Sustainability

Honest about what we do, and what we don’t.

Most cashmere sustainability pages are full of words that sound good and mean little. This one tries something else: a short essay on what we can prove, paired with a transparent ledger of the certifications and programmes we are not yet part of.

Combed cashmere fibre released into the Mongolian steppe wind

Combed-not-sheared. Released by hand at the source.

Our position

Three commitments and a balance sheet.

Sustainability in cashmere is most useful when it is specific. The page that follows reads in two halves. First, the three things we actually do every day, in plain prose, with the documentary trail to back each of them. Then a two-column ledger that sets what we can verify alongside the certifications and programmes we are not yet part of — so the partner reading it can decide what matters to their own account, with no surprises later.

What we do

Three commitments, each verifiable.

Each of the three sections below has a documentary trail. Ask for it.

The Fibre

Combed, not shorn.

Our cashmere is hand-combed from the goats’ undercoat each spring, the way it has been done for centuries on the Mongolian steppe. Combing yields the longest, finest fibres — and a calmer animal — because it works with the goat’s natural shedding cycle rather than against it. We do not shear, we do not extract by machine, and we do not rush the season to meet a delivery deadline.

The fibre we work with at the mill is fibre our partners recognise by hand-feel before they read the spec sheet. That hand-feel is not an accident; it is what happens when an industry resists the temptation to industrialise its first step.

Documented per herder relationship; combing-season records held on file.

The Mill

One roof, no agents.

Combing, sorting, spinning, dyeing, knitting, finishing — the entire production sequence happens under one roof in Ulaanbaatar. Vertical integration is not a marketing word for us; it removes the freight emissions of moving fibre between sites, the markup that an intermediary trading house would add, and the chain-of-custody guesswork that comes with multi-stage subcontracting.

Every garment that leaves the mill carries the same QC sign-off, from the same teams, against the same standard. The teams who handed us our first piece in 2008 still run the floor today, training the next generation on the same machines.

Single-site production verified on every traceability document we issue.

The Box

FSC-certified packaging.

Tissue paper, garment boxes, hangtags, outer cartons — every paper-based packaging component we use comes from FSC-certified suppliers as standard. There is no premium tier, no separate request to make, no upcharge for partners who care about responsible forestry.

The certification is not the most ambitious thing a packaging programme could do, but it is the most baseline thing it can be — and we treat it as the floor, not the ceiling. Custom-printed labels, recyclable hangtag formats, and reduced-plastic outer wrap are available on partner request.

FSC chain-of-custody certificates available per shipment, on request.

A balance sheet

What we can verify, and what we can’t — yet.

We list both sides. The right column is not failure — it is intent. We will move items across when we have earned them, not before.

Verifiable today

We can show you.

Six things sit on this side. Hand-combed Mongolian cashmere, herder-verified per season. Single-site production from raw fibre to finished garment in one building in Ulaanbaatar. MNS 6926:2021 — the Mongolian national standard for cashmere fibre quality — awarded after a full-floor audit in 2023. FSC-certified packaging across every shipment, with no upcharge or eco-tier. And batch-level traceability documentation held for every order, available to any trade partner on request, both for their own compliance reporting and for the simple question of where a particular garment actually came from.

Not yet certified for

We are not pretending.

B Corp status, Good Cashmere Standard membership, Sustainable Fibre Alliance accreditation, GOTS certification, Scope 3 carbon reporting, a take-back or repair programme — none of these sit on our certificate wall yet. We could pursue any of them, and over time we expect some to move across to the column on the left. We list them here because the alternative is to stay quiet, hope nobody asks, and call ourselves sustainable on the strength of what is comfortable to mention. We would rather lose the account than the trust.

When any item moves across columns, this page updates the same week. No quiet edits.

Specifics on request.

For traceability documentation, certification copies, or detailed sourcing records on any line, contact our trade team.