Quezi

Pick a pashmina shawl in your favourite colour (Photo by Tom - CC-BY)

Pashminas took off in the later 1990s, when draping a generous piece of woven cashmere round your shoulders was a fashion trend in Western countries. At the end of 1996 a London journalist reported that “style guru Lucia van der Post” said the pashmina was “the most chic shawl around town”. The New York Times described fashionable women going to pashmina parties to choose from an array of luxurious wraps. In 1999 each single-colour shawl, the “must-have accessory of recent seasons”, cost upwards of $200.

At first newspaper fashion writers didn’t take it for granted that their readers knew the word pashmina. They added phrases like “luxury cashmere shawls” to make things crystal clear. (UK Daily Telegraph, 1997)

Now in 2009 you may find all sorts of shawls, scarves and wraps described as pashminas, but the original ones were undoubtedly made of real cashmere – either on its own or blended with silk. Pashm is an Urdu word for the soft, downy underhair of goats from Kashmir (Cashmere) and other mountainous parts of southern Asia, and pashmina means the cloth woven from it.

The recent wave of pashmina popularity is not the first time shawls of this luxurious fabric have been in fashion. European ladies in the late 18th and early 19th century also loved fine shawls from India and its neighbours. Plain or embroidered pashmina was appreciated as a warm yet light textile that drapes well – though it was sometimes called poshmina or pushmeena.

One Victorian English writer who lived in India described pashmina fibres like this:

The pashm, or shawl-wool, is a downy substance, growing next to the skin and under the thick hair of those goats found … in the elevated lands north of the Himalayas.

She rated  the “celebrated Turfani wool” even more highly. She seemed to regret that the British-controlled Punjab only produced Kermani wool shawls, though this material was also “very fine”. Today there is still debate about where the very best cashmere comes from.

As for pashminas, it can be difficult to find out exactly what fibres have been woven into your shawl. Good quality items in good stores will probably say what proportion of cashmere went into the mix, bearing in mind that cashmere is now produced in China as well as in its original homelands. In the end, you will have to judge a pashmina by look and feel. If you like the way it looks and handles, and the price is right, maybe that’s all that matters? But don’t be misled into buying viscose if you want pashmina qualities like featherlight warmth.

Further reading:
Janet Rizvi’s Pashmina: The Kashmir Shawl and Beyond