Cashmere in the Mud

During the NY design days of my youth I did what I had to do to not get fired. Once, I was a Goat Dipper. Someone had the bright idea of using actual dyed cashmere goats in a photo shoot for the sweaters we were producing. The idea was to show how well cashmere takes to dye. Yet no one thought to ask if this were true when the cashmere is still attached to the goats, who would also be wearing a fair amount of barnyard grime. At Red House, we source our cashmere from the mountains of Tibet, Mongolia and China because I know that the higher the altitude the better the quality. The NY “design house” (and I use that term loosely) got their cheap and scratchy cashmere from the lowlands of rural Canada.

The shoot was in May, in what must have been a banner year for mud. It was a slogging plague of biblical proportions. The kind of mud that sucks the boots off your feet and sets them next to the gates of hell. The crew lost – literally lost- some of the camera equipment. Satan himself may be using it now. I herded a small army of pygmy-size goats through the muck and dipped them in tubs of an eco-friendly dye solution, thinking they would enjoy the warm bath. Uh, no. Can you tell I’m from New York? Hello! They shook. They kicked. And guess who ended up wearing the most dye? On the plane trip home I looked like I’d gone a few rounds with the Teletubbies. This was when Michael and I were dating and I actually hid out in my apartment for days after I got home – scrubbing. If he had seen me he would have bolted. But I’d still have this story to entertain me in my solitude. Maddie, The Goat Whisperer.

History has taught me that a great product doesn’t need a lot of gimmicks to promote it. Our lavish quality Red House cashmere is woven to exacting standards, and each sweater, pashima or scarf is piece-dyed (not goat-dyed!) for truest colors.