Sustainable Fibres: What is Camel Hair?
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Trusted Clothes
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/04/29
It’s that time again! That’s right a quick recap from part one for those that missed out on natural fibres, a crash course. What did Sustainable Fibres: What is Abaca (I) say?
Natural fibres, as opposed to synthetic or man-made fibres, have a long history, and come in many types.[i],[ii] Typically, these include animal fibres or plant fibres.[iii],[iv]
Animal fibres can be things like alpaca wool, angora wool, camel hair, cashmere, mohair, silk, and wool. Animal fibres come from hair, secretions, or wool.[v] Plant fibres can be things like abaca, coir, cotton, flax, hemp, jute, ramie, and sisal. Plant fibres are come from seed hairs, stem or bast fibres, leaf fibres, and husk fibres.[vi]
Which is helpful and a quick description on what is going on with natural fibres, what is its general division within itself – plant and animal fibres, and what even comprises, via examples, those plant and animal fibres. Great! Now, the other fun stuff. Last time we took a peak at Abaca, a plant fibre with lots of neat little uses and history.
Let’s take a look at an animal fibre this time, and this one can be Camel hair; first things first, what is it in general? According to Encyclopedia Britannica, it is as follows:
Camel hair, animal fibre obtained from the camel and belonging to the group called specialty hair fibres. The most satisfactory textile fibre is gathered from camels of the Bactrian type. Such camels have protective outer coats of coarse fibre that may grow as long as 15 inches (40 cm). The fine, shorter fibre of the insulating undercoat, 1.5–5 inches (4–13 cm) long, is the product generally called camel hair, or camel hair wool.[vii]
Bactrian type are, one can assume, a camel from Bactria.[viii] Now, with this kind of encyclopedic description, it can, or might, see a bit overwhelming in terms of the information, but there’s some basic things to pull out of it. One, the specialty animal fibres for the natural fibres, and two, its textile use. Three, the description of the size and characteristics of the hair from camels.
Who supplies it?
According to the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute (CCHMI), there’s many, many sources that supply the hair including “China, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, New Zealand, Tibet and Australia.”[ix]Those aren’t necessarily a tremendous amount of places, but an enormous land area coverage if taken as a whole especially with a whole continent (Australia) and the largest country in the world (Russia). And who doesn’t like cashmere?
How much is gathered and produced for each yield?
It can vary. But there’s a common range. For these kinds of specialty animal hair fibres, natural fibres, the gathering or the collecting of the hairs occurs in the molting season or the season when animals tend to shed their hair.[x] That means around late spring to early summer. These can fall off in clumps for collection by standard collection methods from way-back-when – by hand (neat).[xi]
Following this, the “coarse hairs and down hairs of the…camel are separated by a mechanical process known as dehairing,” explains itself, which in turn brings about a yield per camel from as low (not really low, actually) as 8 kilograms to as much as 10 kilograms.
What is its utility, and look and feel?
It is lightweight and naturally warm, is a tan colour, and can be made various color through colouring it – and, in fact, takes in the dye about as well as wool does.[xii]
What about the small stuff like the end product and recyclability?
If you go to that website with the table, there’s a wonderful layout of some of the finer points such as garment care, end uses, virgin fiber, and recycled fiber.[xiii] Garment care is basically the means by which garments can be properly cared for, so “dry clean wovens; knit goods may be handwashed.”[xiv]
End uses are the finalized textile uses such as “Men’s and women’s coats, jackets and blazers, skirts, hosiery, sweaters, gloves, scarves, mufflers, caps and robes.”[xv] Not bad, a decent selection with a certain appeal in its ability to be recoloured; hosiery is the one that surprised me, personally. And it is a virgin fibre or non-processed fibre, and it’s capable of being recycled – and as with many of the lovely variety of natural fibres, the forms and uses provide plenty of reason for consideration of the general consideration about, what I might call, the lifecycle of fibres.[xvi] That’s about it for camel hair, in a brief summary.
Closing thoughts?
Synthetic or man-made fibres can end up in landfills or the ocean and are not biodegradable, but the natural fibres have all of these measures, granted with a little effort (but they can be fun!), to send them back from whence they came after they’ve spent or expired their fashionable quotient – sometimes in a season, and other times after a decade of cycled fashion trends (you never know).[xvii],[xviii] Come back for part three for the next fibre profile!
[i] natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved fromhttp://www.britannica.com/topic/natural-fiber
[ii] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/technology/man-made-fiber.
[iii] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Animal Fibres.
[iv] Wild Fibres. (2016, February 15). Plant Fibres.
[v] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2009). Natural Fibres. Retrieved from Natural Fibres.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii]camel hair. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.
[viii] Bactria. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.
[ix] Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute. (2013). Cashmere and Camel Hair Fact Sheet.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid.
[xvii] man-made fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.
[xviii]natural fibre. (2016). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from Britannica.
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