Still special, but now within reach

Shoppers should choose with care -- all cashmeres aren't created equal.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- In the old days, cashmere was like good pearls or a sturdy overcoat. It was an expensive investment and still in the wardrobe 20 years later.
But today it's a steamy fashion item available in a surprisingly wide range of trendy styles, prices, sumptuous colors and retail stores.
Although it is no longer priced in the stratosphere, cashmere still carries the cachet of something special. It has a soft, comforting feel and a reputation for long-term wear. And at a time when luxury of any kind is an obsession in the global culture, the demand remains high.
"Masstige," they call it
"Cashmere is a really big deal for us right now," says Tina Hodak, fashion director for May Co., parent of Kansas City's Jones Store.
Lands' End, the catalog and online retailer, offers at least 160 cashmere items, says Sid Mashburn, senior vice president for design. The selection includes women's sweaters under $100, a $900 women's overcoat and an $800 blanket.
It's what trend watchers call "masstige," he says -- the democratization of a prestige product.
"It is considered a luxury, and people are responding to luxury right now," says Victoria Fisher Keller, a buyer at Nordstrom, where cashmere sweaters start at $100.
The mass distribution and accessibility of cashmere has influenced upscale sources to spiff up their garments to set them apart, says Lori Holliday Banks, a fashion editor with New York-based Tobe Reports, fashion retail analysts.
"People have had to push the envelope," she says. They are offering fine, sheer-gauge fittings for evening or summers, sweater jackets, special button details, ponchos and trendy shrunken silhouettes to take a leap ahead of stores such as Costco and Target, where the luxury fibers are in the affordable range. Cashmere "was once viewed as a classic category. Now it's more about fashion," Banks says.
About that goat
Cashmere fibers, of course, are pruned from the under hair of a cashmere goat's belly. According to the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute Web site, the fibers come mostly from Mongolia, Tibet and China, where goat herds struggle for survival on frigid mountainsides.
New Zealand and Australia also have cashmere goats. The name cashmere is taken from the Kashmir region of India, although little cashmere comes from there now.
The fibers are collected with a long comb or by shearing in the spring during the molting season, and the goats are unharmed. The cashmere goat is a type, not a breed, which carries the down gene, according to the cashmere institute. Strong, long fibers called guard hairs protect the soft hairs underneath. Once harvested, the outer and under hairs are separated, usually by machine.
Generally, the longer the soft, precious under hairs are, the better quality. When short hairs are spun into a garment they may be pulled too tightly and have a tendency to pill. Because cashmere is high-priced luxury fiber, the cashmere industry has been plagued with misconceptions and misrepresentations.
Expensive myth
In 1999, the fashion world heated into a frenzy over a so-called pashmina shawl. The implication was that the fibers, reported to be from Himalayan goats, were special and finer than other cashmere.
In truth, pashmina is not a fiber. It is an Indian word for cashmere and part of a huge promotional hype.
Kenneth Langley, who tests cashmere for the Boston-based institute, often at retailers' requests, says the pashmina story was a myth. Even when people were paying up to $500 for a shawl, the material was a blend of silk and cashmere.
Today, some manufacturers still use the word pashmina to describe 100 percent cashmere. And some use the term in reference to a blend. Legally, the word cannot be used without an authentic fiber content description.
The mislabeling of cashmere is an ongoing issue for the industry.
Certainly the blends with silk or wool can be lovely and appealing, and may offer a way to have good-quality cashmere at affordable prices. But a sweater marked 100 percent cashmere cannot be legally diluted with wool. And if a garment says 20 percent cashmere, then it should contain that exact amount of fiber, according to rules overseen by the Federal Trade Commission.
The real McCoy
The content and quality cannot be determined by feel. Langley, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, says it is not unusual to find textiles labeled 100 percent cashmere adulterated with wool. Processors have become skilled in treating wool fibers so that they have the same soft feel of cashmere, he says.
The testing process involves cutting into the material and taking thousands of fibers. Langley says he has to examine at least 500 fiber hairs to authenticate the content.
In recent years, the institute has sued some major retailers over mislabeling. CBS News recently ran a report on the issue. Out of 10 garments a reporter purchased, eight did not test as labeled. The two that were 100 percent cashmere as marked were from Banana Republic and Target. The alleged cashmere scarves bought at kiosks on the street were acrylic.
The issue is echoed by a recent Consumer Reports article that says one of six of the sweaters it tested contained about 10 percent wool treated to have a soft feel. Recycled fibers also may be of lesser quality and also must be indicated on the label.
Most cashmere knits are (and should be) at least two-ply yarn. The number refers to the density of the fibers. If bulky, a sweater may have more. Less expensive sweaters may be two-ply but have thin yarn and looser knit. Consumer Reports suggests you check the ply by untwisting the yarn in the repair kit. A single ply garment gives you less cashmere for your money.
Another frequent complaint about sweaters is pilling, or balling of the yarns. Experts say pilling is often exacerbated by everyday wear that results from friction between a jacket over a sweater, for instance, or a handbag on a shoulder. "Just cut off those strings," says Nordstrom's Keller.