Scene stolen
June 11, 2003 | 12:00am
Shawls, scarves and stoles are items not usually found in the same frequency as batik nighties, plastic raincoats and rubber tsinelas in our climate controlled wardrobe. The pashmina craze reached an apogee during the last turn of the century, emblazoning its soft-focus image for fashion posterity with the pink-shawled princess Paltrow trawling hers over skinny Oscar-pumping shoulders.
Well, pashminas have also passed through its passé stage, transcending into a clothing nirvana where one knows no trends nor time. Only a few other once-hot-then-hidden-then-resurrected-in-another-decade closet dwellers have managed this feat, such as Birkenstocks, Converses, and 80’s rock band t-shirts. So, before you pshaw-pshawl pashminas as something only genteel women with hot flashes take to chilly movie theaters, try a few different ways of throwing around this cozy but lightweight affair for a superstylin’, hello nightclub look.
Pashmina is wool. Cashmere, to be exact, and is fabled to be spun and woven from the fine inner hairs of the Himalayan goat which it grows during winter and sheds on mountain shrubs in spring, to be collected like unseasonal Christmas ornaments by Tibetan nomads in the lurk. Now if this was really true, we would have to wait an eternity for just a few shawls to be shucked out.
The shahtoosh was the original rare and ultrafine ring-shawl, adorning Nepalese royals and adored by New York richies, a rather unfortunate fact for the chiru, the rare Tibetan antelope that sprouts these downy fibers. As high-society demand for shahtoosh went up, chiru supply was literally decimated and are now an endagered species, while the shahtoosh trade has been criminalized. Animal respecters will be glad to hear that the shaggy Kashmir goat is ranched and fleeced for pashmina purposes, no different from your old mothballed merino and mohair sheep sweaters – but against your bare shoulders in chilly cinemas, it definitley feels more wolvishly wicked.
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