How to buy cashmere without wasting money

By the middle of February the sweater has told on you. Pills stand in a grey drift along the side seam where a bag strap rode all winter, and the collar sits wider than it did in November. Nobody spilled anything on it. It just spent five months under a wool coat, walked the PATH at lunch instead of the sidewalk, and sat pinned against a 501 seat with the heat cranked.

That is not bad luck. It is short fibre, the thing that decides everything about a cashmere sweater and the thing no label will tell you.

The label is silent about the only number that matters

Cashmere is the undercoat of a goat, combed out in spring and sorted by hand. Two measurements decide what the yarn does over fifteen years: how fine each hair is in microns, how long it is in millimetres. Fine and long is the good material, roughly 14 to 15.5 microns with a staple of 36 mm or more. Coarse and short is what fills the mall racks with $89 crewnecks the week the clocks go back.

Neither number is on the tag. Fibre content is, and a care symbol, which is why "100% cashmere" on a $79 sweater and on a $700 one are both honest sentences about unrelated objects. Grade A, B and C turn up on hangtags and mean whatever the seller wants. Read grade as decoration.

Which leaves your hands. Thirty seconds at the rack.

What your hands find out before you reach the mirror

Distrust anything that feels wonderful immediately. Slippery, almost wet to the touch, means it was washed hard and finished with softener to fake a hand the fibre cannot produce, and that finish rinses out by March. Good cashmere feels drier and faintly springy, and warms under your palm in seconds. The cheap one is at its best on the hanger, which is a sales strategy dressed as a fabric.

Take the cuff in both hands, pull two inches sideways, let go. It should snap back inside a second. A rib that returns slowly, or wider than it started, is loose yarn on a loose gauge and will bag at the elbows by January.

Look inside at the armhole. A fully fashioned sweater is knitted to shape and joined stitch to stitch, with small paired marks running up the seam where the machine narrowed the panel. A cut-and-sew sweater is cut from flat yardage with a blade and overlocked, which leaves a serged ridge of chopped fibre ends inside the arm. Every one of those ends is a pill waiting.

At the neck, the collar should be linked loop by loop so the join lies flat. Pull it wide. If it ripples, it goes first.

What two-ply actually buys

Ply is how many yarns are twisted into the thread. Two-ply buys balance. A single-ply yarn carries torque, which is why a cheap sweater grows a slow diagonal twist down the side seam after a few washes and hangs crooked forever. Twisting two plies against each other cancels it and traps the short ends inside the twist instead of letting them walk out. It buys no warmth: a chunky single-ply at seven gauge, the low needle count, beats a fine two-ply at twelve, because warmth is trapped air and mass.

Weight is the honest number nobody prints. A mid-gauge crewneck worth keeping runs 300 to 450 grams in a medium. One that floats off the shelf belongs under a proper winter coat, not out on Bloor on its own in January.

What each price band buys in 2026

Under $150. Short fibre, single ply, cut and sew, sometimes quietly blended. These are the ones photographed badly and resold out of a condo lobby off Bay in April, one winter old.

$250 to $450. The honest middle. Two-ply yarn, cut and sew with a linked collar. Handled well it runs five or six winters, pills for one season, then settles.

$500 to $900. Fully fashioned, long staple, real weight. Here fifteen years stops being marketing and becomes arithmetic. Past roughly $1,400 you are buying the cut and the house, fair enough if you know that is the purchase, but the fibre stopped improving a long way down.

The good colours and the middle sizes are gone by early December, and what survives to the January markdown is extra-small, extra-large and a burgundy nobody wanted.

Wash it, and stop hanging it

Most cashmere here dies of care, not wear. Dry cleaning solvent dissolves oil. What ruins a sweater in this city is road salt and sweat, both water soluble, both left behind by the machine. Wash it in the sink.

Cool water, under 30 degrees, with a pH-neutral wool wash or plain hair shampoo, since cashmere is hair. Press it under a dozen times, leave it five minutes, rinse at the same temperature. Never wring it, and never change temperature between wash and rinse: felting is heat plus agitation plus shock, and it is permanent. Roll it in a towel, stand on it, dry it flat away from a radiator.

Fold it. A knit has no internal structure, so a hanger hangs the whole sweater from two points at the shoulders, and those points stretch permanently within weeks. Store it clean and sealed: moth larvae eat keratin and follow body salts to it. Cedar smells like diligence and does not kill larvae.

Buy a cashmere comb, the flat sort with a fine metal blade, and use it after the fourth wear, not in April. Lay it flat and work in short strokes, one direction. The short ends that were going to migrate leave once, early, and the surface stays smooth.

Common questions

How can you tell if cashmere is good quality?

Good cashmere feels dry and faintly springy rather than slippery, and a stretched cuff snaps back inside a second. Then look inside the armhole: a serged ridge of cut fibre ends means it was cut from flat yardage and will pill hard and early.

How much should a good cashmere sweater cost?

In Toronto in 2026, a cashmere sweater built to last fifteen years costs $500 to $900, and one that gives you five or six winters costs $250 to $450. The difference is fully fashioned seams and longer staple, at 300 to 450 grams in a medium. Below $150 you are buying short fibre that pills within weeks.

Why does my cashmere pill?

Cashmere pills because short fibres work out of the yarn's twist and tangle wherever the garment rubs, which is why pills appear under the arms, at the cuffs and along the line a bag strap takes. Shorter fibre and looser twist mean more of them, for longer, and that is most of what separates a $79 sweater from a $700 one. Comb them off early: once the loose ends are gone, a well-spun sweater largely stops.

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