Why is cashmere called "soft gold"?

2026-08-17 12:10:41

Scarcity: extremely low yield, difficult to collect

The primary meaning of 'gold' is rarity. The scarcity of cashmere far exceeds the recognition of the vast majority of people. It is not "better wool", but a special animal fiber with extremely limited production.

1. Species limitation: Only goats produce wool, sheep only produce wool

This is the most fundamental cognitive misconception: cashmere comes from goats, wool comes from sheep, and the two are completely different species.

Sheep only have wool on their body, which is the main raw material for ordinary knitted sweaters due to its large production and sufficient supply;

Goats have thick and long goat hair and a layer of fine wool that closely adheres to their skin. Only this layer of fine wool is cashmere, which accounts for a very low proportion and is difficult to collect.

That is to say, all things called "wool" come from sheep, and only the fine wool at the bottom of goats is qualified to be called "cashmere".

2. Extremely low production: one sweater equals the annual wool production of several goats

The rarity of cashmere lies in its extremely low yield:

Each adult goat only produces wool once a year during the spring molting period, and the net wool collected from combing is only a few tens of grams. Typically, a goat produces about 30-80 grams of high-quality net wool annually;

To make a regular pure cashmere knitted sweater, it takes about 300-500 grams of pure cashmere, which is equivalent to the annual production of 5-10 goats to make one piece;

The global annual production of cashmere is only tens of thousands of tons, far below the million ton scale of wool, and its scarcity is evident at a glance.

3. Fine collection: manual combing, complicated process, high cost

The collection of cashmere is not simply shearing, but requires manual combing, which is tedious, time-consuming, and labor-intensive

During the natural shedding period of goats every spring, herdsmen use specialized combing tools to repeatedly comb along the direction of hair growth, gradually separating the bottom layer of fur from the coarse fur;

The combed raw cashmere still needs to go through multiple processes such as combing, removing impurities, washing, and color separation to obtain pure cashmere raw materials that can be used for spinning;

The high degree of manual participation and long time consumption throughout the process further increase the cost of raw materials.

From the source, cashmere is naturally a "small but refined" fiber, with limited production and difficult collection, which is the basic reason for its high price and the first layer of confidence in its title as "soft gold".