How to judge cashmere before you pay

Ply and gauge, in plain terms

Ply is how many strands are twisted together into the yarn. Two ply means two, and it is the standard for a sweater that is warm without being heavy, because the second strand fills the stitch and evens the knit. A single ply knit can be beautiful and light, but it has less to give at the elbows. Gauge is how finely the machine knitted, counted in needles to the inch: 12 gauge is a fine, light knit for wearing under a jacket, 7 gauge is the standard sweater, and 5 gauge and below is the chunky knit worn instead of a jacket. None is better. They are different garments, and a tag that names neither is asking you to shop by adjective.

The cuff will tell you

Stretch and recovery is the whole test. Take the cuff, pull it a couple of centimetres, and let go: good yarn with enough twist snaps back and the ribbing closes. A cuff that stays wavy has told you about the fibre or the twist, and it will keep telling you every time you push a sleeve up. Run a dry palm across the forearm too; a surface that sheds fluff on the first pass is short fibre already leaving.

Softness in the shop is the least reliable thing you can feel.

A mill can brush a mediocre knit into instant plushness, and that surface is exactly what pills. Fibre that will last for years often feels slightly dry and firm on the shelf, then softens with wear and washing, in that order.

Pilling, told honestly

Every cashmere sweater pills where friction lives, under the arms and where a bag strap rides. The difference is what happens next. Long fibre spun with proper twist sheds its loose ends in the first weeks; you comb them off and the surface settles. Short fibre keeps making pills for the life of the garment, and price does not pardon it: an expensive sweater brushed soft can pill as fast as a cheap one. Early pilling that stops is a phase. Pilling that never stops is the yarn confessing.

Grade A is a sentence nobody polices

Buying houses do grade raw cashmere by the fineness and length of the fibre, and those grades matter at that end of the trade. On a consumer tag, no regulator defines grade A, so any label can print it. What is policed is the word cashmere itself: on an American tag it may name only fine dehaired undercoat averaging no more than 19 microns, with no more than three percent of the fibre above 30. The fibre content line is the one the law does police, so read that one, then put your hands on the knit and run the tests above.

What a fifty dollar sweater cannot contain

A cashmere goat is combed once a year, in the spring moult, and the down that survives separation from the coarse guard hair runs to roughly 150 grams, which is why a sweater wants the yield of three or four goats. Dehairing, spinning, knitting, and finishing are paid on top of that. So the cheapest new cashmere sweater on a chain store shelf, which now lands near fifty dollars, is illustrative arithmetic: something was removed. Either the fibre is short or recycled, or there is very little of it in a loose open knit, or it is a blend, or the content line is simply wrong. A low price is not a scandal. An impossible one is a disclosure.

Questions to ask at the counter

• What ply and what gauge is this knit?
• How much does the sweater weigh? At the same gauge, more fibre is more warmth.
• Is the fibre new or recycled, and where was the yarn spun?
• What does the care label ask beyond dry cleaning?
• If it pills in the first month, is that a defect under your return policy or a job for a comb?

Reading helps, touching decides

The tests take a minute at a counter and no counter worth your money minds them. For where to stand at one, the journal keeps a note on cashmere in Toronto. Then wear the sweater ten times, comb it once, and judge it in month three. That is when the yarn stops performing.