CARING FOR CASHMERE
Caring for Cashmere
Cashmere has a reputation for being difficult, and it isn't deserved. It asks for a little more thought than a cotton sweater, but almost everything that goes wrong with it comes down to three things: hanging it, washing it too hot, and putting it away dirty.
Get those right and a cashmere piece lasts decades, getting softer every year.
A note on the cashmere we use from Susi, our founder
Not all cashmere is the same, and the difference starts on the goat.
The fiber we use comes from the underbelly, where the coat is finest and softest — the part doing the most work to keep the animal warm through a hard winter. It's combed out rather than shorn, so the fleece stays intact and only the fine undercoat comes away. It's a small yield from each goat, which is part of why good cashmere costs what it does.
We also choose the white fiber. Our sweaters are dyed, but starting from white means they only have to be dyed once. Darker fiber has to be stripped back before any color can go near it, so it's bleached first and then dyed — two aggressive processes instead of one, on a fiber this fine. Every one of them costs a little softness and a little strength. Starting white means we skip the first.
It's the sort of decision nobody can see on a hanger. You feel it in year three, when the piece is still as soft as the day you bought it.
Fold it, never hang it
If you take one thing from this page, take this one. Cashmere is heavier than it feels, and on a hanger its own weight slowly pulls the shoulders out of shape. That stretch doesn't come back. A folded shelf or a drawer is all it needs.
Pilling is normal
Those small bobbles are friction, not a fault, and every cashmere garment in the world develops them. They appear wherever fabric rubs: under the arms, at the cuffs, along a seatbelt line.
Most of the time you can lift them away gently with your fingers, which is all we tend to do. A cashmere comb or sweater stone makes quicker work of a whole sleeve if you have one, but it isn't something you need to buy. What you should never use is a razor, which cuts the fibers rather than lifting the pills and thins the knit over time. After the first few washes, pilling slows down considerably.
Why we don't blend it with polyester
Most cashmere on the market isn't 100% cashmere. It's blended with polyester or nylon — partly for price, and partly because synthetics are said to help a knit hold its shape. The problem shows up in the pilling.
Natural fibers are short. Cashmere comes in staple lengths of a few centimeters, spun together into yarn. Synthetics are the opposite: long filaments, extruded in a single continuous strand. A pill forms when the end of a short staple fiber works its way loose and balls up on the surface.
In 100% cashmere, that pill eventually drops away on its own, because nothing is holding it there. In a blend, the polyester or nylon runs continuously through the yarn, and those long filaments anchor the pill to the surface. It can't fall off, and it's much harder to lift away. A blended sweater keeps its pills. A pure one sheds them.
So we keep the cashmere pure and solve the shape problem a different way: by tightening the tension and gauge at the cuffs and hem, which is what actually stops a knit bagging out with wear.
Wear it more, wash it less
Cashmere is naturally odor resistant and recovers well with air. Hanging a piece over a chair overnight does more than washing it. Every three or four wears, or at the end of a season, is plenty.
How to wash cashmere
By hand, in about ten minutes.
- Fill a basin with cool or lukewarm water. Never hot, which shrinks and felts the fibers.
- Add a capful of wool detergent, or a little baby shampoo.
- Turn the piece inside out, submerge it and leave it for about ten minutes, swirling gently once or twice. Don't rub, twist or wring it; agitation is what causes felting.
- Rinse in cool water until it runs clear. Skip fabric softener, which coats the fibers and dulls the softness.
- Press the water out between two towels. Don't wring.
- Lay it flat, reshape it by hand, and dry it away from radiators and direct sun. Never hang it to dry, and never tumble dry it.
If it needs pressing afterward, steam it rather than ironing it. If you must iron, use the lowest heat with a cloth between the iron and the knit.
On dry cleaning: it won't ruin a piece, but the solvents dry the fibers out over time. Hand washing is gentler and gives a better result.
Storing it for summer
This is where cashmere is most often lost, and the fix takes two minutes.
Wash everything before you put it away. Moths aren't interested in clean cashmere; they're after what's on it — body oils, perfume, traces of food. A clean sweater is a far less interesting meal.
Fold rather than hang, and store somewhere breathable: a cotton bag or a box, not plastic, which traps moisture and invites mildew. Cedar or lavender on the shelf deters moths without the smell of mothballs, and cedar blocks can be refreshed each year with a light sanding.
If something goes wrong
A small hole in knitwear is usually repairable by a specialist and is worth mending rather than replacing. If a piece has stretched slightly, a gentle wash and a flat dry will often bring it most of the way back. Felting from a hot wash, unfortunately, is permanent, which is why the water temperature matters more than anything else on this page.
