that are blessed by monks, never sold, and honoured with ceremonial scarves. When the combing season begins in early June, the herders sing to their goats as they work, asking the animal for good pashm in return for the grass it has eaten and the water it has drunk.

The combing itself is done a few animals at a time, in stages, so the goat is never left cold. A large male yields around three hundred grams of raw fibre in a season; a female somewhat less. Raw pashm arrives mixed with coarse outer hairs and dust, and only about a third of its weight survives cleaning as fibre fine enough for the loom. Consider that arithmetic for a moment. A single full size shawl represents the annual yield of several goats, a season of a herding family's labour, and weeks of cleaning and spinning before a weaver ever touches it.

Why colour matters

Pashm fibres are available in white and in a variety of natural shades of fawns, greys and browns that Kashmiris call khudrang, meaning self coloured. The value of white lies in its ability to be easily dyed into any shade of the spectrum, starting from light rose and ending with dark indigo. At the same time, khudrang shades have their own unique value for being easily dyed into darker shades and giving the shawl a rich natural base colour that the pure white lacks. Some of the most admired shawls in history were woven in undyed natural browns, a preference recorded among discerning buyers as far back as the seventeenth century.

From Changthang to Srinagar

For at least four hundred years, this fibre has travelled one road: from the high pastures down to the valley of Kashmir, where the only community of artisans on earth possessed the full chain of skills to transform it. Treaties were signed over this trade as early as 1684, kingdoms fought over it, and the entire economy of a Himalayan region was built on the annual journey of fibre sacks from herder to trader to the spinning households of Srinagar. That journey continues today, and every genuine Kashmiri Pashmina shawl is still its final destination.

We only use pure Pashmina of Ladakhi and Kashmiri origin, going through all the stages of its processing in the valley as we have done since 1881.

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