Move over, merino. These are the rare, luxurious and ethically sourced exotic wools the fashion industry is hot for — pun intended.
When you’re fighting sub-zero temperatures, the average Mary’s little lamb’s hair sweater just won’t cut it. Quality issues of mass-produced wool aside, there’s also a moral component to consider. While lambswool and cashmere were once considered luxury materials, unsound breeding practices and the unethical shearing of their undercoats have met with widespread criticism.
Us animal lovers at Singapore Tatler advocate these softer, warmer, far rarer and, most importantly, humanely acquired exotic wools be added to your wardrobe instead. Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the writing of this story.
Vicuna
The removal of the coarse guard hairs from the vicuna’s ultra‑fine underfleece is done by hand.
It takes an experienced native a week to “dehair” 1kg of the fleece of four animals.
Legend has it the vicuna transforms its fleece into gold. That may not be true, but this deer-like South American highland creature’s fibre — the most expensive in the world — makes it the gold standard of the fashion industry. As less than 5,000kg of the raw fibre of this incomparably light and soft fleece is available each year, every item made out of this precious wool is a sizeable investment. Case in point, two vicuna-blend scarves from Loro Piana will set you back about $10,000 while a ready-to-wear vicuna suit from Kiton costs three times that, at the very least.
Because thinner wool fibres produce finer fabric and drape, it comes as no surprise that the most esteemed fashion houses are unable to resist vicuna. Take Ermenegildo Zegna. At 2.3 million metres annually, the Italian clothier is one of the world’s biggest global producers of luxury fabrics. Their best customers are not the world’s top CEOs (although there are many), but more familiar names, like Gucci, Saint Laurent and Tom Ford.
There are approximately 180,000 vicunas in Peru and 40,000 in Argentina today. In the 1960s, numbers were as low as 5,000. The Peruvian government made some smart decisions. Since Loro Piana, the high-end Italian manufacturer of luxury cashmere, along with two other companies, was granted exclusive rights to purchase the entire annual production of the fibre in 1994, over 4,500 of the vicunas under its care roam freely in the Andean plateau of Peru and northern Argentina, safe from unlawful hunting and poaching and threatened extinction.
Dubbed the “Queen of the Andes”, the vicuna’s golden fleece is known to be implausibly soft. “It’s the finest hair on the planet,” Mr Loro Piana once said. Quite literally so: its diameter, at 12.5 microns, is a whole micron less than the best cashmere money can buy. In comparison, a human hair is around 75 microns in diameter.
The underfleece of vicuna is also considerably rarer than cashmere. It is sheared off the animal no more than once every two years. The output: 250g per animal, of which 120 to 150g is selected for use. It takes the wool of about six vicunas to make a sweater, 35 for an overcoat.
The shearing of the animal was once a part of a ritual that involved entire Incan communities and was carried out before the Emperor and there’s still magic woven in the process. Today in Peru, the ancient Chaccu or Chakku tradition still stands. Native women pray to the gods of the mountains in colourful traditional dress, while men, women and children take part in a ritualistic song and dance. The animals, guided by a human chain, are corralled into an area enclosed only by rope. The young ones are freed, while the shearing of the adults is kind and precise, and in mere minutes the shorn animals are set free, lighter and unharmed.
Baby Cashmere
Baby Cashmere sweater by Loro Piana.
During pashmina shawls’ popularity ascension, it was boasted that those made of the finest pure cashmere would glide through a wedding ring. Now imagine a woollen fabric that’s even silkier than that. Where the long, soft pashmina hairs from the hircus goat’s underbelly and throat are below 19 microns thick, cashmere can go even finer — with baby goat hair.
It took Loro Piana 10 years to develop a trusting relationship with goatherds in northern China and Mongolia, a relationship that resulted in the production of Baby Cashmere. Trademarked by the brand, Baby Cashmere couldn’t be farther from the more common cashmere obtained from adult goats that have gained notoriety for pilling and losing shape with every wash. Baby Cashmere is the extraordinarily warm, lightweight and soft (by 20 per cent, when compared with regular cashmere) downy underfleece shed by hircus goat kids during their first year of life when their virgin hair is delicately combed for the first time. Each kid produces as little as 80g of fibre, of which less than half is selected after dehairing, and it takes the hair of 19 kids to make a full sweater.
Qiviut
The ultra-fine and soft underfleece of the hircus goat protects it against extreme winter climates that can drop below -40°C.
Most of the 10,000 musk ox alive today lives in the tundra of Canada. The shaggy creature resembling the bison, with wool to its feet, can also be found in the Arctic, Alaska and Greenland. The relative of sheep and goat has been around since woolly mammoths roamed Earth during the Ice Age. The straggly coarse guard hairs protect it against harsh temperatures, but it is qiviut — the dense undercoat of short, fine hairs that provides an added layer of insulation during the harsh arctic winter months — that provides the luxurious touch we are after.
Another big player is Brioni, a label famous for suiting up James Bond since the mid-1990s using pricey Vanquish II fabric — a qiviut, pashmina, and vicuna blend — with white gold stitching by Anglo-French textile expert, Dormeuil. Eight times warmer than sheep wool, the clothing made of qiviut fibre gets loftier and softer as it is worn. Between April and May, farmers comb the qiviut shed by the musk ox with a long-toothed hair pick in a barn, a process that takes anywhere between 10min up to an hour. One third of the yield (approximately 1 to 2kg) makes the cut to be spun into yarns. Non-shrinkable, non-felting and non-scratchy, it is usually blended with silk, merino, angora, alpaca and bamboo in the garments found in Alaskan knit boutiques.
Alpaca
Alpaca and wool-blend coats by Max Mara.
Once called a poor man’s cashmere, the tables have officially turned for alpaca, which appeared on the Louis Vuitton and Versace runways in the last few years. As Chinese grasslands are quickly turning into ice deserts due to the over-farming of alpine goats to meet overwhelming demand of cashmere, the fair trade Peruvian alpacas’ environmental footprint is considerably smaller. This is in part linked to the fluctuating demand of the fibre and in part due to the animals’ short padded feet, which are gentle enough to not disturb the terrain. Bred all around the world, the camel’s domesticated cousin has an undercoat that’s generally coarser than cashmere.
However, the downy wool of baby alpaca can be just as soft, if not softer, than cashmere. It fares better in insulation, strength and durability, too. It is worth noting that the colour scope of fair fibres from alpacas — along with Baby Cashmere and qiviut — is superior to that of its woollen friend, vicuna’s, which can only be dyed in dark colours due to its original rich gold fleece. Seen in about twenty natural shades, dyed alpaca fibres range from the richest of blacks to the fairest of whites with a wide variety of hues in between.
Guanaco
The yield per animal of guanaco fibre is low, contributing to its prestige. Less than 2kg of wool per year is obtained from every sheared adult.
Once a year in early spring, community members in Argentina, where most guanacos can be found, install a temporary camp at an abandoned oil site in preparation of the round-up of the animal by horse, followed by a humane shearing practice. Based on ancient traditions, indigenous community members, now aided by biologists and veterinarians, gently blindfold and shear every guanaco they capture within a large fence made of recycled fishing net.
Less than five minutes after, the animals are released to roam in the coastlines, plains, plateaus and mountains of South America again. The ritual yields one of the finest fibres in the world; guanaco’s lush fleece is second to vicuna, its smaller cousin, and rivals the quality of hair produced by its domesticated cousin, the alpaca. Similarly, the average diameter of its cinnamon coloured, water- and dirt-resistant hair is in the region of 12 to 17 microns, giving it a super soft and luxurious finish.