What Is Vicuña Wool?

How is vicuña wool made?

Vicuña wool is made by rounding up wild or semi-captive vicuñas, shearing the live animals and processing the fibre into yarn, cloth and garments.

The roundup

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo reports that the Inca, and perhaps earlier peoples, rounded up thousands of vicuñas at two- to three-year intervals, with as many as 30,000 people taking part. Most animals were shorn and set free; some were killed for meat and leather.

In 1995, the Smithsonian article reports, Peru’s government began encouraging similar roundups:

• Villagers on foot drive the animals into a net-lined chute that leads to a small corral.
• The vicuñas are inspected and sheared; young animals and those with short fleece are released.
• The fleece grows back completely in two or three years.

A 2022 study by Cowan Ros and colleagues says the wild-management techniques developed at Peru’s Pampa Galeras reserve were inspired by the Inca roundup, the chaccu. In Argentina’s Jujuy province, producers at Cieneguillas carried out their first captures with shearing between 2003 and 2005. From 2012, members of Indigenous communities (comunidades originarias) in Jujuy’s Yavi and Rinconada departments took up the same wild management.

From fibre to cloth

In Jujuy, producers sell the raw fibre sorted but not yet dehaired. The same study notes that the high-precision industrial processing, which captures most of the value, is held by a handful of international textile corporations.

What are the properties of vicuña wool?

Vicuña wool’s defining property is fineness: at a diameter of about 12 microns (thousandths of a millimetre), it is one of the finest fibres in the world and finer than cashmere, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo.

Treat product-copy claims about vicuña’s warmth, strength or pilling as marketing unless a test is cited.

How is vicuña wool graded?

Vicuña wool is measured by fibre diameter: the Smithsonian’s National Zoo gives about 12 microns, finer than cashmere and close to shahtoosh.

Diameters from the Smithsonian article:

Neither the US specialty-fibre rule (16 CFR 300.18) nor the EU list of fibre names (Regulation 1007/2011, Annex I) sets a diameter for vicuña.

How does vicuña wool appear on a clothing label?

On a label, vicuña appears as a named fibre with its percentage, and garments in international trade must also carry a mark naming the fibre’s country of origin.

Under US rules

• The Wool Products Labeling Act counts vicuña hair as wool, alongside camel, alpaca and llama, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
• 16 CFR 300.18 lets a label name the specialty fibre in place of “wool”, provided each named fibre’s percentage is given. The rule’s own example is “35% Recycled Llama—35% Recycled Vicuna—30% Cotton”.
• Once “vicuna” is used, that name must be used whenever the fibre is mentioned. The name, or any word or symbol implying vicuña, may not appear in other, non-required information such as hang-tags unless vicuña is in the required fibre-content statement.
• The FTC requires wool to be disclosed by name and percentage even below 5%. Labels must also name the country of origin and the company or its registered identification number (RN).
• Hair from cross-bred animals may also be disclosed under its own name; the FTC gives “Paco-Vicuna hair” as an example.

Under EU rules

• Annex I of Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 lists “vicuna”, “followed or not by the word ‘wool’ or ‘hair’”, alongside mohair, alpaca, llama and cashmere. “Vicuna wool” and “vicuna hair” are both correct.
• Plain “wool” in the EU means sheep’s or lambs’ wool, or a mixture of it with the listed animal hairs. Pure vicuña cannot be labelled simply “wool”, and a blend labelled “wool” may contain vicuña without naming it.
• Under Article 7(2), “100%” may still allow up to 2% technically unavoidable extraneous fibre (5% if carded).

The vicuña origin mark

Wildlife-trade law adds a second layer. The vicuña entry in the annex to Regulation (EC) No 338/97 on wildlife trade (as retained in UK law) allows international trade only in fibre from live-sheared vicuñas of listed populations: in Argentina, the populations of Jujuy, Catamarca and Salta and semi-captive herds in five provinces; in Chile, the Tarapacá and Arica and Parinacota regions; and all of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. All other specimens are treated as CITES Appendix I specimens, which may be traded only in exceptional circumstances. The marking rules are:

• Garments: a label in the garment must carry the “vicuña country of origin” wording, mark or logo. If the garment was made outside the country of origin, the country where it was made should also be named.
• Cloth: the wording, mark or logo appears on the reverse side, and the selvedges must bear the words “VICUÑA [COUNTRY OF ORIGIN]”.
• Handicrafts made in the range states carry “VICUÑA [COUNTRY OF ORIGIN] – ARTESANÍA”.
• Mixed origins: if fibre from several countries is used, each country’s mark must appear.

How do you tell genuine vicuña wool from a false claim?

Genuine vicuña is shown by the garment’s labels, not by how soft it feels: read the fibre line, find the origin mark and check the price.

1. Read the fibre-content line. Look for “vicuna” or “vicuña” with a percentage. Under US rules, a hang-tag or secondary label that says “vicuña” while the fibre line does not is not allowed, so treat it as a red flag.
2. Find the origin mark. Look on the garment label for the “vicuña” wording or logo with a country of origin, and a second country if the piece was made elsewhere. On a length of cloth, read the selvedge for “VICUÑA” and the country name.
3. Don’t trust the word as a cloth name. Merriam-Webster records that “vicuña” has also named a sheep’s wool imitation of vicuña cloth. Only the fibre line tells you which animal the yarn came from.
4. Separate vicuña from cross-breeds. “Paco-vicuña” hair is from a cross-bred animal, not pure vicuña.
5. Check the price against the raw fibre. In 2018, Jujuy producers were paid US$380 per kilogram for raw vicuña fibre, while cashmere traded at US$108–126 per kilogram and merino at about US$6.20 in Argentine Patagonia (Cowan Ros and colleagues). A “vicuña” piece priced like cashmere deserves questions.

How do you care for vicuña wool?

Care for vicuña wool by following the care label sewn into the garment; the maker’s instruction is the safest guide.

Is vicuña wool sustainable?

Vicuña wool is a conservation success with unresolved questions: protection and legal live-shearing helped the species recover from near-extinction, but researchers still dispute how the animals should be managed and who gains from the fibre.

Collapse and recovery

The Smithsonian article estimates that vicuñas once numbered perhaps several million. Over-hunting and competition for pasture in the centuries after the fall of the Inca Empire reduced them to about 10,000 by the 1960s. By 2008 the population had rebounded to several hundred thousand.

Protection came in stages, as set out by Cowan Ros and colleagues:

• 1969: Peru and Bolivia signed a treaty banning hunting and trade for ten years.
• 1975: vicuña populations were placed on CITES Appendix I, which allows trade only in exceptional circumstances.
• 1979: Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador and Peru signed the Convention for the Conservation and Management of the Vicuña; Argentina joined in 1988.
• 1987 and 1997: some Peruvian and Chilean populations, then Jujuy’s, moved to Appendix II.

Open questions

• Animal welfare: the Smithsonian reports that legal live-shearing reduces the incentive to hunt vicuñas. A 2007 study found no rise in deaths or drop in offspring among females shorn in spring, but more research is needed on shearing in cold weather.
• Wild or farmed: some scientists worry that permanent corrals could affect gene flow or start the animals on a path to self-domestication. In 2012, the signatories to the vicuña convention declared the vicuña a wild species, not livestock.
• Who benefits: Cowan Ros and colleagues, citing earlier work by Cowan Ros, find that Andean people retain barely 3% of the value the fibre generates.

For sustainable fashion, the useful questions are where the fibre was shorn, under which rules and for whose benefit.