VICUÑA by Illimani

We don't keep Vicuña in stock, but we're happy to order it in for you. Just get in touch.

Vicuña is the rarest, and most precious natural fibre in the world.

It comes from the wild vicuña, the smallest of the South American camelids, which lives high in the Andes. The fibre measures an astonishing 11–13.5 microns on average - finer than cashmere, incredibly light and exceptionally warm.

And it is VERY rare.

Vicuñas were hunted almost to extinction for their extraordinarily valuable fleece. By the 1960s, wild populations had collapsed to just a few thousand animals and strict protections were introduced. Conservation programmes and carefully controlled fibre harvesting have since helped populations recover, but vicuña remains protected and trade in its fibre is tightly regulated.

The animals aren't farmed like sheep or alpacas. They live wild.

To collect the fibre, Andean communities use the traditional Chaccu - an ancient practice dating back to the Inca. Local communities work together to gently herd wild vicuñas into temporary enclosures, where the animals are briefly captured and carefully shorn by trained specialists before being released back into the mountains.

Each animal produces only a tiny amount of usable fibre and can only be shorn infrequently. The Chaccu allows Andean communities to benefit economically from protecting the wild herds, while preserving a centuries-old cultural tradition.

And then comes the de-hairing.

Raw vicuña fleece contains coarse guard hairs and tiny impurities from life in the high Andes. Because the precious fine fibres are so short and delicate, preparing the fleece is incredibly painstaking.

Skilled hands work through tiny quantities of raw fleece, carefully removing coarse guard hairs and impurities and separating the finest fibres.

• Guard hairs removed one by one BY HAND
• The finest fibres carefully separated
• Impurities removed without damaging the delicate fibre
• Fleece sorted by fineness and natural colour
• Hours of meticulous work to prepare just a few grams

It is slow. Painstaking. And requires extraordinarily skilled hands and eyes.

The result is the finest fibre Illimani produces: 100% pure vicuña, spun into an extraordinarily light fingering-weight yarn.

This is not an everyday yarn.

It's rare, precious and genuinely exceptional. One of those fibres that you need to touch to properly understand.

Made in Bolivia. Illimani works with international aid organisations to support artisans in Peru and Bolivia.

(Many commercial yarns labelled simply as "vicuna" are actually spun from a paco-vicuña: a hybrid of a vicuña and an alpaca. Paco-vicuña lacks the microscopic 12-micron fineness of a pure wild vicuña, resulting in a coarser feel. 

Illimani Vicuña is the real deal.)

Price is per 20g skein.