New in Fiber Nation: A Tale of Two Sweaters
Picture two sweaters: both are simple crewnecks, machine-knit, and look like something you might find in a better department store. Yet although they are almost identical, one costs $95 and the other…$8000?
Welcome to the world of luxury knitwear.
The $95 sweater is a fine-gauge alpaca, from a small boutique near my home. The $8000 sweater is 100% pure vicuña, and any store selling it would probably not allow me to enter. So, what the heck is a vicuña, and how is it $7905 different from alpaca?
Even non-fiber people can recognize an alpaca. They’re four-legged teddy bears—so fluffy it can be hard to see their faces. And you see them everywhere: on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and in a thousand internet memes.
Vicuña, though. Vicuña are the magical unicorn version of alpacas. If an alpaca is a teddy bear, vicuña look like a cross between a deer and a space alien. They are the wild ancestor of alpaca and live in the high plains of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.
That $8000 sweater is made from the most valuable fleece in the world–not just because it feels great, but because great things do indeed come in small packages. A vicuña takes two or three years to produce just one pound of fleece. And the fleece is really hard to get. If you want to hear just how hard, please check out the latest episode of Fiber Nation.
In between domestic alpacas and wild vicuña is something else, though. Something new, called a paco-vicuña. It’s not a direct cross between alpacas and their wild cousins, but more like a genetic throwback. A paco-vicuña is an alpaca with a whole lot of vicuña traits popping out of the woodwork. Paco vicuña shouldn’t exist at all.
South American alpaca ranchers often culled them because they looked weird and had a lot of guard hair—those stiff pokey fibers that are generally seen as a buzzkill in any fiber. But that guard hair hid a fleece you’d never find on your garden-variety alpaca. If you want to hear about the discovery and rescue of these special creatures, make sure you listen.
While working on this episode, I got to spend time with Jane Levene, of Jefferson Farms outside Denver. Jane is the Godmother of paco-vicuñas and has been working for years to create a fiber that is unlike anything I’ve seen or touched. Paco vicuña fleece is the best of both worlds.
This paco-vicuña had me at hello.
It has the long staple length of alpaca fleece but is incredibly fine. At 13-14 microns, it beats the best merino out there. When shorn, it looks more like fur than like fleece but is many times lighter than alpaca fiber. Jane’s goal is not to replicate the vicuña, but to create a new luxury fiber. Think of it as somewhere between those two sweaters.
Besides having a lot of fun factoids about fiber and the animals that produce it, A Tale of Two Sweaters also features some adorable baby alpaca noises. If you want to know what these creatures sound like, please be sure to tune in.
Thanks for listening,
Allison
Further Resources
An absorbing account of a $50,000 Vicuña Coat
Saving the wild vicuña
Watch a traditional chaku, when vicuña are corralled and sheared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eUi5TPWSoE Look at the shears in this one!!
Luxury garment company Loro Piana and their vicuña program
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