The history of cashmere rests, fairy-tale like, on a wholly unlikely alliance: that of an empress and a goat. The goat, perhaps, is self-explanatory. Cashmere goats – also known as capra hircus – are hardy beasts, whose native habitats include the inhospitable plateaus of Mongolia, India, Tibet and China. To help them cope with extreme weather, they have a double coat consisting of a thick, wiry overlayer and a soft, downy underlayer that grows in each winter as temperatures plummet. It’s this latter coat, combed out as the weather warms each spring, that is collected, spun and woven or knitted into the fine cashmere fabric we know and love.
The empress in question was Joséphine of France, the wife of Napoleon. Of course, cashmere had been used for many centuries before her birth. It was loved for its incredible softness and warmth, and had been traded across the Silk Road, becoming a status symbol and luxury good across the world.
Napoleon, madly in love with his wife, bought her several cashmere shawls during his Egyptian campaign. Although she was apparently initially sceptical, the shawls’ softness and warmth won her over (as she had been born on the tropical island of Martinique, she was always susceptible to the cold). Before long, they were a signature of hers, frequently draped over her shoulders elegantly and wound around her waist in portraits.
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Her adoption elevated the cashmere shawl throughout Europe, setting off a craze that would persist for three-quarters of a century.
Arthur Lasenby Liberty, the founder of the eponymous store, began his career working at the enormous Farmer & Rogers Shawl Emporium on Regent Street, one of many purveyors of luxurious cashmere products to Europeans during the mid-19th century. Matthew Digby Wyatt, a near contemporary of his, spoke about the cashmere shawl as the apotheosis of textile creations in a lecture about industrial arts: ‘It seems almost inconceivable that human patience could ever have produced a thing so complicated… and yet so entirely harmonious and graceful.’
While the popularity of shawls has waned considerably since that heyday, the global love of cashmere has ballooned. Today, most is produced in China, prices have decreased significantly and there are growing concerns about quality and the environmental impact of cashmere production.
Still, there’s little point denying that cashmere is one of the last words in luxury – because each individual fibre is so fine, the finished textile has an unrivalled softness against the skin. This is a material that is worth treating as an investment in true quality. Buy the best you can afford and savour it whenever temperatures drop, meditating gratefully, perhaps, on the unlikely alliance of goat and empress that brought this fabric to you.
