What is mohair? Why is it so expensive?

Nothing is more suitable for autumn than a furry and warm sweater. With Double Eleven coming, it’s time to add an autumn outfit to your wardrobe.

But if you compare carefully, you will find that the price of sweaters of the same brand with similar styles and patterns can differ by about 500 yuan. Among them, mohair sweaters have emerged as a new force, with prices far exceeding those of wool and even approaching the high price of cashmere.

In recent years, more and more fashion and fast-moving consumer brands tend to launch mohair products as their main autumn and winter products. What is mohair, why is it favored by the mainstream market, and most importantly, why is mohair so expensive?

The price of a mohair sweater in a brand's official store

What is Mohair?

Mohair, when you see this word, do you think of horses or seahorses?

In fact, mohair has nothing to do with these. Mohair is a kind of wool, referring to the coat of Angora goats, also known as Angora goat wool. Mohair is a transliteration of the Arabic word "Mohair", which is named after the Turkish word "MUKHYAR", which means "the best wool".

As one of the most advanced animal textile fibers in the world, mohair is a precious natural fabric second only to cashmere.

This is mainly because Angora goats cannot be raised in captivity and cannot be grazed on grasslands. They can only live in alpine shrub areas and require 20 times the area for growth as ordinary sheep.

In addition to the harsh living environment, only the wool produced by Angora goats under 8 years old meets textile standards. Therefore, the annual global production of mohair does not exceed 26,000 tons.

The appearance of mohair is similar to sheep wool. The fiber surface is smooth and has a natural, silk-like luster. It has good resilience and wear resistance, is not easy to pilling, and is easy to clean and wash.

Moreover, mohair has a good affinity for dyes, because it is more sensitive to chemicals than ordinary wool, and can obtain brighter colors after dyeing. In production, mohair is mainly used in blended or pure spinning technology to make various men's and women's clothing, blankets and decorative fabrics.

History and spread of mohair

Angora goats originated in the Himalayas and settled in Ankara, Turkey about 5,000 years ago as nomadic herders migrated. It is now generally believed that the history of mohair being widely used in textiles began from this time.

Because Ankara was formerly known as Angola, the goats that were domesticated in the natural environment here were named Angora goats. Mohair, as a precious textile raw material, became the only choice for the elite class.

Following the footsteps of the Turks, Angora goats arrived in Port Elizabeth south of the Sahara Desert in 1838; in 1849, Angora goats entered Texas, USA.

It is worth mentioning that around 1554, the Roman Emperor tried to introduce Angora goats to Europe, but was unsuccessful.

But it doesn’t matter. The goat, the representative of the farming era, did not leave its footprints on the map of Europe. The product of the industrial era, mohair products, started from Yorkshire, England, and went to Russia, Germany, Austria and other places, until they became popular throughout Europe.

Mohair spreading route map

Mohair and Fashion

Nowadays, more and more fast fashion brands tend to launch mohair products, mainly because mohair can present good color effects.

In addition, mohair is light and fluffy, and it hangs naturally, soft and plump, so mohair products have a fluffy and soft cloud-like shape that cannot be replicated.

However, due to the price of mohair, most merchants choose to blend mohair with silk and acrylic to produce products that combine the excellent characteristics of other fabrics.

Inevitably, the popularity of mohair has also led to uneven product quality on the market. Some merchants call fluffy acrylic bulked yarn "mohair" for sale, but such acrylic bulked yarn can only be called "imitation mohair" at best.

Conclusion

As one of the oldest animal fibers, mohair was recorded in the Bible as early as the time of Moses 3,500 years ago.

The Book of Exodus mentioned that the veils and curtains covering the altars in Jewish chapels were made of pure seahorse wool. Just as the Red Sea was split apart by miracle and the Jews walked out of Egypt, mohair walked down from the mountains and hills, into the Topkapi Palace, to Port Elizabeth and Texas... along with the spindle of the Industrial Revolution, it became a piece of wool product in the wardrobe of Europeans.

Today, mohair can be seen on high-end catwalks at Paris Fashion Week and in your and my shopping carts.

With the advancement of technology and the improvement of living standards, mohair is still precious but not so out of reach - rather than "the best wool", when people buy mohair products, they mostly regard it as a product with good warmth retention and soft touch.

END

Author: Wang Yongfei, School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing

Editor: Guru