Yak wool scarf "Chaurigai" (चौंरीगाई) – Grey, handwoven

The tone of a winter sky above the ridge.

Grey, with a warm brown undertone – both tones come from the animal's natural colour, not from the dye bath. Woven in a fine herringbone weave whose zigzag only shows up close.

Pure yak wool, woven by hand.

Size: 68 × 192 cm (27 × 76 in)

Material: 100% yak wool

As this is a purely natural product, there may be slight variations in colour and size. The incidence of light and the type of light source can also slightly affect how the colour appears.

How the fibre is obtained

On one square centimetre of yak skin there are about 1,468 fine undercoat hairs and only 182 coarse guard hairs. This ratio is the reason why the undercoat can be combed out without taking the protective guard hair from the animal.

It is harvested in spring, during the natural moult, by hand with a comb. Whatever is not combed out, the animal loses in early summer anyway: the undercoat then mats in the guard hair or gets caught on pasture and bushes. If it is combed before shearing, the share of fine fibre in the fleece rises from around 50 to 61 per cent.

Why the guard hair has to come out

Yak undercoat and yak guard hair have been measured against each other in the laboratory. The undercoat conducts heat less well — 2.08 against 2.63 (×10⁻⁴ cal/cm·°C) — and therefore insulates better. The finer the fibre, the better the insulation; the correlation is −0.80.

Separating guard hair and undercoat is therefore the real work on this fibre. If guard hair remains in the yarn, it shows in the finished fabric as a lighter, harder single fibre: coarse hair has a medulla and takes up dye less well. Fine yak undercoat is free of a medulla.

Soft, without itching

What makes a fabric itch on the skin is not the hand, but the scale layer of the fibre. In yak, the scale height is about 0.3 micrometres — the same value as in cashmere and less than half that of merino wool at 0.7 to 0.9 micrometres. The scales also lie flat against the hair shaft.

We do not claim that yak is softer than cashmere. In a comparative test on technically identical fabrics, cashmere felt the softest, and fine cashmere is below it in fibre diameter. Yak is soft enough not to itch at the neck — and in return brings properties that cashmere does not have.

Robust and long-lasting

In a comparison of three fine animal hairs — yak, cashmere and camel hair — yak had the highest strength. Because the scales lie flat, the fibre is slow to felt; a fabric of yak undercoat tolerates washing better than one whose fibres catch on each other easily. Brown, naturally pigmented fibres felt even less than white ones.

One note belongs here: yak fibre is more sensitive to acids and alkalis than cashmere. A mild wool detergent is therefore not a recommendation for caution, but the condition.

The colour is the colour of the animal

Only about one yak in ten has white hair. Anthracite, brown and grey are not colour fashions here, but the coat itself — undyed, without a dye bath.

With cashmere it is the other way round: breeding is geared to white animals, because white undercoat takes the purest colours. Yak fibre can be bleached, but it costs hand and fibre strength. We do not bleach.

Animal welfare and pasture

Combing takes place when the animal is losing the undercoat anyway. Without harvesting, it is lost in early summer.

Yak keeping in the highlands is extensive pastoralism, without supplementary feed in summer. A grazing trial showed that it is possible at about one animal per hectare without discernible damage to the turf; at this density, the gain per hectare still reached 88 per cent of the value of denser grazing. We have no separate assessment of the condition of the high pastures in Manang and Upper Mustang. We therefore do not claim that our fibre comes from unstressed pastures, but say what has been measured.

There is a widespread story we do not pass on: that cashmere goats tear the turf out by the roots and yaks do not. No evidence for this claim could be found in the specialist literature.

Two small everyday things

Under the same conditions, yak undercoat builds up less static than cashmere. And it contains only 1.7 to 2.7 per cent wool grease, where sheep wool brings considerably more — preparation accordingly takes less.

A young fibre

For centuries, it was the coarse guard hair of the yak that was processed: tent cloth, ropes, mats, sacks. The fine undercoat has only been a textile fibre since the 1970s. There is no world production figure for yak fibre — the FAO notes that it is not produced in commercial quantities. Of cashmere, 15,000 to 20,000 tonnes of raw fibre are harvested each year.

Whom your purchase helps

Yak keeping in Nepal is transhumant pastoralism: on high pastures in summer, in sheltered valleys in winter. Eighteen alpine districts practise it. The population has fallen from around 200,000 animals in 1961 to about 48,000, kept by fewer than ten thousand households; the reasons given are the migration of young people, changing rainfall, pastures that have become smaller and lost access to pastures across the border.

What remains after deduction of all selling costs contributes substantially to the work of Namaste Kids e. V.

What is in this scarf

• 100% pure yak undercoat
• Fibre diameter 16 to 19 µm, the range of fine yak undercoat
• Fibre length 30 to 45 mm
• 10 ply — ten threads twisted together
• 10 to 12 gauge
• Woven by hand
• Undercoat from the high pastures of Manang and Upper Mustang

We give fibre diameter and fibre length as the range within which tested fine yak undercoat lies. We cannot give a single value for this piece, and we do not invent one.

The short answer

Cashmere is finer and softer at first touch. Yak is more resilient, undyed and rarer. Both keep you warm, both are woven by hand in the same manufactory, and with both, what remains after deduction of selling costs supports the same work. The difference lies not in the quality, but in the purpose.

Choose yak if …

• … the scarf is to be worn and washed a lot. The fibre is slow to felt and had the highest strength in a comparison of three fine animal hairs.
• … you would like a colour that comes from the animal and not from the dye bath. Anthracite, brown and grey are undyed.
• … it is to be a strong, substantial scarf. These pieces are densely woven and not translucent.
• … you have already noticed static with cashmere. Yak builds up less static.
• … you would like something that not everyone wears. There is no world production figure for yak fibre; the FAO notes that it is not produced in commercial quantities.

Choose cashmere if …

• … the softest possible hand matters most to you. In the comparative test, cashmere was the softest, and good cashmere is below yak in fibre diameter.
• … you are looking for a light or clear colour — pink, light blue, cream, pure white. With yak, light shades could only be had by bleaching, and that costs hand and strength.
• … the scarf is to be light, fit in a handbag and not be too warm in summer. That is what our single-thread cashmere wraps are for.
• … you would like a particularly fine, open weave. Cashmere can be spun into finer yarns than yak.

What applies to both

Both fibres are obtained by the same method: in spring, during the natural moult, with a comb. The industry standard for cashmere expressly requires combing. With yak, shearing is also carried out to harvest the coarse guard hair. There is no method that asks more of one animal than of the other — anyone who claims an animal welfare advantage for yak is claiming more than can be shown.

Where the limits of our knowledge lie

There is no series of measurements comparing yak and cashmere for thermal performance at the same weight. Nor is there one comparing pilling and shape retention in the finished piece.

Anyone who tells you that yak is thirty or forty per cent warmer than cashmere or merino is passing on a manufacturer's claim, not a measurement. We do not do that. And the widespread explanation that the yak fibre is hollow and therefore traps more air does not apply to the undercoat: it is precisely the undercoat that is free of a medulla; the medulla is in the coarse hair, which we separate out.