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King of Wools: High Fashion and the Chiru's Shahtoosh
by Judy Mills

This is a story of beauty turned ugly. A story of a species turned fashion victim. A story of murder and subterfuge on the roof of the world. This is the story of shahtoosh.

Roughly translated from Persian, shahtoosh is understood to mean the “king of wools.” The description is no hyperbole. Shahtoosh is gossamer in weight and texture, soft as a baby’s skin, yet warm. Scarves and shawls made of shahtoosh come in natural beige and off-white, may be dyed rich colors, and are sometimes intricately embroidered. They sell for $1,000 to $5,000 and more, and have become the rage among the rich, famous, and fashionable. Movie stars wrap newborns in them, socialites drape them over ball gowns, and a Hong Kong tycoon dines with one in his lap. Shahtoosh owes its “royal” status to the hair from which it is woven. The coat of the endangered Tibetan antelope, or chiru (Pantholops hodgsoni), contains some of the world’s finest hair, measuring three-quarters the width of cashmere and one-fifth that of human hair. Shahtoosh is so fine that even a large shawl can be pulled with ease through a finger ring, giving it its other name “ring shawl.”

Behind this luxury lies death: Three to five chiru must die to provide the ten to 20 ounces of raw wool needed to produce a single shawl, according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India. Poachers are gunning down chiru in droves for the sake of this fashion craze. William Bleisch of the China Exploration and Research Society (CERS) reported that, in the summer of 1999, he personally saw more than 900 skinned chiru carcasses—many of them pregnant females—in China’s high-desert Arjin Shan Reserve.