It is sometimes rather lovely to be staying with your family under one roof - you get to engage yourself in a number of interesting debates (especially with my dad, aha!) and sometimes rows too - because me & my dad never admit we are wrong, even though we might be fully aware of our blagging capacity since the beginning of the aforementioned discussion. *sigh* And yesterday the discussion turned to cashmere & what it actually is. Justin confidently claimed that cashmere is made of weasels (or maybe foxes, he says?). I pointed and laughed - literally, since I was well sure it's made of sheep. Fluffy sheep from Asia. All wool is made of sheep, innit! Then my mum & dad stepped in simply stating that we are idiots from a big city & that it's made of goats. GOATS? Where the heck do you get such a fluffy goat that you can make a jumper out of it?!

After researching some cashmere facts I can now share them with you and have an absolute peace of mind that I'm not blaggin' it. *pinky promise* Cashmere is a very fine material that is basically made of Cashmere goats' neck hair. Cashmere goats live in different parts of Asia - one of the main suppliers is China, however apparently the finest cashmere is produced in Mongolia and inner Asia. Cashmere is of a very specific sizing/texture - to be able to say that your jumper is 100% cashmere, the cashmere fibre can only be of a certain size and certain width, harvested at certain time of the year. It's a very difficult process and to make one 100% cashmere jumper you need about 8 goats! Makes sense cashmere products are so expensive, doesn't it?!

And what often happens - unfortunately - is that apart from Pashmina scarves, most of the pieces that are made of cashmere seem very old-fashioned. Well, it's a very traditional material which has been made for a few centuries, so it is sort of justified, but it'd be quite nice to have a few contemporary pieces here & there to be honest. Cashmere is apparently one of the best isolators out there - and that's something you find rather useful when you live in England, ehm. Pure Collection is a retailer that I have not heard of before, but really it's such a shame because it seems like it's one of the few companies that actually put a thought into their work and came up with a new range of contemporary cashmere products. Below is just a little taster - you can head over to their section on cashmere cardigans (my personal favourite) where you can find a load of excellent quality (cashmere material is so specific that it has to be perfect, it's simple like that!) cardigans in pretty colours - they even have mint & coral! The sort of clothes they offer quite reminds me of French Connection, but shhhhh! 

Obviously the prices are going to reflect the high quality and difficult process of obtaining cashmere (you pretty much paying a farmer & his 8 goats for a jumper, innit!), however they do have a summer sale on at the moment, so you can grab a pretty jumper that's gonna stay with you for years for a fragment of its original price!

What did you think cashmere was made of?
Do you own any cashmere pieces?