Despite its luxury associations, cashmere is shockingly bad for the environment. As demand for cashmere has increased over the years—especially for lower-priced cashmere—the quality has decreased, as well as the industry’s ethics. This isn’t a new problem; a 1999 New Yorker article titled “The Crisis in Cashmere” outlined how the democratization of cashmere had led to dicey production practices in Mongolia and cheap, coarse fibers. Almost 20 years later, we’ve also found that the enormous herds of cashmere goats are overgrazing to the point where parts of Mongolia are becoming a desert, which threatens the other endangered species that live there.More »

The fashion industry has been captivated by natural fibers, particularly animal hair fibers due to their specific characteristics—such as fineness, warmth, suppleness, visual appearance, and finally mystique—since ancient times. Animal hair fibers protect the animal from extreme weather particularly at high altitude/low temperature, and thus generally their production is not as high as fine wool fiber from sheep. The limited production and unique characteristics lead them to be used in the fashion industry to enhance the aesthetic and prestige look of garments. Being utilized in luxurious fashion industry, they are also known as luxury or exotic fibers. To reduce the cost of the end product and impart novelty, these hair fibers are used often in conjunction with either sheep’s wool or other natural fibers. These blends produce special effects, such as additional beauty, texture, colour, softness, resilience, durability, and luster, on garments. Luxury hair fibers are exceptionally fine (8–16 μ) and are in high demand for the production of fashion garments and accessories, which led to brink of extinction of luxury hair fibre-producing animals such as antelope in Tibet. To help sustain the luxury hair fiber industry, this chapter considers the existing luxury hair fibers in the fashion market and their potential applications.More »

We offer a luxury item that is truly unique with a provenance that can rarely be found. As the only producer of alpaca tweed suits in the world you can rest assured that you are investing in something special. All our suits are hand cut and stitched in the UK by some of the finest craftsmen and women in British tailoring. Even the button holes are hand sewn and it is this attention to detail that means every suit is crafted to perfection and is of a quality you would find in major London tailors.More »

While not as over-the-top luxurious as vicuña (which easily garners price tags of $15,000 and up), alpaca pieces combine the softness of cashmere with the wear-everywhere ruggedness of the roughest sheep’s wool. This versatility is put on sumptuous display in Italian house Canali’s latest collection, which centered around handsome alpaca overcoats (from $1,775)—like the sleek double-breasted, wrap, and utility-jacket styles shown here.More »