How it is made

From fibre to garment, in one factory

Seven steps between a yak on a Mongolian hillside and a jumper at your door. One country, one material per piece, one factory for yarn, knitting and finishing.

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The land

A cold, dry country

Mongolia sits high on a plateau, far from any sea. Winters run below minus thirty for weeks, summers are short and dry, and the wind never really stops. The grass is thin, so the land cannot feed many animals per hectare, and the animals that do live on it stay outdoors all year.

To survive that, yaks and cashmere goats grow a second coat for winter: a fine, dense underdown beneath their long outer hair. It is this underdown, not the outer hair, that becomes yarn. The colder the winter, the finer and denser the down. That is why Mongolian cashmere and yak wool are what they are.

The animals

Yaks and cashmere goats

Yaks live in the high valleys and mountain pastures. Under their shaggy outer coat they grow a soft down in the animal's own colours, mostly deep brown and grey, which is why most of our yak pieces are undyed. Cashmere goats graze the drier steppe and grow the finer, lighter down that the world calls cashmere.

Both are kept by herding families who have raised them for generations, moving with the seasons between pastures. The animals are not farmed indoors and are not kept for their down alone; they give milk, carry loads on the move and are part of the family's daily life, and they are looked after accordingly. No animal is harmed for its down. The down is a winter coat the animal sheds every spring in any case.

Spring

Combed, not shorn

In April and May, as the weather warms, the underdown loosens from the skin and would fall out on its own. Herders comb it out by hand with a wide-toothed comb, animal by animal, over a few days. Only the loose down comes away; the outer hair stays on the animal, and the animal keeps its protection against the late spring frosts.

Nothing is cut, and the animal is not shorn or hurt. Combing takes patience rather than force, which is why it is still done by hand. One goat gives a few hundred grams of raw down a year, and one yak not much more. After washing and sorting about half of that remains. That is why a cashmere jumper takes the spring combing of several animals, and why it costs what it costs.

The mill

Sorted, washed, opened

The raw down arrives at the mill with dust, grease and coarse outer hairs mixed in. It is sorted by colour and fineness first, then washed, then opened into loose fibre. A dehairing line removes the remaining coarse hairs; what is left is the soft down only.

The fibre then goes to the card, which lines the fibres up into a soft, even web and removes the last short pieces. This is the stage you see in the picture: washed, opened fibre waiting for the card. From here on, nothing is added to it.

The mill

Spun into yarn

The carded web is drawn out into a thin strand and twisted into yarn on the spinning line. The amount of twist decides how the finished piece feels: a looser twist gives a softer, fluffier surface, a tighter twist gives a smoother, firmer one. Most knitwear yarn is two strands twisted together, which holds its shape better than a single one.

The same factory does this step and every step after it. The yarn is never shipped anywhere between fibre and garment, so there is no second supplier whose composition we would have to take on trust.

The factory

Knitted in Mongolia

Jumpers, cardigans, skirts, trousers and coats are knitted on flat machines, panel by panel, then linked together at the seams. Socks, hats and gloves are knitted on circular machines in one piece. Ribbed cuffs, collars and hems are knitted in, not sewn on afterwards, so they stretch and recover with the fabric instead of pulling against it.

The factory is family-owned and small. One place spins, knits and finishes, so the composition on the label is the composition that went into the yarn.

The finish

Washed and checked

A knitted piece is not finished when it comes off the machine. It is washed first, which relaxes the stitches and brings up the soft surface of the fibre; this is the wash that gives cashmere and yak wool their feel. Then it is dried flat, never hung, and steamed into its final shape.

After that every piece is checked by hand: seams, cuffs, hems, loose ends, dropped stitches. Only then is it folded and packed. What you unpack is a piece that has already been washed once, so it is soft from the first wear.