What it is
Cariaggi sources fine cashmere from Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, selecting fibres for fineness, length, colour, and quality before they arrive in Italy. What happens next in-house has earned it a prestigious reputation and global respect. In the wrong hands, without the necessary expertise, cashmere can be extraordinarily soft in its raw state and turned into unremarkable yarn afterward. Sorting, dyeing, blending, carding, combing, spinning, and twisting all help determine how much of the original fibre's character survives and how the yarn turns out.
Cariaggi has spent more than six decades building their expertise surrounding cashmere. The mill works in both carded and combed spinning, allowing it to produce two different expressions of this noble fibre. The difference between the two is very interesting, but more often than not is lost completely on people, even the ones who work inside the luxury sector and think they know what good cashmere feels like, looks like, and why high price points are justified.
Carded cashmere retains more air and volume during spinning. It produces the soft bloom, loft, and subtle mélange effects - where different coloured fibres are mixed together before spinning - associated with a lot of luxury knitwear. Combed yarn aligns the fibres more precisely. It creates a cleaner, finer, and smoother yarn that can produce remarkably lightweight knitwear that feels like a second skin.
Colour, and the vast array Cariaggi can boast within its portfolio, especially over the years as older ones are retired and new ones incepted, is another one of its particular strengths. For its carded yarns, fibres can be dyed before spinning to create different colours blended together. For custom colours requested by clients, Cariaggi can colour-match almost anything they are given as a target. The process builds incredibly nuanced mélange shades rather than simply applying a single colour to an already constructed yarn. This is one reason Cariaggi colour cards have become such an important tool for luxury knitwear designers and are frequently requested or used by specific Cariaggi colour name: the colour is unique, effectively constructed inside the yarn.
