Kreacher wrote:
^ Ooh, nice! Nothing feels as nice as cashmere. What color?
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Bit off topic, but re: the bit I bolded, I tried on a couple of vicuna items in Dunhill last year. I was pretty sceptical - the eternal buzz is that vicuna is softer than even the finest cashmere and the finest fabric you can get at about 10 microns roughly* - but it really does have a genuinely wonderful hand to it.
Of course, then I looked at the price tags and put them back on the rack. There's a reason the shop assistant in Sunset Boulevard only recommends taking the vicuna if the lady is paying! Genuinely high quality cashmere (rather than the coarser stuff) from a top Scottish or Italian mill is still only a mere fraction of the price of vicuna... I think the vicuna overcoat I tried on was something around £20-30k and the jacket in the region of £10-15k (can't remember exact figures). Of course, at this level, cost comparisons become inexact/non-meaningful because normal price elasticity curves don't apply, but still, vicuna is genuinely rare and I think Loro Piana have something of a lock on its milling because they cut a deal with the Peruvian Government re: sourcing the rare wool, which helps keep prices high. Talking of LP, I was sorely tempted to buy a vicuna scarf from them a while back before sense returned. One day, I would like to have more money than sense.
(*allegedly, IIRC shatoosh is even finer but its trade is highly illegal so I've no experience as to whether that's true)