Journal

What to ask before you buy pashmina

Most pashmina sold in Europe is a blend. Three tests you can do in a shop before you pay, and the questions any honest supplier can answer.

Cloth that worked as currency: pashmina and the...

Before it was a garment, this cloth was a way of paying someone in status. What the Mughal court did with shawls, and the one part of the story we...

Eighty grams a year: how mountain pashmina is a...

One goat grows eighty grams of usable fibre in a year, and a single scarf takes the entire annual yield of three or four of them. The price is not...