On Monday, we announced our partnership with Reverso for regenerated yarns. Today, we want to tell you about something that usually remains behind the scenes: how, concretely, you go from a cashmere sweater that someone has discarded to a yarn ready to become a new Lanaioli garment. Because “circular fashion” is an expression we hear often, but it is rarely explained step by step.
It is not a by-product: it is real cashmere, twice over
Before getting into the process, it is worth clarifying a common misconception. Regenerated cashmere is not a processing waste product nor a lower-quality fiber mixed with something else to reduce costs: it is authentic cashmere, from finished garments, which is recovered instead of ending up in a landfill or being incinerated. The difference compared with virgin cashmere is not in the nature of the fiber, but in its history.
The journey from discarded sweater to yarn
The process begins with collection: cashmere garments that are damaged, torn or too worn to be worn any longer, which consumers would otherwise throw away. From there, a sequence of precise stages begins.
1. Manual sorting. Each garment is inspected by hand to remove impurities and discard anything that is not 100% pure cashmere: buttons, zippers and parts made from other fibers. At this stage, the garments are also sorted by color, a step that often makes it possible to avoid dyeing them again, further reducing the environmental impact of the process.
2. Unraveling. The selected garments are mechanically unraveled, meaning they are reduced to small pieces that return the cashmere to its raw-fiber state, ready to be treated again as a raw material.
3. Carding. The resulting fibers are carded through a process similar to the one used for virgin cashmere obtained from the undercoat of the Hircus goat: carding untangles and aligns the fibers, preparing them for spinning.
4. Twisting and spinning. The regenerated fibers are finally strengthened through twisting and transformed into regenerated cashmere yarn ready for textile production. Because the unraveling process inevitably shortens the fibers compared with virgin cashmere, regenerated yarns are often reinforced by blending them with a small percentage of virgin cashmere, ensuring the strength and quality of the final yarn without giving up the environmental benefits of recovery.
Why it matters to us beyond the environmental aspect
The environmental benefit of this process — which we will explain with figures in Friday’s article — is only part of the story. The other part is that regenerated cashmere allows us to offer garments made from a fine, warm and soft fiber without having to draw each time on new virgin raw material, whose production (from raising Hircus goats to processing) remains resource-intensive. It is the same principle that guides us in our short supply chain project for merino wool, applied to a different fiber: making better use of what already exists before taking something new from the environment.
A process you can see, not just hear about
We chose to tell you about every stage of this process instead of simply writing “regenerated cashmere” on a label, for the same reason we tell you about the supply chain behind our merino wool step by step: we believe that truly knowing how a yarn is made changes the way you choose and then wear a garment.
We’ll see you on Friday for the final chapter of this week dedicated to Reverso: the real figures on environmental savings, and why the problem of textile waste concerns not only those who produce it, but also those who, on the other side of the world, find themselves having to dispose of it.
