The Word That Remembers the Comb: What Pashmina Really Means

Before it was a shawl, a fashion word or a line on a swing tag, pashmina was simply a description. In Persian it means "woollen", or more exactly, "made of pashm". And pashm, if you follow it far enough back, turns out to be a word about combing.

That is a rather good summary of what makes a Kashmiri pashmina what it is. So this time, instead of starting with the goat or the loom, I want to start with the words, because each one we use for this cloth carries a little of its story.

Sozni paisleys on ivory pashmina. Every thread beneath the needlework began as combed down.

Pashm: the down beneath the coat

In Persian, pashm means wool, and in particular the soft down that grows close to an animal's skin. Add the ending -īn, which turns a material into a description, much as "golden" comes from gold, and you have pashmīna: woollen, made of the down.

Persian was the language of Kashmir's courts and scribes for centuries, so it is no surprise that the valley's most famous cloth was named in it. By the nineteenth century the word had crossed into English, where it was used for the finest of the Kashmir shawls.

Linguists trace pashm back further still, to a very old root meaning to comb or pluck wool and hair. The same root gives Latin pectere, to comb, and Greek pekein, to comb or shear. The word for the finest down in the world and the word for a comb are, quite literally, relatives.

Combed, never sheared

The language remembers something the craft has never forgotten. Pashmina is not cut from the goat. It is the winter undercoat of the Changthangi goat of Ladakh's high plateau, and each spring, as the animal begins to shed it, the down is combed out by hand.

It reaches Kashmir as a soft cloud still tangled with coarse outer hair, and there it is combed again, a pinch at a time, until every guard hair is gone. Only then can it be spun.

Combing the down by hand in Kashmir, a pinch at a time.

If you would like to see what happens next, I have written about how the down is spun on the yinder and woven on a handloom.

Shawl, cashmere and paisley: words Kashmir gave away

Pashmina is not the only word this craft lent to English. "Shawl" itself comes from the Persian shāl. "Cashmere" is nothing more than an old English spelling of Kashmir: when these shawls reached Europe and became the wrap every fashionable woman wanted, the cloth was simply called by the name of the valley it came from.

And the curling teardrop that Kashmiri embroiderers call the buta? Europe knows it as paisley, after the Scottish mill town that copied the Kashmir shawl so successfully that its name stuck to the motif.

The buta, stitched in ivory Sozni on indigo blue pashmina. Europe renamed it paisley.

Over time, "cashmere" came loose from the place altogether. Today most of the world's cashmere comes from goats in Mongolia and China, and has never been anywhere near Kashmir.

Kashmiri pashmina and Mongolian cashmere

This is the question we are asked most often, so it is worth being fair about it. Mongolian cashmere is good fibre. It too is combed from goats in spring after a hard winter, and studies of Mongolian herds put its average fineness at around 16 microns, with the best lots finer still. A good Mongolian cashmere jumper is a lovely thing.

The difference is not that one is real and the other is not. It lies in three places.

• The fibre. Kashmir Pashmina, protected as a Geographical Indication in India, must be made from down finer than 16 microns, from the Changthangi goats of the Ladakh plateau.
• What happens after the comb. Most cashmere is scoured and dehaired by machine, spun on industrial frames, then knitted or power-loomed. Kashmir Pashmina is hand-spun and handwoven; the GI requires it.
• The cloth. A skilled spinner can draw the down finer than a machine usually manages, and a gentle handloom keeps that fineness intact. The result is warm, yet so light it barely registers on the shoulders.

You can see it in a black Kani pashmina with a multicolour floral jaal, where every flower is woven into the cloth on the loom, thread by thread, rather than printed or stitched on afterwards.

Kani florals woven into black pashmina: the pattern is the cloth.

How to read the word on a label

Because the words have drifted, a label can tell you less than it seems to.

• "Cashmere" tells you the fibre is goat down. It tells you nothing about where it came from or how it was made.
• "Pashmina" on its own is used very loosely in UK shops, often for wraps that contain no goat down at all.
• "Kashmir Pashmina", hand-spun and handwoven, is the cloth the word was coined for. The surest guide is a seller who can tell you exactly where a piece came from and how it was made.

If you would like to go deeper into the fibre itself, our note on Aari, the finest grade of Kashmiri down, explains why it comes from one place only.

A word worth keeping

When you say pashmina, you are using a word that has carried the memory of the comb through several languages and a few thousand years. We think the cloth should live up to it.

Every shawl at Miraas is authentic Kashmiri pashmina from artisans in Srinagar, embroidered in Sozni or woven as Kani, and each piece exists once. A grey pashmina with an all-over gold and rose Sozni jaal, or an ivory shawl scattered with rust red paisleys, is here now and will not be made again in quite the same way.

Browse the full collection, and if a piece catches your eye, message us on WhatsApp from its page or write to info@miraaskashmir.com. We are always happy to talk about where a shawl came from.

Questions we are often asked

What does pashmina mean?

Pashmina comes from the Persian pashmīna, "woollen" or "made of pashm", the soft down of the goat. Pashm itself goes back to an ancient root meaning to comb or pluck.

Is pashmina the same as cashmere?

Both are goat down, and "cashmere" is simply an old spelling of Kashmir. In practice, cashmere now covers fibre from many countries, mostly Mongolia and China, while Kashmir Pashmina means the finest Ladakhi down, hand-spun and handwoven in Kashmir.

Is Mongolian cashmere the same as pashmina?

Mongolian cashmere is a good, combed fibre, usually processed by machine into knitwear. It is not Kashmir Pashmina, which is defined by its very fine Ladakhi down and by being spun and woven by hand in Kashmir.