A complete guide to cashmere and wool care — why you should wash rather than dry-clean, how to defeat pilling, and the cold rest that doubles a sweater's life.
Cashmere is the most misunderstood fibre in a luxury wardrobe. People treat it as fragile and so they barely touch it, sending it to the dry cleaner twice a season and folding it away in terror. In truth cashmere is robust — it comes from goats that survive a Himalayan winter — and the surest way to ruin it is to handle it too little and too anxiously. It wants to be worn, washed and rested, in that order.
Wash it; do not dry-clean it
The solvents used in dry cleaning strip cashmere of its natural lanolin — the oil that makes the fibre soft and keeps it supple. A sweater dry-cleaned repeatedly grows drier and scratchier with every visit. Hand-washing does the opposite: it cleans the wool while leaving its character intact. Use cool water and a wool-specific or pH-neutral wash, submerge the sweater, and press it gently under the water for a few minutes. Never agitate, wring or rub — friction and warm water together are what felt wool into a stiff, shrunken board.
- Cool water only. Heat is the single most common cause of a shrunken sweater.
- Lift the wet sweater out supported underneath with both hands — its waterlogged weight will stretch the shoulders if you hold it by one part.
- Press the water out in a clean towel. Never hang knitwear to dry; the weight of the water drags it out of shape.
- Dry flat, reshaped by hand to its original measurements, away from sun and any heat source.
Pilling is not a flaw
Those small bobbles on the surface are not a sign of poor quality — they are the shorter fibres working loose with friction, and even the finest cashmere pills in the first weeks of wear at the points of contact: under the arms, at the cuffs, where a bag strap crosses. Do not pick at them with your fingers, which pulls live yarn from the knit. Use a cashmere comb or a battery sweater shaver, laying the garment flat and working in one direction. After the first season, pilling slows dramatically as the loose fibres are exhausted.
“A sweater is not finished when you buy it. It finishes itself over the first winter — the surface settles, the pilling passes, and what is left is the true fabric. That version is the one you keep.”
Yaya, Founder & Creative Director
The cold rest
The most overlooked piece of knitwear care costs nothing. Never wear the same sweater two days running. Wool fibres are elastic, but they recover their shape and loft only when given time to rest — usually a full day between wears. A sweater worn day after day stretches and thins at the elbows and never bounces back. Rotating between several pieces, each rested, is why a small collection of good knitwear outlasts a drawer crammed with cheap ones.
Folding, never hanging
Knitwear must always be folded and shelved, never hung. A hanger concentrates the weight of the whole garment on the shoulders and within weeks pulls two permanent points into the knit. Fold sweaters along the same lines each time, store them in the dark with cedar against moths, and refold occasionally so no crease becomes set. Cared for this way — washed, rested, folded, defended from moths — a single beautiful sweater will warm you for ten winters and look, each year, a little more like it belongs to you.
