Jing Xue

Jing Xue

June 30, 2026

Kashmir shawl, Kashmir cashmere shawl, Colonial trade, Eurasian material exchange, Modern European fashion, Luxury consumption history.

By sorting out the complete communication chain of Kashmir shawl from Kashmir through Central Asia land from the 16th century, and through the British colonial maritime trade into Europe from the 18th to the 19th century, this article clarifies the operation mechanism of cross-border cashmere industry chain, which the cashmere was supplied by Ali in Xizang region, transferred by Ladak, and woven by Kashmir. Then, this article analyzes the logic of the change of the class and audience of the fabric from the ritual vessel of the Western Asian monarchy to the exclusive luxury of the European royal family, which then sank into the middle class marriage social symbol. Relying on colonial historical materials, European fashion prints, and modern literary texts, this article argues that the aesthetic taste of the French court and the trade expansion of the East India Company jointly shaped the modern European fashion trend of Kashmir shawl. It also systematically analyzes the internal mechanism of the decline of the original handmade Kashmir shawl market caused by multiple factors such as mechanized imitation, aesthetic transformation of women's clothing, saturation of raw material supply, and the rise of mass consumption in the mid to late 19th century. The article breaks away from a single narrative of clothing history and extracts insights into the rise and fall of the contemporary high-end cashmere luxury industry from five aspects: scarce value control, product scene adaptation, natural material technology improvement, gradient product system construction, and fashion culture narrative update. At the same time, it reflects on the narrative bias of modern Eurasian material exchange research from a European centric perspective.

© 2026, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license