Pashmina, what the word actually means

Pashmina is not a weave and not a brand: it is a fibre. The Changthangi goat of the high Ladakh plateau grows a winter undercoat finer than 16 microns, and that fleece, combed out each spring, is what the word means. Everything else is marketing.

Real pashmina is too fine for power looms; it snaps under machine tension. So it is hand spun on a wheel called a yinder and hand woven, a shawl taking weeks. The weavers of Srinagar have done this for five hundred years, and a genuine piece is warm out of all proportion to its weight.

A machine woven "pashmina" from a mall costs less because it is cashmere blend at best. Buying from a Srinagar weaver on 1VIM means the person who wove it packs it, and the price with shipping and duties is the whole price.