Due to global production and consumption trends, together with updated manufacturing technologies, the price of cashmere—once a totally luxury market, in which higher prices consistently signaled higher quality—now reflects a wider range of influences. Even with these shifting implications, when it comes to the high-quality wool fibers, consumers still mostly get what they pay for, but now they have more options in that choice context. In particular, modern-day fabrication technologies make it possible to stretch and soften the wool fibers. Previously, innate factors such as the softness and length of wool largely determined its quality and longevity. To get sufficiently soft, long fibers, cashmere producers had to undergo a labor-intensive, slow process. The ranchers would wait patiently for their goats to shed their coats, then comb out the fine undercoat, separating it from the rougher top layer. Although modern manufacturing processes can make wool feel as if it is the best quality, over time, the bleached, dyed, stretched wool will break down more quickly than a traditional cashmere garment. Furthermore, traditional luxury brands still import the wool from Mongolia and China, where the goats thrive naturally, and hire experienced artisans in Italy or Scotland (countries with long-standing reputations for their wool sweaters) to spin it into gorgeous, long-lasting clothing. But recent competitors, looking to produce sweaters that ultimately will retail for around $100, instead rely on production facilities in other locations, including Vietnam and China, which are better known for their low price manufacturing than for taking an artisanal approach to clothing. Today’s consumers thus can still buy a cashmere garment for thousands of dollars that will retain its shape, softness, and warmth for generations—or they could spend about one-tenth of that and enjoy a pretty good, if not quite as soft or warm, cashmere sweater for the next few years.
Source: Jennifer Smith, The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2019