How to Inspect a Cashmere Sweater: 6-Point Checklist

The inspection checklist

The label

Composition is the one hard fact a listing photograph can give you. '100% cashmere' is a regulated claim; 'baby cashmere', 'royal' and 'grade A' are not, and no garment label carries a micron figure you can hold anyone to. Judge fineness by the hand of the cloth and by what the house is known for.

Underarms

This is where a sweater dies first, and where sellers rarely photograph. Look for grinning at the seam, where the stitching has pulled apart far enough to show the join, and for the thin translucent patch that forms where an arm rubs. A repairer can close a seam; nobody can put back yarn that has gone.

Cuffs

Ribbing that no longer springs back has lost its recovery, and washing returns only a little of it. Pilling along the same edge is a separate matter and comes off with a comb, so do not read the two as one fault. Ask the seller for the cuff photographed flat rather than on a wrist.

Body density

Gauge describes how fine the knit is, not how good it is. Ply is the more useful number: two strands twisted together hold shape better than one at the same weight, and a single-ply sweater will go thin sooner. Hold the body up to a window, and the less light that comes through, the more yarn you are buying.

Hem rib

The hem decides how the sweater sits. A rib gone slack lets the body ride up and flare at the waist, which reads as a fit problem long before it reads as damage. It is the more livable of the two rib faults, since a hem spends most of its life under a jacket.

Pilling

Pilling is friction, not decay: short fibres work loose from the yarn and tangle at the surface. A cashmere comb or a battery shaver clears it in a few minutes. What neither can do is restore knit that has already thinned, so part the pills and check what is underneath them.

What this means in practice

The secondhand market prices cosmetic flaws harshly and structural ones barely at all. Pilling photographs badly, so a pilled sweater from a serious house takes a steep discount for a problem that half an hour with a comb ends.

A stretched cuff or a worn underarm photographs as almost nothing and is the fault that cannot be undone. Buy the first at the discount. Walk away from the second whatever it costs.

The rule

Pilling is surface. Loss of recovery and thinning are structure. One is a discount worth taking; the other is a sweater with a fixed number of wearings left in it.

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