THE Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute (CCMI) has agreed to withdraw its claims for breach of UK labelling regulations against Laura Ashley Ltd. These relate to the sale by Laura Ashley of garments labelled “100% cashmere” that independent tests commissioned by the CCMI demonstrated contained sheep’s wool. Laura Ashley said it regretted offering these garments for sale, which it had after placing reliance on “false assurances” given by its suppliers.

CCMI and Laura Ashley have agreed a protocol for the testing of cashmere garments to avoid the risk of retailing garments labelled as “pure” or “100%” cashmere when this is not the case. CCMI said it shared with Laura Ashley the common objective of ensuring that customers could place total reliance on the labels attached to cashmere garments.

Mr. James Sugden, managing director of Johnstons, the Scottish cashmere spinning and manufacturing group, said the case was a watershed in the battle against mislabelled garments.

“With the demise next year of the Multi Fibre Arrangement, many markets are being flooded with cashmere products of highly-differing quality, largely made offshore,” he told the Wool Record. “This case sends a message to all the industry: caveat emptor.

“The proclivity for some overseas suppliers to debase the pure product with a percentage of wool has now been exposed, and the clear duty of the CCMI and all industry members, in which group the UK is very active, is to highlight these cases and protect both the customer and the good name of cashmere on which the reputation of our industry rests.

“Although this case has taken over two years and proved quite expensive, the results justify the efforts made by ourselves, Z. Hinchliffe and our Italian friends.”

CCMI was established in 1984 to promote the use of genuine cashmere and camel-hair products and protect the interests of manufacturers, retailers and consumers of these products. After its initial success in the United States, CCMI has expanded its operation to the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan.

CCMI monitors the UK retail market by purchasing cashmere garments and sending them to independent specialist fibre-testing laboratories. If the analysis shows the garment is not labelled correctly, CCMI contacts the retailer to inform it of the problem. One of CCMI’s principal concerns is that garments labelled “100%” or “pure” cashmere, particularly from Chinese suppliers, often contain significant amounts of sheep’s wool.

With the assistance of CCMI, Laura Ashley has re-examined its existing testing protocol and has developed and proposes to adopt a revised testing protocol which it is confident will eliminate the risk of offering mislabelled cashmere garments in future.

The revised testing protocol has evolved following a reappraisal of the independent specialist fibre-testing laboratories used by Laura Ashley and includes the use of CCMI-recommended laboratories. In addition, the protocol requires that suppliers provide Laura Ashley with test certificates from the revised list of recommended laboratories certifying the purity of the original fibre, the yarn and the finished garments. It also requires Laura Ashley to carry out random sampling of cashmere garments with which it is supplied for retail sale.

The CCMI website is on www.cashmere.org

Captions:

Mr. James Sugden

The lady wears a pure cashmere stole from Johnstons’ autumn/winter 2003 collection.