The people behind the fibre: what sustainable cashmere really looks like

Of course there had to be an Inner Mongolia. There’s an Outer, stands to reason there’s an Inner. We just haven’t heard of it. I hadn’t. It’s not one of those destinations my mum used, to describe the-absolute-middle-of-nowhere, like Timbuktu or Outer Mongolia. It’s even more remote.

(I imagined it would be basic. I took energy bars. Blimey, I hope my Inner Mongolian colleagues don’t read this and find out about the energy bars. I brought them all back. Sharing food is integral to Mongolian culture. And energy bars don’t constitute food.)
Dawn in the Grasslands. Only Lucy and I got up to catch the first light. Lucy is ‘social’. I’m just fascinated. We arrived the night before in darkness. It was our first glimpse of Inner Mongolia.

It was summer and the first thing you noticed was the silence. No cars. No lights on the horizon. No buildings except some goat pens behind us and a traditional herder’s yurt (known as a ‘ger’), built not-so-traditionally of stone. Ahead there were miles and miles and miles of grass. Like Yorkshire but without the roads and teashops. As the sky turned pink, the goats began to bleat. Lucy got busy with the drone. I was left sitting on a fence, contemplating a very different way of life. There was a complete absence of urgency. In Inner Mongolia, nature dictates the tempo.

I went to Inner Mongolia to fit the pieces of a giant jigsaw together. It’s easy to go to a shop and buy a jumper and imagine that it started out life under the strip lights, on a hanger with a swing tag. It’s harder to picture it all beginning right there, with the goats (and the snakes).

Later we arrived at our first herder’s home. As we pulled up, he hastily disappeared inside to put on his traditional costume. It’s in an orange and blue silky fabric and his wife, daughters and son had matching tabards. They’re a proud family and share the work load. Their families have lived here for generations. Since Inner Mongolia became an independent state of China, the rules of ownership have changed and rather than nomadic methods, cashmere production is more tightly controlled in sedentary farms, hence the stone-built ‘ger’. Both methods have pros and cons. Two significant outcomes for a percentage of herders are a higher quality fibre and a more reliable income.
The question I went to Inner Mongolia to answer, before Baker Miller Pink could call itself an ethical brand was not “are we certified” because it seems that everybody is these days — but instead, “is this kind?” It sounds naïve and a highly unlikely way to run a business. (I knew Anita Roddick well. She would have been proud.) Kind to the goats, the herders, the workers and the land.

The fact that you can buy cashmere anywhere now, including Tesco’s for heaven’s sake, has put incredible pressure on a triangle of land in the north of China. Inner Mongolia is the world’s largest supplier of cashmere accounting for over 60% of production and as farming has become more intensive, the average fibre has become coarser. Jumpers made with coarser fibre don’t feel the same and don’t wear as well. These are the ones you’ll find in supermarkets. Fast cashmere brands have growth strategies that are simply not aligned with the longterm welfare of the goats, the herders, the knitters and the land. In exactly the same way that British supermarkets drive down farmers’ margins on milk because of their huge buying power, so fast cashmere retailers drive down the price and quality of cashmere. For many herders, the race to produce more fibre from more goats on the same footprint of land is hard to sustain.

But that’s not me.

The kind of raw cashmere fibres I’m after are of genuine quality, that can last a lifetime, called GRADE A cashmere. These are fine, long-staple fibres from super healthy animals that have been well-kept on well-managed land. Grade A costs more than your average cashmere because the conditions required for it to exist cost more. Enough food, plenty of exercise, warm summers and freezing winters plus careful combing by hand and very little stress, encourages very fine hairs on the underbelly at a significantly longer length. GRADE A is key. It’s a genuine measure of quality. To be eligible to supply GRADE A fibres, a herder has to produce the longer, finer hairs. To do that he must invest in the health of his herd.

We were invited for lunch with the herders. (One small member was absent as he didn’t want to get off his bike). They prepared a traditional dish of goat meat and potatoes. It’s important to share the meal and appreciate the hospitality. The family members took it in turns to explain how they read the condition of the land, know when a grazing area needs to rest and how they assess the health of each animal through the quality of its coat. This kind of expertise has taken decades to develop. They now also tag the goats, digitally monitoring their exercise and food consumption, medicating them to prevent disease. They play ‘intentional’ music to the goats through a Tannoy system. It’s The Shawshank Redemption with panpipes and gongs. But they said the best cashmere, GRADE A, comes from calm goats on healthy land. They say it like it’s obvious. But in twenty years of working in fashion, no one in the supply chain has ever said anything like that to me before. But not everyone in Inner Mongolia can afford to invest in the health of their goats. Those are the herders who will supply low grade cashmere for low grade jumpers by low grade brands.

Sustainability in cashmere production relies upon a personal relationship with specific people whose specific knowledge and specific choices determine the quality of what eventually reaches the consumer.

Lucy and I flew back to London with our content captured, our samples completed, with a better understanding of how businesses could be run if more people added ‘kind’ into their brand principles. The only way that will happen is if more consumers demand it.