Cashmere, a fabric that remained the exclusive domain of European nobility in the 19th century, is now as ubiquitous at fast-fashion retailers at it once was in royal palaces. As a growing global middle class demands more—the market was estimated at $4.7 billion in 2016, according to Bain & Co.—retailers are keeping pace and using quantity to drive down prices. As this story went to print, H&M was selling cashmere sweaters for $20 (on sale), while Uniqlo’s standard price for the item was $80. Not the price tags you expect to see for what’s traditionally been considered the finest of fine fabrics. But then again, are they truly luxe?
The answer, according to Ronnie Lamb, a 30-year textiles industry veteran and cashmere supply-chain consultant, is a resounding no. Any sweater priced in the double digits, Lamb says, is unlikely to be fit for an empress.
The high price is due to the strict guidelines for what constitutes cashmere: The fiber must come from the undercoat of the cashmere goat, indigenous to a tiny portion of northern Asia, as well as be very, very fine—with a diameter one-fifth the size of a human hair. But what’s marketed as cashmere today is often not the real thing, and it’s not uncommon for Chinese herders to crossbreed cashmere goats with bigger species of the animal in hopes of yielding more hair. The result is, predictably, a less fine fiber.
So luxury goods companies have increasingly opted to source their cashmere not from China but rather from its northern neighbor, Mongolia. As a result, that nation’s exports of cashmere garments have nearly tripled from 2009 to 2016, according to a 2017 report by the Mongolia International Capital Corp. (MICC), a regional investment bank.
This increase in demand is both a gift and a curse for nomadic herders, who make up about 50% of the population. Cashmere goats are by far the most lucrative of livestock, but keeping up with booming demand is proving unsustainable. Herders have at least doubled—if not tripled—the size of their flocks over the past decade, says William Danforth, author of the MICC report. The resultant overgrazing, combined with climate change, has led to desertification, seriously endangering the cashmere trade—and with it, the nomadic way of life.
The Mongolian government is ill-equipped to handle the classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem, so private international actors are stepping in. Paris-based Kering Group, which owns brands like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga, is partnering with nonprofits to develop more sustainable models for cashmere production. The group’s focus is educating herders on pasture management and animal welfare, but there is much work to be done further down the supply chain.