The Scottish Borders has a long-held reputation for producing some of the world’s most luxurious fabrics, built on a blend of heritage expertise, traditional skills and design innovation. The Kinalba approach sits at the very top of this pinnacle.
Kinalba uses only the finest cashmere fibres – sourced from the Alashan region of Inner Mongolia. Here they raise their flocks of goats at high altitude and allow them to roam freely over the mountain plateaus. It is this unique combination of geographic, climatic and dietary conditions that allows the goats to produce the finest cashmere.
The herdsmen carefully comb the fine hairs from the underbelly of the goats prior to grading the fibres, where they are sorted by hand into colour, micron and length. We select only the most suitable fibres for our colour palette, the finest micron and the optimal length for our processes to ensure you receive an end product that is durable and luxurious – a timeless piece, made to last.
Just before dyeing, our cashmere is de-haired to remove any impurities and course hair, ready for manufacturing.
We dye our cashmere early in the process into a beautiful array of selected Kinalba core colours. Many of these tones are reflective of the Scottish landscape and flora throughout each of the seasons. We use ecological methods of dyeing, such as using natural colourants while avoiding chemicals in the process.
Once perfectly blended, the cashmere fibres are combed through the carding machine to straighten them up, ready for spinning into yarn.
At this point of the process the carded fibres are still delicate and need strengthening. To do this our artisans spin and twist the fibres together to create a very fine and even yarn. This foundational part of the process ensures Kinalba cashmere can be woven into the perfect product.
Skilled technicians follow the designer’s instruction, selecting specific coloured yarns. Warp yarns are firstly aligned vertically onto a warp mill and then transferred to a beam ready for the weaving loom. To create the overall desired pattern, the weft yarns are pulled through over and under the warp yarn horizontally using a high-speed shuttle. Kinalba cashmere designs are woven specifically for sophisticated audiences and specific occasions in mind.
Scottish Borders water is exceptionally soft and perfect for creating the ideal soap lather. This enhances the natural properties of the fibres and is one of the reasons our cashmere is of the highest standard in the world.
To provide the perfect finish, the surface of our fabrics is ‘raised’ to give the fabric body and create pile direction. We then use teasel heads from nature itself, to create a smooth ripple effect on the surface of the product. All these incremental gains enable us to produce the ultimate handle of the cashmere product.
Our quality assurance team follow the manufacturing process throughout, checking the product specification at each and every stage. At the end of the whole process, we personally do a final quality check to approve our luxurious products. We hope you love wearing them as much as we do making them.
Have your luxurious Kinalba product gift wrapped in elegant, sustainable packaging. Our gift to you is that it’s completely free of charge – as is delivery. We will handwrite your message for that personal touch. You can include this in the check out process before payment. Thank you for shopping with Kinalba x
Terms
Have your luxurious Kinalba product gift wrapped in elegant, sustainable packaging. Our gift to you is that it’s completely free of charge – as is delivery. We will handwrite your message for that personal touch. You can include this in the check out process before payment. Thank you for shopping with Kinalba x
Terms