CASHMERE SELVEDGE

With family ties in Elgin, we’ve always been tuned in to what Johnstons are up to. Celebrating a great heritage and beautiful Scottish craftsmanship, Johnstons of Elgin do a lot that inspires us, including their renowned attitude towards sustainability.

Aware of what essential waste can be involved in machine weaving, we reached out to their CEO in 2019 to see if the business would be interested in partnering up with Dastardly Line to become more circular in their practices.

The response was better than we could have hoped. Johnstons were enthusiastic and encouraging and in March 2022 we launched a series of woven cashmere throws and scarves in their flagship stores.

What is selvedge?

Selvedges are the thin strips of fabric that are removed from the finished machine woven cashmere pieces. Removing them ensures the perfect finish across Johnstons of Elgin’s products.

Selvedge has a lot of individuality and we deliberately leave in all of these imperfections. This means every item we create has a visible history such as contrasting hand stitches, there to remind us of the multiple processes these fibres have gone through prior to coming to us.

How do we manufacture the pieces?

We trim, count, bundle, iron and then finally weave together the selvedge into our scarves and throws. We then stitch it all together to ensure it is neat and durable. Finally, we evenly trim the fringe and stitch on our label, ready to sell.

Is it really zero-waste?

Thread is the only new type of textile introduced to create our scarves and throws. To value every fibre, we let the selvedge dictate the size and weight of each final piece.