The Pattern-Drawer's Blog

So how exactly can a cashmere garment range between $20 to $1000? When you buy a relatively lower-priced cashmere scarf or a garment from a shop at your local mall or an online website, it's most likely mass-produced and has other fabric components mixed in it. Due to the nature of customer demand for lower-priced items, there will be yak or sheep wool blended with cashmere passing it as genuine or 100% cashmere. Of course there are exclusive boutiques around the world that sell fine cashmere pieces but these will usually come attached with higher price tags. More often than less, I also see '100%' and 'pure' terminology used as a sales trick. 

Gartika plans to donate 1% of its profits every year to the foundation. We are barely three months old but as we continue to tell the Gartika story, we want to do everything right to build a sustainable, slow fashion industry. This little contribution is Gartika's small gesture towards helping all the awesome work the AWF team has been doing.

Scarves that cling to your neck and clothing items made of natural fabrics are skin-friendly letting your skin breathe easily. They're also non-toxic and biodegradable making them environmentally friendly. 100% pure cotton, cashmere, wool or silk scarves are preferred by customers and it's the fabric quality and its creation process (an important aspect), that has direct correlation to its retail price.

While hand block printing on pure cotton fabrics or cotton blends is awe-inspiring, using this ancient Indian technique on cashmere and silk blend fabric creates an unusual clothing item that takes winter fashion to the next level. Separate blocks are required for each of the colors used in a pattern and it's not unexpected to have two or more colors in a typical design. It can take more than ten people up to twelve hours to create a rare block print pattern.

What's worse is that textile chemicals affect us directly and research shows that clothing that uses harmful dyes, on coming contact with the human skin, due to heat and perspiration starts getting absorbed by our skin pores. It's highly possible that our skin starts feeling irritated due to these reasons and we don't even know why we are feeling a certain way. Some people with chemical insensitivity may also suffer from extreme symptoms such as dermatitis, allergic reactions, skin problems like eczema and sometimes even infertility. 

No one really knows except the founders of Kit and Ace.

I was personally curious to know what it meant when the word "technical" got attached with the word "cashmere." As I researched, I found out that clothing companies like Kit and Ace are trying to retain the fine qualities of cashmere while adding the benefit of reducing the number of trips to the dry cleaner. This would be awesome if the fabric was actually genuine cashmere - though this isn't the case with "technical cashmere." We cannot simply change the fabric construction of cashmere. Let's look into this a bit more.