Washing cashmere hair Brown muddy water gradually turns into pure white cotton.

Washing cashmere hair
Brown muddy water gradually turns into pure white cotton.


The selected cashmere goes through the washing process.
When I entered the room where the cashmere is washed, it was humid and smelled like an animal. The cashmere was put into a washing machine, which was about 50 meters long, and washed many times. At the beginning, the water was brown and muddy, but as it was washed, the water gradually became clear, and the washed and dried hair was pure white. But at this point, the fluffy cashmere is not yet visible because of the bristles.

Seimou (shaping).　
The most difficult process unique to cashmere.

In the case of wool yarns other than cashmere, such as sheep, camel and alpaca, the raw wool is spun and processed into yarn as it is after harvesting. However, cashmere is a mixture of hard hairs (called "prickly hairs") and downy hairs (called "downy hairs") inside the harvested raw wool.
Only the downy hairs need to be removed to make the soft and fluffy cashmere. The process of separating the downy hairs from the knotted hairs and removing only the downy hairs is known as the downy hair preparation process.

The downy hair is the most important process in making cashmere wadding, as it minimizes fiber breakage and damage, and completely removes the stinging hairs. This process is technically difficult, and it is no exaggeration to say that the quality of the raw material is determined by the technique used to prepare the downy hair.
The color, fiber thickness and length are the most important quality criteria for cashmere raw wool. The original downy hairs of cashmere are quite long, but they are shortened by fiber breakage that occurs during the hair preparation process, so it can be said that quality is determined by the technique used to prevent hair breakage in this process.
The removed bristles are effectively used as fodder for fields and other purposes.

In the process of shaping cashmere, of course, it is important to keep the humidity at 67% to 68%, because if the cashmere wool is too dry, the fibers deteriorate and are prone to breakage. It is good in winter, but in summer it is very hot and humid, and it is very hard work.

Until around the 1970s, Japanese spinning companies used to import the clay wool and perform the entire process in-house, from sorting and washing to the next step of conditioning.
Nowadays, China does not export the raw wool to maintain local employment and to add value to the process of sorting, washing, and conditioning the wool, so when we talk about cashmere, we are talking about cashmere conditioning raw materials.
Spinning companies all over the world now buy the raw materials from China for the wool preparation process, and this process cannot be seen in Japan or Europe today.