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The first little something that Napoleon brought home to Josephine was a cashmere shawl. Nobody knows how hard he had to bargain to get it from the Khedive of Egypt, but the Emperor-to-be would pay any price for a chance to please his captious, demanding wife. And this gift did the trick. No one in post-revolutionary, party-going Paris had ever seen a woollen cloth like it. The shawl was feather-light, lustrous, and incredibly soft and warm. The word was that it came from the mysterious East, probably on a magic carpet, from Kashmir, via Kabul and Baghdad. When Josephine showed how she could draw it clear through her wedding ring, her fine friends began to wonder whether her little throw actually was a magic carpet. And the French fashion elite of 1801 went crazy over this thing they called cashmere. 

So it was that a single shawl set a standard for luxury that has lasted two hundred years. Cashmere has since developed a rich embroidery of fame and tradition. In celebrity circles today, cashmere ‘pashmina’ wraps outnumber wedding rings. Resourceful designers knit cashmere into pastel-shaded sweaters, cut it into top-coats and made-to-measure suits, and weave it subtly with silks for added lustre. The finest cloth is now milled in the English Pennines, in Scotland and the Italian Alps. But the fibre they use is from the same animal, a certain kind of goat, that lent its wool for the Ring Shawl of Josephine. And every thread of cashmere worth the name still comes out of the mysterious East – from the arid highlands surrounding the great Gobi desert in China and Mongolia.

It takes a cashmere goat four years to grow enough wool to make a figure-hugging sweater for a film star. For a Kel goat – and his herdsman – that means four cruel winters living at 12,000 feet in temperatures that can reach thirty below zero, eating thin wind-scoured hill grass, and watering from hand-dug wells. Cashmere yarn is spun from the inner underdown coat (the pashm) that sustains these goats through the cold months, and is shed or combed out every spring. The hungriest, hardiest goats of the herd make the finest fibre – around 14 microns, or a third of the thickness of a human hair. Baby cashmere, gathered from baby goats, is even finer and more sought after. Woven into 2-ply cloth, cashmere is eight times warmer than sheep’s wool, and yet so light and soft to the hand that the cloth is barely felt on the skin.

When you take a Kel goat out of the Gobi, you leave quality behind. Expatriated goats, well-fed and fussed over by farmers in the warmth of Texas and New South Wales, quickly lose their edge. They grow thicker, heavier hair. How can a buyer of cashmere be sure that he has got his goat? Trust your fingers. The handle of coarser cloth will always betray itself. Another factor is density. A good cashmere sweater should feel substantial, for all its lightness. When pulled, the knit should snap back to its original shape.

Colour also plays a role. Whiter, more expensive fibre needs less dye to color it. This is important since dying harms the feel of the cashmere. Experienced producers can minimize but not eliminate the difference in handle between lights and darks. Cashmere fibre is also priced by length. Longer fibres are more expensive because they make stronger yarn that pills less. Two-ply yarn is the standard for cashmere – the yarns twist and crimp evenly into one another. Further plies add weight or colour as may be required for a particular cloth, but do not affect quality.

 
For contemporary designers, cashmere swings both ways. Tradition and good manners used to dictate that a cloth so rare and in such high demand went to the ladies, for pastel cardigans and bright pashminas. Today, gentlemen understand its value to themselves - for formal topcoats, fine lightweight suits, cotton-cashmere trousers, and even socks. If only Napoleon had been more fashion-forward. When he set off on a long trip to northern climes in 1812, it did not occur to him to pack a generously cut overcoat of cashmere, with travelling rug to match. The Emperor's toes would have had some warmth on the Retreat from Moscow, and fashion and history might have taken a very different course.