Cashmere, wool, and cotton
Caring for your knitwear
The sweater that's best for the planet is the one already hanging in your closet, worn one more winter.
That isn't a figure of speech. According to WRAP, the British program, extending the active life of a piece by just nine months cuts its carbon, water, and waste footprints by roughly 20-30%. Nine months, not ten years.
And nine months don't come from a better material. They come from how the piece is washed, dried, and put away. That part is yours, which is why we wrote it out properly.
How long a sweater lasts is decided in the wash
Knitwear doesn't wear out on your back: it wears out in water. Washed well, it stays with you for years. Washed badly, it felts on the third wash, goes to the back of a drawer, and from there into a bag. That's where fast fashion does the real damage — not in the sweater it makes, but in the habit of treating a sweater as something seasonal.
Two rules before you even turn on the tap. Don't wear the same piece two days running: leave twenty-four hours between wearings, the fibers recover, and pilling shows up much later. And wash it less than you think: wool and cashmere hold off odors and marks on their own, and an hour laid flat in the open air usually brings a piece back. Every wash you skip is fiber that isn't stressed, water that isn't used, energy that isn't spent.
Cashmere and wool, by hand
First, the myth: cashmere does not need dry cleaning. Apart from heavily worked or embroidered pieces, it washes perfectly well at home.
A basin of lukewarm water, never hot, with very little gentle wool detergent, a neutral soap, or a few drops of baby shampoo. One piece at a time, inside out, letting it take up the water. Press gently: don't twist, don't rub, don't wring, because that is what makes it felt. Never soak longer than five minutes, or the detergent starts working against the fiber and against the color. Then rinse patiently, changing the water until it runs clear, always at the same temperature: sudden shifts are what wool really can't take.
No fabric softener. It flattens the fiber and wears the piece down over time. If you want softness, use a conditioner made for wool and cashmere, which opens the fiber out instead of crushing it.
Cashmere and wool, in the machine
Yes, you can, with four precautions. The piece goes in inside out, better still inside a mesh bag for delicates — essential for scarves and pashminas, which otherwise thrash around. Very little gentle wool detergent. The wool or delicate cycle, cold. And no spin: if your machine won't let you turn it off, keep it at the lowest setting, four hundred rpm.
Drying, where most of the mistakes happen
Lay the piece on a dry towel and roll the two up together, pressing lightly: the towel takes the excess water and you never have to wring anything.
Then open the piece out, reshape it with your hands — collar, shoulders, sleeves — and let it dry flat, away from radiators and out of direct sun.
Never the dryer. Heat and tumbling together are the recipe for felting: it is the fastest way there is to shrink a sweater two sizes.
Pressing
If you washed and dried it as above, most of the time there is nothing to press.
If there is: piece inside out, iron on low, and one of these two precautions, neither of which is optional — a burst of steam held 2" (5 cm) above the fabric, without setting the iron down, or a cotton cloth between the iron and the knit.
Let the piece cool before you fold it. Folded warm, it takes the crease and keeps it.
Pilling is not a defect
The little balls that turn up under the arms or along the sides are not a sign of poor cashmere: they are friction. The shorter fibers work loose, rub against each other, and roll up. It happens on every natural-fiber knit, and on the softest yarns — which are the finest ones — it happens sooner.
Take them off with a cashmere comb, drawn gently in the direction of the knit. Never a razor: on fine knitwear the risk of opening a hole is too high, and a hole is another matter.
Cotton
Our cotton pieces ask less of you, but they do have one trap: knitted cotton shrinks from heat, not from water.
Machine wash cold on the cotton cycle, dry on a rack — the dryer is exactly what shrinks the knit — and iron it slightly damp, which is far easier than dry.
When the season ends
Putting a piece away dirty is the surest way to find holes in it later: moths are not after the wool, they are after the traces of sweat and food left on it. So wash it, dry it properly, and only then put it away.
Fold the piece in half lengthwise, sleeves laid straight, without creasing it. Slip in a sheet of tissue paper against damp and put it in a cotton or plastic bag that isn't airtight: it has to breathe. Add a natural moth repellent — cedar balls, sachets of cinnamon and cloves, cotton wool soaked in basil and mint oil — and refresh it every two or three months.
If the damage is already done
A pulled stitch, a seam that has opened, a small moth hole: none of it means the piece is finished. Knitwear is one continuous yarn, and that is exactly what makes it fixable — a dropped stitch can be picked back up, a seam can be closed along the line it was sewn on, and a hole the size of a pea can be darned so well that you have to know where to look.
What loses a piece is the drawer. Put away with a loop hanging, it pulls further; put away with a hole, the hole grows. So look at it while it is still small: a knitwear repairer or a good tailor handles most of this kind of work. And if you aren't sure what you are looking at, write to us with a couple of photos before you put the piece away. We'll tell you plainly what the damage is, whether it's the kind that disappears or the kind that will show, and what to ask for when you take it in.
Inside every package
Inside every package we ship there is a printed folder with these same steps. It isn't the small-print warning leaflet: it is the part of the purchase that decides how long what you bought will last.
All of it is in our article How to wash cashmere as well.
100% Made in Italy
Yarn we select, knitted in our own factory in Prato. Our Factory