ABOUT

SB STORY

“I fell in love with Cashmere the first time I was introduced to it at one of the lectures in the University of Leeds during my under graduation in Textile Management.” – Shakti Golyan. And thus started a saga of understanding and expressing the true spirit of Cashmere: ethical, sustainable, organic, warm and pure. Scottish Borders was born from this rich knowledge and experience gathered by Golyan over the next 2 decades being in the Cashmere industry involved right from the source of the fibre to retail of sweaters and scarves.

The whole idea behind Scottish Borders was to create high quality products from ethically and sustainably sourced Cashmere and offering it to customers at affordable prices.

REASONABLE CASHMERE

By buying direct from the source, we are able to save on many middleman costs (and their profits) by eliminating then altogether. We pass on part of the savings to the ever reducing nomadic herders and part of it to you. Happy Herder + Happy Customers = Growing Sales = Happy SB Team

FACTS

  • Cashmere wool comes from cashmere goats and NOT sheep. Sheep Cashmere is NOT Cashmere. It is regular fine wool derived from native Chinese Sheep and NOT from Cashmere Goats.
  • Cashmere comes from the entire undercoat of the goat and NOT just the underbelly. NOT all fibre derived from the Cashmere goat is cashmere. The outer coat of the goat is made up of coarse hair, not used in cashmere production, is called guard hair.
  • Pashmina is a word derived from the Persian word ‘pashm’ meaning wool. It is a term used by some Asian countries (India, Nepal, Pakistan etc) to refer to Cashmere. Pashmina is NOT the best quality of cashmere. Pashmina is NOT silk blended with Cashmere. Infact 100% Pashmina labelling is used for cheap imitations made from wool or even viscose. Legally, labelling a product 100% Pashmina is as good as not labelling it at all.

MAKING

High quality Cashmere is collected by carefully combing the goat. The loose hair in the comb is then delicately removed to ensure no damage is done to the fine Cashmere fibre.

This is simply a washing process to remove any dirt and grease from the wool.

During this stage any non-Cashmere hairs are removed (such as hairs from the goat’s coarse guard hair). The quality of the Cashmere fibre is determined during this step and this depends on their fibre length and diameter.

All high quality Cashmere is coloured or dyed at the fibre stage. This is referred to as ‘fibre dyeing’ or sometimes ‘stock dyeing’.

The newly dyed fibres are now put through a spinning process specially designed for the delicate Cashmere fibres. The quality of the yarn are defined at this stage too. Yarns to be used for knitting will have lower twist and so will require longer fibres and yarns for weaving will have higher twist so can be used for slightly lower quality yarn.

The yarn is knitted into panels using automatic or hand flat knitting machines. The panels are then stitched together on high precision stitching machines to create the finished article. The garment is finally sent through the finishing process which involves washing, softening, drying and steam pressing the garment to produce the required shape and feel.

The yarn is woven into a scarf or a stole using two sets of yarns called the warp and weft. The woven scarf is then sent through a similar finishing process to the knitted garments, however some blends may require extra treatments.