What to ask before you buy pashmina
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Rarity is the easiest claim in this industry to make and the least often checked. A number gets chosen because it sounds scarce, a story is written to match it, and nobody asks for the paperwork.
This page is the paperwork — ours, and how to demand it from anyone else.
Three tests you can do in a shop
Laboratory testing is the only definitive method. In its absence, these three are reliable and take under a minute.
- Price. Genuine certified mountain pashmina cannot be produced below roughly €80–100 for a standard scarf. Below that threshold the raw fibre cost alone makes it economically impossible. A €40 pashmina is a blend, whatever the label says.
- Yarn appearance. Hand-spun mountain pashmina is slightly irregular under magnification — the twist and diameter vary, because a person made it. Machine-processed blends are uniform.
- Burn test. If you own the piece already: animal fibre burns like hair, slowly, smelling of burnt protein, leaving an ash that crushes between your fingers. Synthetic melts, beads, and smells of plastic.
Five questions any honest supplier can answer
- Does this product carry independent fibre certification, and what is the certification number?
- Can you provide the verification documentation for this piece?
- What is the fibre diameter in microns, and has it been independently tested?
- Is the yarn hand-spun or machine-processed?
- What was the person who made this paid for it?
A supplier who cannot or will not answer these is not operating a traceable supply chain. This is not unusual — most of the market does not. It is, however, something worth knowing before you pay.
What we can prove
| Fibre provenance | Independently verified — certification number on every piece |
| Producer standard | Certified cooperative sourcing, to internationally verified standards |
| Maker payment | €49 per throw · €38 per scarf — published, not negotiated |
| Audited by | Third parties. Renewable, and withdrawable. |
Neither certification is a logo we bought. Both are assessments somebody else conducts, and both can be taken away.
What we will not publish, and why
We do not name our cooperative, our manufacturing partner, or the individual makers publicly.
Not because there is something to hide — because naming a small supplier in this market exposes them to being approached, undercut and copied, and the decision about whether to be named is theirs to make rather than ours.
We would rather tell you that limit exists, and who it protects, than dress it up as mystique. If you want to see the documentation behind a specific piece before you buy it, write and ask us. That offer is not a formality.
The standard
If we make a claim, we publish the number behind it, and we tell you plainly where the limit is. Scarcity is never a reason to cut a corner — it is the reason to work harder to get it right.