Pashminas: Fire Drill
Namaste from India!
She’s Shopping India:
Pashmina scarves are a classic accessory to add a burst of color to your coat, a little warmth to your neck or some style to your ensemble.
Pashmina is the type of wool found on the throat, chin, face and underbelly of adult and baby mountain goats in the Kashmir Provinces. The finer the pashmina, the lighter, softer and more expensive the scarf. 100% pure pashmina is the most expensive and warmest scarf, so soft and fine you can pull it through a wedding band.
Pashmina has become almost a generic term for any wool blend scarf, regardless if it’s 100% acrylic or 100% pashmina. Whether you’re buying at a bazaar in Jaipur for $200, or a street corner in New York City at 4 for $20, or at Macy’s in Chicago for $55, you want to get what you’re paying for.
If you’re paying 4/$20, it’s a pretty sure thing you’re buying 100% acrylic. But if you’re paying $55 and the tag promises 80% pashmina, 20% silk (most “pashminas” are a pashmina wool/silk blend), how can you be sure it’s not acrylic?
India has introduced Moi to the pashmina fire drill:
- When shopping for pashminas, bring matches
- light one strand of the pashmina fringe with a match
- immediately extinguish the strand with your thumb and pointer finger
If it smells like burning rubber and there is a black sooty streak on your thumb and finger, it’s an acrylic blend. Burning silk smells like burning hair, and doesn’t leave any soot.
Moi tip: any reputable pashmina dealer in India will respect you for performing the fire drill. Macy’s will probably arrest you.
4 comments
What an excellent tip – and so smart to include the warning regarding Macy’s!
Can’t wait to read more about your travels.
Toma
The last line of this blog cracked me up. You are a true writing wit!
Interestingly if you are buying inexpensive jewelry, ie carved stone, they also whip out matches and hold them to the stone to prove they’re not plastic: plastic would melt!
Avoiding acrylic is easy. Trying to avoid yarn adulterated with sheep wool is hard. The Chinese, and probably the Indians too, are perfecting descaling techniques that help merino sheep pass as Capra hircus laniger. Unless you are a trained technician, your best bet is to choose a reliable pashmina purveyor. Big names are no guarantee at all. In fact, most of the heavy volume retailers resort to machine loomers, as they cannot get reliable supplies of hand-woven stuff. (Buying a machine-loomed pashmina shawl is like buying an “oriental carpet” from a Belgian factory… cheap, but karmicly deficient.
Sunrise Pashmina has the best pashminas, best service, and most information about choosing, wearing, and caring for your shawl.
If you cite “ShesShopping10″ in the Ordering Instructions box at checkout, we’ll discount your order 10%.
Seth Sicroff
Manager of Internet Sales
Sunrise Pashmina
http://www.sunrise-pashmina.com
607 256 0102
info@sunrise-pashmina.com
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