Cashmere is Scottish....isn't it?

My Moving Conversations show at the Edinburgh International Festival is shaping up well.  All of our panellists have chosen their films from the Scottish Screen Archive - an amusing, amazing and enlightening bunch of movies.  We now await, with eager anticipation, the punchy, controversial arguments from our Bollywood producer, technology investor, banker, retailer and Professor.  The latter is Professor Catherine Schenk, whom has chosen a film called Cashmere is Scottish http://tinyurl.com/3htj4sh, a 1970's promotional film for the cashmere industry.  Catherine has kindly shared some of here thoughts with us on her reasons for choosing this fabulously retro and Joanna Lumley starring film.

The film clip from the 1970s firmly states that Cashmere IS Scottish and this was certainly its reputation and a key part of its value as a luxury product.  It was traditionally a part of Scotland's international brand image (along with bagpipes, shortbread and whisky).  In fact, of course, cashmere was almost always a 'globalised' product that linked Scottish producers and designers with rural Chinese herders who supplied and undertook the first processing of the essential raw material.  In recent years, the production of cashmere has been shifted to China and other countries in East Asia, and the luxury 'brand'  has been somewhat tarnished by variation in quality and fraudulent products.  If cashmere WAS Scottish in the 1970s, it isn't any more - many of the key traditional companies here have been taken over - most notably Pringles.  The ability of Asian companies to produce large amounts of cashmere products for the global market has had an important impact, not only on Scottish business and on consumers, but even more importantly on the environment in China because of the huge expansion of grazing goats.

This leaves the questions:
Was cashmere ever REALLY Scottish or is it an example of long-standing integrated trade links between Scotland and China? 
Does it matter if cashmere is now predominantly 'made in China'?

To see the other films and hear from the other panellists, come along to Trading with the West on 19th August, 2.30pm at Filmhouse, Lothian Rd, Edinburgh.  www.eif.co.uk/trading.