Camel Hair

Camel hair, as a cloth, is woven from the soft insulating down of the two-humped Bactrian camel, not its coarse outer guard hair. The down is gathered as the animal molts in spring, when it sheds in clumps that are collected and separated, so no shearing is needed. The fiber is warm, light, and a natural golden tan, which gives the camel-hair overcoat and the polo coat their signature color. Carried along the old caravan routes of Central Asia, it became a byword for a soft, costly winter cloth.