Pashmina is not a quality. It is a fibre, from a specific animal, in a specific place.

The goat

The animal is Capra hircus, of the Changthangi breed. The Changpa nomads of eastern Ladakh have herded them for centuries on the high plateau of Changthang, at elevations between fourteen and seventeen thousand feet, where winters drop below minus forty. The goats grow a fine, dense under-coat to survive — that under-coat is pashm.

The combing

In spring, when the herds begin to moult, the under-coat starts to lift away from the body of the animal. The herders comb it off — gently, by hand, with a wooden comb — over the course of several days. No animal is killed for pashmina. None is even shorn. The fibre that is not combed off naturally is left on the goat. A good adult animal yields perhaps a hundred and fifty grams of raw fibre in a season.

The crossing

The raw fleece is then shipped from Ladakh into the Kashmir valley. In the days of the caravan it came across the Zoji-la pass on the backs of ponies. Now it comes by road, but it still takes its time. The fleece arrives full of guard hair, dust, vegetable matter — all of which must be removed by hand before anything else can happen.

The spinning

Spinners — almost always women, working from home — separate the down from the guard hair, fibre by fibre, and then spin the down into yarn on a small wooden wheel called a yinder. A skilled spinner produces around six to ten grams of yarn in a day. A single shawl can require eighty grams. The yarn for one shawl is therefore the work of several weeks.

The weaving

Only now does the cloth begin. The yarn is taken to a weaver, who sets up the warp on a handloom — a job that itself can take two weeks — and then begins to weave the cloth. For a plain pashmina the weaving is perhaps a month. For a kani, much more.

The finishing

When the cloth comes off the loom it is washed — gently, in cold mountain water — and then beaten with wooden mallets to relax the weave. It is dyed, often more than once, depending on the depth of colour wanted. If there is embroidery to do, it begins now. The finished cloth is pressed and folded into muslin.

A shawl in your hands has crossed mountains and seasons.

We tell this story because it is easy to forget what a shawl is, in a world of fast textiles. Pashmina is a long, slow conversation between a goat, a pasture, several people you have never met, and your shoulders.