Word: spilhaus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Karl Spilhaus shops with a mission. His busy hands rake through the winter- coat racks, expertly fingering the fabric as he examines the labels and checks the prices. When Spilhaus senses a swindle, he purchases the suspicious garment and whisks it to a laboratory where it is sectioned, stripped of dyes and studied under microscopes. Spilhaus is searching for counterfeit cashmere, and all too often he finds it. A garment labeled 70% cashmere/30% wool frequently contains no more than 5% cashmere. The rest? Recycled rags, human hair, acrylic, asbestos, rabbit fur and even newspaper...
...Spilhaus is director and chief detective of the Boston-based Camel Hair & Cashmere Institute of America. The group, founded in 1984, is a watchdog agency supported by seven major textile firms. "Nearly 30% of the cashmere sold in the U.S. is mislabeled," says Spilhaus. "Because the demand for cashmere is strong and prices are high, the incentive for shoddy operators is great...
Meanwhile, the counterfeiters have no shortage of substitutes. Some weavers remove the coarser fibers from camel hair to make it feel more like cashmere. Others use yak hair. Says Spilhaus: "The cheating is limited only by the imagination of the cheaters...