About
Born in Mongolia, where the world’s finest cashmere has been made by hand for generations.
How we began
Cashmere Paw started with one dog and one bad sweater. Mongolia runs to −30°C, and the acrylic thing we had bought was pilling within a fortnight while doing very little for him. Meanwhile the fibre our own families have relied on for generations was being combed a few hundred kilometres away.
It seemed obvious once we said it out loud: make for dogs what we already make for people, to the same standard, from the same fibre.
One fibre, no blends
Everything we sell is 100% Mongolian cashmere. Not a blend, not cashmere-touch, not wool with a percentage of cashmere in it. Cashmere is warmer than sheep's wool at a fraction of the weight, which matters more on a small animal than on a person — a coat heavy enough to change how a dog moves is a coat the dog will fight you over.
Who makes it
The raw fibre is combed by herder families in the Gobi in spring, when the goats shed naturally. It is washed, de-haired and spun in Ulaanbaatar, and knitted by a small workshop there whose people have worked with cashmere for their whole careers. Often a fleece passes through a single pair of hands from start to finish. We pay them properly and we buy at a price the herders can live on. That is most of why our pieces cost what they do.
Cashmere Paw was founded by a woman, and most of our team are still women — among them retired elders and mothers raising families on their own. We have been working this way since 2003, toward one shared goal: to give the world cashmere of genuine Mongolian quality.
Why the fibre is this fine
Mongolia supplies roughly a fifth to a third of the world's raw cashmere, and the fibre is measured at 15.6 to 17.9 microns across the country's goat populations — the fine end of the global range, where a lower micron count means a softer handle. The reason is the climate the goats live in: sustained cold below −30°C drives a finer, denser undercoat than milder places produce. The cold that makes Mongolia hard to live in is the same cold that makes the fibre worth having.
A layer for cool air, all year
Most of what we make is knitted light, and that is deliberate. A small, thin-coated dog starts to feel the cold at around 7°C and loses heat faster than it can make it — but in Australia the cold that matters is rarely the outdoor kind. It is the air-conditioned house in February, the walk before the heat arrives, the car, the vet's waiting room, and the fortnight after a clip when a dog has lost the coat it was relying on.
Cashmere works in a warm climate for a reason a synthetic layer does not: it breathes, and it moves moisture vapour away instead of holding it against the skin. That is what makes a light layer wearable indoors in summer rather than stifling. What it is not is a garment for the heat of the afternoon — outdoors on a hot day, it comes off, and a heavy coat built for −30°C would be the wrong thing entirely.
Made to last several dogs
Cashmere rewards care. Hand washed and dried flat, a sweater will outlive a lot of what hangs in your own wardrobe. We would rather sell you one piece that lasts than four that do not — read the FAQ for how to look after it.