Long before it becomes a shawl, pashmina exists as something almost too fine to hold. Combed from the underbelly of the Changra goat, high in the mountains of Ladakh, the fibre is, as they say, 'soft enough to pass through a ring'. Understanding what happens to it between there and a finished shawl is what has driven Kashmir Loom since its founding in Srinagar in 2000.
Pashmina Shawl from Kashmir Loom, a prize in the Issue 131 prize draw.
The house was built by Asaf Ali and textile historian Jenny Housego, who met while Ali was apprenticing under his uncle and first began learning how raw fibre becomes fabric worth generations of care. Housego, trained in Art History and shaped by decades working alongside Indian weavers and embroiderers, brought a scholar's understanding of pashmina's history to Ali's growing knowledge of its production. Together with Ali's brothers Zahid and Hamid, and with Samina Zaidi, they built a team rooted in Kashmir's own textile traditions.
Pashmina Shawl (detail) from Kashmir Loom, a prize in the Issue 131 prize draw.
Readers can now win a piece of that tradition for themselves: Selvedge is giving away a Kashmir Loom pashmina shawl (pictured above) worth £500, handwoven in ivory and finished with sozni embroidery in silk thread, its hashiya border drawn from the gul, or flower, motif found throughout Kashmiri design.
Wooden hand spindles wound with pashmina yarn from the Changra goat. Photo: Qamoos Bukhari and Gourab Ganguli
Cover for Issue 116, Uncut, featuring Kashmir Loom. Photographer Gourab Ganguil, Model Anrita Bagchi, Shawl Kashmir Loom, shot on location on Lake Nageen, Kashmir.
Ali and Housego travelled together to Ladakh to study how the Changra fibre was spun and woven into cashmere, an interest that grew into decades of collaborative work back in Srinagar. There, women hand-spin the pashmina on traditional charka wheels before men weave it into cloth prized for its strength and its extraordinary softness. This division of labour, spinning by women, weaving by men, has shaped family workshops across the valley for generations, and remains central to how Kashmir Loom operates today. The pace of this work is unhurried by nature, each shawl passing through many hands before it reaches its finished form. Kashmir Loom went on to pioneer the use of metal yarn in this weaving, developing dorukha shawls that shift colour and lustre depending on which side catches the light, alongside a range that has grown to include throws, blankets and chogas lined with bandhani or ajrakh.
Kashmir Loom Pashmina. Photo: Gourab Ganguil.
Ali keeps a library of old pashminas and historic textile books close at hand, and makes regular visits to museum collections, folding what he finds there back into new designs. The shawls carry this history within their weave: centuries of trade routes through Kashmir, and the mark left by the nineteenth-century fashions, that first carried the Kashmiri shawl to Europe and made it an object of fascination there.
In every Kashmir Loom shawl, the mountains of Ladakh meet the workshops of Srinagar, and centuries of trade meet a design still being written.
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Further Information:
Enter the prize draw on the Selvedge website for your chance to win.
Read more about Kashmir Loom in the following publications:
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Image Credits:
Lead: Pashmina Shawl from Kashmir Loom, a prize in the Issue 131 prize draw.
All further images as credited in captions.