With the cold winter days here, it’s time to buy elegant new stoles and shawls. While there are varieties and you can pick your choicest ones, do you know how best to care for your expensive shawls. How well do you know your shawls? Follow some tips on how to identify the pure from fake and how to care for your favourite Pashmina shawls or scarves.
Produced in Kashmir, Pashmina shawls are much sought after for their fine and imperial weave of pure cashmere wool. Its texture is thin, fine and soft, yet provides warmth. Wrapping yourself with Pashmina shawls can tell you how warm it can keep you.
Thick layers of warm clothes in winters can make you look sloppy and slumpy. So, this winter go for gorgeous and elegant Pashmina shawls or stoles that will keep you warm and make you look sophisticated and fashionable as well.
These days, Pashmina shawls come in two types: hand-woven and machine made, in fine colours and beautiful patterns that complement both traditional and contemporary look. Now that you have set out to buy one, there are few things one must keep in mind while identifying pure Pashmina.
How to identify pure Pashmina shawls
Pure Pashmina shawls come with loose ends rather than knotted because they are traditionally loomed by hand and not by machine. Both ends are in single colour as they are not blended from two or more yarns.
A 100 per cent pure Pashmina shawl is lighter, softer and more luxurious than the silk blended ones. However, some people prefer Pashmina blended with silk as it has the warmth of Pashmina and durability of silk relatively at a lower price.
Once you have bought them, the question comes, how to care for them.
How to maintain Pashmina shawls
Dry clean them if possible
Wash them gently in a wool-friendly detergent
Dry them in open air by spreading them on a flat surface
Although the colours are natural, make sure that none of them bleeds on washing
These exquisite Pashmina shawls, whether plain or embroidered, are quite expensive, but they are worth buying as you can wrap yourself warm, easy and nice with it. It can also be worn with both ethnic and Western outfits.