Types of Cashmere: Quality, Softness, Durability, and Use

There is a particular quiet to good cashmere. You feel it before you can name it: the weightlessness across the shoulders, the warmth that arrives without bulk, the way a piece seems to soften the longer it lives in your wardrobe.

Not every piece labeled cashmere holds that same feeling. The different types of cashmere vary in grade, origin, and the way the yarn is spun, and those quiet differences are what separate a garment kept for a season from one kept for years.

What follows is less a lesson in specifications than a way of seeing the fiber clearly. Once you understand what gives cashmere its character, the right piece becomes easier to recognize, and easier to keep. You can browse our cashmere collection to see where these standards begin.

What Defines the Quality of Cashmere?

Quality in cashmere is something you notice with your hands long before you read it on a label. The softest pieces feel almost weightless, warm without heaviness, and they hold that quality season after season.

Two things quietly decide this: how fine the fibers are, and how long they run. The finest measure under 15 microns, finer than a strand of human hair, which is what gives the best knits their lightness against the skin.

Length matters just as much, if less visibly. Longer fibers hold together as the yarn is spun, so a well-made piece stays smooth and tends to soften with age. It is the difference between a garment that wears in and one that simply wears out.

Cashmere Grades Explained: Grade A, Grade B, and Grade C

Most cashmere is sorted into three grades, A, B, and C. These cashmere quality grades are a quiet shorthand for how fine and how long the fibers are, and knowing the grades of cashmere is the simplest way to understand what you are holding.

Grade A Cashmere

Grade A cashmere is the finest of the three. Its fibers are the thinnest and the longest, somewhere around 14 to 16 microns, and that combination is what you feel as softness, drape, and a knit that keeps its shape.

This is the grade we reach for in pieces meant to last, the kind found in our women's cashmere sweaters. It is cashmere chosen for how it will feel years from now, not only on the first wear.

Grade B Cashmere

Grade B is a step coarser, its fibers a little thicker at roughly 19 to 22 microns. It is still recognizably cashmere and still warm, which is why it sits comfortably in everyday pieces. The difference shows in fineness more than in feel.

Grade C Cashmere

Grade C has the thickest fibers, from around 22 to 30 microns. It is the most common in blends, often spun with merino, silk, or cotton, where the goal is durability and a gentler price rather than the softest possible hand.

Mongolian Cashmere vs Cashmere from Other Regions

Where cashmere comes from shapes how it feels, more than most people expect. A goat raised on the Mongolian plateau, through long winters and sharp swings in temperature, grows a finer and denser undercoat than one raised somewhere milder. The climate does the first part of the work.

This is the fiber we know best. Our own journey began in Mongolia, where we partner with herders whose families have worked with cashmere for generations. The region's hard winters are part of why Mongolian cashmere has become a quiet benchmark: lighter in the hand, warm out of proportion to its weight, and built to last.

The same standard runs through our men's cashmere sweaters, chosen for how they age rather than how they sell.

If you would like to understand how the fiber is assessed before a single thread is spun, our all about cashmere guide follows the journey from herder to finished knit.

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Beyond the Grade: Yarn Ply and Knit Gauge

Two pieces can share the same grade and still feel like different things entirely. How the yarn is spun, and how tightly it is knit, decides much of a garment's weight and character. Two quiet terms explain most of it: ply and gauge.

Yarn Ply

Ply is simply how many threads are twisted together into one yarn. Two-ply is the steady standard for cashmere sweaters, balanced between structure and softness. A single ply feels lighter and finer, while heavier plies belong to thicker winter pieces and pieces made for the home.

Knit Gauge: 7-Gauge vs 12-Gauge

Gauge describes how tightly the piece is knit. A finer 12-gauge knit gives a smooth, light surface that layers easily through most of the year. A 7-gauge knit, looser and chunkier, holds more warmth for the coldest months.

Neither is better than the other. One is an everyday companion, the other a piece you reach for when the season turns. The choice is really about how you want it to live in your wardrobe.

Pure Cashmere vs Cashmere Blend Fabric

Pure cashmere is exactly that: nothing but the fiber, with all of its softness, warmth, and quiet breathability intact. It costs more, and for a simple reason. Gathering and preparing enough of the fiber for a single garment is slow, careful work that can take years.

A cashmere blend mixes the fiber with others, often merino, silk, or cotton. Blends are easier to make in quantity and gentler on the price, and depending on what they are spun with, they can hold their shape well. What they trade away is a measure of the softness and warmth that pure cashmere keeps whole.

There is a reason the pure fiber endures. It is warm well beyond its weight, naturally free of lanolin, and kind to sensitive skin, qualities that thin out the moment other fibers enter the yarn.

Frequently Asked Questions About Types of Cashmere

What Is the Most Expensive Type of Cashmere?

Baby Cashmere. It is combed by hand from goat kids in their first year, the fiber finer than 14 microns, and each animal gives very little. That rarity, more than anything, is what sets the price.

What Is the Best Grade of Cashmere?

Grade A. Its fibers are the finest and longest, around 14 to 16 microns, which is what gives it the softest feel and the cleanest drape. It is the grade chosen for pieces meant to be kept.

Is 7-Gauge or 12-Gauge Cashmere Better?

Neither, really. A 12-gauge knit is finer and lighter, easy to layer through most of the year. A 7-gauge knit is chunkier and warmer, made for deep winter. It comes down to how you want to wear it.

What Is the Softest Type of Cashmere?

Baby Cashmere, with fibers under 14 microns. Among pieces you will find more easily, Grade A Mongolian cashmere comes closest, soft, fine, and far more available.

Choosing Cashmere That Lasts

In the end, knowing the different types of cashmere is really about knowing what to value. The finest pieces tend to share the same quiet qualities: a fine, long fiber, often from Mongolia, spun and knit with care, and meant to be lived in rather than replaced.

Looked after gently, a good piece only improves, growing softer with each wearing and holding its quality for years. Our cashmere care guide covers the small habits that keep it that way.

The same standard runs through our cashmere accessories, the scarves, shawls, gloves, and beanies that carry the fiber into everyday life. Fewer pieces, chosen well, are the ones that stay.