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CCMI in the News
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Wool Can Be A Fuzzy Thing
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Hartford Courant
Inside Pitch
Wool Can Be A Fuzzy Thing
Matthew Kauffman
April 10 2002
When is a goat not a goat?
That
Zen-like question is at the heart of a long-running legal battle that has
pitted some powerful names in retailing - including Saks Fifth Avenue - against
... well, against something called the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers
Institute.
So far: Chalk up a preliminary win for the institute.
Here's
the tale. Few of us have memorized the Wool Products Labeling Act of 1939,
and I'm not sure I could tell virgin wool from recycled cashmere fibers.
But people who earn their keep in the textile trades make it their business
to know the difference between, say, the hair of a rare Mongolian capra hircus
goat and the considerably more pedestrian fleece of the Australian Merino
sheep.
People like Karl Spilhaus.
Spilhaus is president of
the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute, which for nearly 20
years has led the charge to keep importers, manufacturers and retailers honest
about labeling cashmere and cashmere-blend clothes.
Consumers are
willing to pay a premium for cashmere - which is wool combed from the undercoat
of the Kashmir goat - and the institute works to preserve that cachet by
making sure consumers are getting what they pay for.
The Boston-based
group runs a voluntary testing service and sends out endless letters to the
trade reminding companies about the rules. It also buys garments off the
rack from stores around the country and puts them under the microscope to
measure fiber lengths and examine scales.
More often than they'd like,
the fibers they see through the lens don't match the description they find
advertised on the garment label.
Sometimes, a tag fails to disclose
that the fibers are "recycled" - chemically stripped and reconstituted from
old garments. Other times, the label overstates the percentage of cashmere
in a cashmere-blend.
And once, the institute claims, thousands of
blazers described as "A Luxurious Blend of Cashmere and Wool" actually contained
little or no cashmere at all.
That's what brought the institute to U.S. District Court.
In
1996, the institute filed a false-advertising suit against Harve Benard,
which made the disputed blazers, and two retailers that sold them: Saks and
Filene's Basement.
Harve Benard represented that the garments were
manufactured from a 10 percent cashmere-blend fabric. But in the suit, the
institute says it sent random samples of the blazers to experts in cashmere
identification - yes, that is an actual field of expertise - who concluded
that the "luxurious blend of cashmere and wool" contained no more than trace
levels of cashmere. And what little cashmere there was, the suit claims,
came from inferior recycled fibers.
Harve Benard vigorously disputes
the claim and has insisted that all of its garments contain at least as much
cashmere as the label states. It has its own scientific reports, from experts
approved by the institute, showing the blazers were properly labeled. A lawyer
for Harve Benard, Saks and Filene's Basement said the firm has a policy against
commenting on pending litigation.
Also on the suit is L.W. Packard
& Co., an 86-year-old textile plant in Ashland, N.H., that claims it
lost sales because the Harve Benard blazers took the bottom out of the 10
percent cashmere-blend market.
"They really suffered. Their fabric sales plummeted," said Robert J. Kaler, a Boston attorney who represents the plaintiffs.
Misrepresenting
cashmere is a serious problem, and it's only gotten worse with the craze
over pashmina. (Factoid: Pashmina is simply an Indian word for cashmere.)
"You
don't want to say everything's mislabeled, because, No. 1, everything is
not mislabeled; and No. 2, you don't want to scare people," Kaler said. "But
it's been a pervasive problem in the last 10 years, and particularly in this
area of low-cashmere blends."
Even the Federal Trade Commission has
taken notice, and last year held a half-day conference on cashmere labeling,
covering such topics as "The Cashmere Market - Goat-to-Garment."
Nevertheless,
the District Court threw out most of the lawsuit, saying the plaintiffs failed
to show that consumers were confused by the alleged mislabeling or that Packard
had suffered financially.
But earlier this month, a federal appeals
court revived the suit, ruling that under the Lanham Act - the nation's false-advertising
law - there was enough evidence to at least let a jury decide the dispute.
This
case deserves a full airing, whatever the outcome. And the story deserves
to be told not simply because it offers the headline writers an endless opportunity
for bad puns about getting fleeced and/or having the wool pulled over one's
eyes. It also illustrates why false-advertising laws are so important, and
why it's good to have somebody - the government, the media, consumer groups,
trade organizations - keeping an eye on standards and honesty.
I take
it on faith that the gasoline I put in my car is 87 octane, whatever that
means, and that the ring on my finger is 18-karat gold, whatever that means.
But I depend on someone else to make sure it's so.
We
all have a responsibility to read the fine print in ads. Take a ride to the
mall and you'll find "cashmere and wool" sports jackets that contain - they
report in much smaller letters - a measly 5 percent cashmere.
I'm
OK with that modest sleight of hand, as long as the jackets really contain
the cashmere. And I'm happy to have a trade group, even one with its own
self-interest in mind, checking to see if they do.
I don't pretend to know my Tibetan antelope from my high-Andes vicuna.
But I'm glad someone does.
Copyright 2002, Hartford Courant
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