What is Cashmere?
Kashmir is, first and foremost, the name of a province in India. Cashmere, or kashmir, is a textile fiber made from the hair of the hircus goat, which is named after the region of origin of the animal that produces it.
The wool of hircus goats is very soft, and also silky and velvety to the touch, which adds to its value. When worn, it provides a warm and soft sensation, effectively protecting against temperature changes, thanks to the "duvet," the thinner undercoat, like a fine down that naturally serves this purpose, protecting the goat from thermal excursions by thermoregulating its body.
These goats live in the mountainous regions and plateaus of Asia. Nowadays, only small, insignificant quantities of cashmere fiber are produced in the Indian province of Kashmir. The other main producing countries are China, Iran, Mongolia, and Afghanistan. The particular climatic conditions, the strong temperature fluctuations between day and night in these areas, favor the development of the down called duvet. This down has the exceptional characteristic, like all animal fibers (but this one more than any other), of thermoregulating the animal's body relative to the external environment, protecting it from both low and high temperatures.
From the Kashmir region, which, as we mentioned, is a province of India, cashmere wool was exported to Europe starting in the early 1800s.
While the thinner, finer part is the down of the undercoat and is called duvet, which is the soft, woolly underlayer, the coarser part with stiff, rough hairs comes from the outer coat and is called guard hair. To collect it, the coat is manually combed during the shedding season, which occurs in spring. The average production per animal can range between 100 and 200 grams of fine hair.
