Cover story · Thread · Issue 01
More than half of the world's mohair grows on South African goats. It is shorn in the Karoo, sold in Gqeberha and combed in the Eastern Cape. From there it travels to the mills of Biella, the cutting rooms of London and the ateliers of Paris. This is the story of every hand it passes through, and of what South Africa could become if more of that journey stayed home.
In the Karoo, the light arrives before the heat. On farms from Prince Albert to the Oudtshoorn district, angora goats move across the veld in loose white clouds. They graze on succulents and sweet bush in country too dry for most livestock, and that dryness is part of the secret. Their fleece grows long, lustrous and curled, with a sheen the textile trade has prized for centuries.
That sheen travels far. It is woven into the lightweight summer suits of Italian tailoring houses, into evening jackets on Savile Row, into a throw that catches the light in a hotel lobby. The people who wear it rarely know where it began. Fewer still know that one of the world's great luxury houses created an award for South African farmers in 1970, so it could buy the very best of their clip.
This is not a story about a raw material leaving a poor country. It is a story about mastery: a craft refined over nearly two centuries, by farmers, shearers, brokers, combers and designers who together supply the world. It is also a story with a question at its heart. When the fleece is this good, why does so much of its value end up somewhere else?
I. The goat
The angora takes its name from Ankara, the Turkish province that was the only source of these goats until the middle of the nineteenth century. The word mohair itself entered English before 1570, from the Arabic mukhayyar, a kind of fine haircloth. England began importing raw mohair from Turkey around 1820 and became the leading manufacturer of mohair cloth, Wikipedia's history of the fibre records.
South Africa's chapter began in 1838, one of the earliest commercial attempts to farm the goat outside its homeland. The United States followed in 1849, Australia from 1856. Of all of them, it was the Cape that made the angora its own. Today South Africa produces 56% of the world's mohair, Mohair South Africa says: 2,600 tonnes in 2024, worth about R940 million before it is even washed. Lesotho adds about 16% more, FashionUnited reports. Southern Africa grows roughly seven of every ten kilograms of mohair on earth.
Why the world wants it. Mohair is a hair, not a wool, and it behaves like nothing else. Each fibre has a natural, high lustre that reads as a quiet glow in cloth. It takes dye exceptionally well, which is why mohair yarns hold such saturated colour. It is elastic and strong, resists creasing and burns poorly. It insulates in winter yet wicks moisture in summer. The industry calls it the diamond fibre.
The finest of it comes from the young. A goat's fibre thickens as it ages, so the first shearings, called kid mohair, are the softest and most valuable. Zegna, one of the fibre's most devoted buyers, uses only kid mohair from animals under ten months old, according to the Zegna Foundation.
II. The farmers
About three-quarters of South Africa's clip comes from the Eastern Cape, the provincial development agency says, with more from the Little and Great Karoo to the west. This is old country for the angora. Sean Hobson's family has bred them on Martyrsford since 1865. Asked why the goats thrive there, he points to the land itself. "It's an incredibly healthy area, there are wonderful veld species, sweet plants," he told AFP.
Lloyd Short is a seventh-generation farmer on Wheatlands, a 7,700-hectare family property where he keeps about 2,000 angoras and his brother as many again. The Shorts sell their entire clip to a single French fashion house, an arrangement that lets the house trace every kilogram to its source. The first two shearings bring in the most money, he told FashionUnited.
The best of these farmers are also custodians of the veld. Trenly Spence inherited land his family had grazed for more than a century, and found it worn out. In the 1990s he moved to holistic grazing, rotating his herds so no paddock is grazed too long. He now runs seven times as many animals as he did thirty years ago. "Overgrazing is caused by time, and not the amount of animals," he told Textile Exchange, whose profile of Karoo growers also meets CJ Lotter, who spreads out his water points so the herds don't trample the veld around one trough.
The new growers. The industry founded the Mohair Empowerment Trust to bring emerging Black farmers into the trade. Its head, Beauty Mokgwamme, finds promising Black farmers and gives them interest-free loans of goats, repaid from the profits of their own shearings. The Trust also teaches the record-keeping that responsible-mohair certification demands. In February 2026, the Eastern Cape's development agency said it was investing alongside the Trust to bring emerging growers to commercial scale.
Across the border. In the highlands of Lesotho, next door, the fibre rests on herders. More than 80,000 are employed, by one estimate, and some 320,000 Basotho depend directly on wool and mohair, GroundUp reported in June 2026. Khotso Tšoeu, near Mokhotlong, spends months alone at a stone hut with his employer's flock, paid once a year: 12 sheep, or M12,000. Mokoinihi Thinyane, who chairs the national growers' association and once worked South Africa's mines, sums it up: "This is our way of life."
III. The shearing shed
Twice a year, roughly every six months, the herds come in. South Africa shears twice a year, where Turkey shears once and grows the longest locks. A young goat gives about a kilogram at its first shearing and around 1.5 kg at its second. Between shearings the goats are dipped against parasites, and in Lesotho they are dipped, vaccinated and dosed before the shears come out, to protect the fleece. There, goat shearing begins on 1 April and aims to finish by the end of May.
The shed is where the fibre's value is first decided. A fleece shorn cleanly, kept free of straw and dung, and sorted by fineness and length can command more at auction than the same fleece handled carelessly. The language of the trade starts here: kid, young goat, adult; the micron that measures each fibre's thickness; the length class written on the bale. At the April 2026 sale, the top bale was 21-micron kid mohair of B length with a 92% clean yield, Farmers Weekly reported, meaning almost all of its weight was fibre and not grease or dirt.
The people with the shears are the least visible hands in this story. They are skilled, they work fast, and their pay and conditions shape everything from the quality of the clip to the welfare of the animals. Mohair South Africa's director, Marco Coetzee, told AFP that farmers now face annual broker visits and third-party audits. What happens on the shearing floor between those visits is the question the industry still has to answer, and we return to it in section IX.
IV. The auction floor
From the farms, the bales travel to Gqeberha, the old Port Elizabeth, where the world's mohair changes hands. Two South African brokers, The House of Fibre and OVK, handle more than 70% of the global trade between them, split almost evenly. Here the buyers for the world's mills bid against each other, bale by bale.
The fourth sale of the 2026 season shows the market at work. Buyers took 96% of the 156,849 kg on offer, Farmers Weekly reported on 6 April. The average market indicator settled at R403.86 a kilogram. Kid mohair rose 2% on the previous sale while the stronger adult hair eased. The star of the day was a single bale of 21-micron kid mohair from Martin and Hein Truter of Die Wieg Boerdery in the Oudtshoorn district. It sold for R1,110 a kilogram, close to three times the average. Pierre van der Vyver, who heads The House of Fibre, called it "certainly the best quality offered this year so far."
Who bought it tells you where the fibre goes next:
| Buyer | Share of the April 2026 sale |
|---|---|
| Stucken Group | 34% |
| Samil | 34% |
| Süd Wolle | 11% |
| Mosenthal's | 9% |
| Connacher | 7% |
| Vitale Barberis Canonico (VBC) | 4% |
| Standard Wool South Africa | 1% |
Two South African processors took more than two-thirds of the sale. One famous Italian mill, VBC, bought directly. The rest went to traders and combers who supply mills around the world. For responsibly certified farms, the auction is also where certification travels with the fibre: auditors confirm a farm's status, and that status is attached to the mohair sold at the official sales, Mohair South Africa explains.
V. The combing plants
After the auction, almost all of the clip stays in South Africa for its next transformation. About 98% of it is processed locally, Riaan Marais of Mohair South Africa told Farmbiz; only around 2% leaves as greasy, unwashed fibre. South Africa even imports greasy mohair to process here.
The work is industrial and exacting. The fleece is scoured to strip out grease, dust and plant matter. It is carded into sliver, a soft rope of loosened fibre, and then combed to pull out short and uneven hairs. What remains is a top: a clean, gleaming ribbon of long, parallel fibre, ready to be spun.
Two companies dominate this stage. The Stucken Group has worked with South African mohair since 1951. It describes itself as a vertically integrated processor and trader that also spins and dyes mohair yarn, and through its Hinterveld mill in the Eastern Cape it weaves and knits blankets, throws and fashion fabric, according to Mohair South Africa's directory. Samil Natural Fibres runs the Border Combing Plant at Ntabozuko, established in 1987. In February 2026 it unveiled a new R21 million carding machine there. The plant employs 82 permanent staff, and Samil held an estimated 41% of South Africa's mohair top and noil exports in 2025, the Eastern Cape Development Corporation reported.
Then the tops leave. In 2022, the most recent year with published destinations we could find, Italy took 39% of South Africa's mohair tops exports, China 26%, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria 10% each, and Taiwan, Japan and Spain most of the rest, Mohair South Africa reported.
The combing plants are a point of real pride: they turn a farm product into a world-standard industrial input, and they keep skilled industrial jobs in the province. But a top is still an ingredient. The stages that turn it into something people long to own, spinning at scale, weaving, finishing, design and the brand, mostly happen elsewhere.
VI. The mills and the tailors
Biella. In the foothills of the Italian Alps, the wool town of Biella has spun and woven the world's finest suiting cloth for generations. Vitale Barberis Canonico, one of its best-known mills, buys South African mohair directly at the Gqeberha sales and uses it in large quantities for summer cloth, according to its listing with Mohair South Africa.
Nearby in Trivero stands Casa Zegna, home of a house whose relationship with the Karoo is one of the great untold stories of South African fashion. In the late 1960s Angelo Zegna travelled to the kid mohair farms around Port Elizabeth. The Zegna Group soon became one of the world's largest buyers of kid mohair, and at times secured an entire season's production. In 1970, with South Africa's Mohair Board, it founded the Ermenegildo Zegna Mohair Trophy, an annual award for the country's best kid mohair farms, designed to push growers toward ever finer fibre. Zegna then bought the kid mohair of the top three farms. The trophy itself became an object of craft: from 1980, a silver plate engraved by the Florentine silversmith Brandimarte Guscelli. One family farm, FE Colborne & Sons, won it nine times. "We've been holding the Ermenegildo Zegna Mohair Trophy Awards since 1970," Paolo Zegna, the group's chairman, said at the 45th edition in Johannesburg, the Zegna Foundation records.
Savile Row. In England, mohair changed the shape of men's tailoring. Mohair suiting was developed there, Permanent Style's guide to the cloth explains, at first with mohair in the weft and wool in the warp, and the mill William Halstead was the first to weave it well. Dormeuil's famous Tonik cloth was, by the mill's own account, about 59% kid mohair and 41% wool in its 1957 form. Burberry used an 87/13 wool-and-mohair blend for so long it became the industry standard. The look returned in the Mod-inspired revivals of the 1980s and 1990s, including Ozwald Boateng's.
Read the names in London cloth merchants' swatch books and South Africa is written into them. Harrisons has sold a mohair suiting called Cape Kid. Standeven, the merchant arm of William Halstead, has offered one called Cape Town. Tailors reach for these cloths for two reasons: the sharp, two-tone sheen that makes an evening suit glow under lights, and the lightness and crease resistance that make a summer suit wear cool. Zegna says mohair cloth has found new life in humid markets in the East for exactly that reason.
VII. The runway
The most exciting chapter of this story is being written at home, by South African designers who treat mohair not as a commodity but as a signature.
Laduma Ngxokolo showed the way. His early knitwear, made for amakrwala, young Xhosa men returning from initiation, translated the arrows, diamonds and zig-zags of Xhosa beadwork into knit. He sourced mohair and merino locally and had the yarns dyed to his own palette, designboom reported when the work was shown at Design Indaba. That work grew into MaXhosa Africa, now one of the continent's best-known luxury labels.
The Diamond Fibre Collections. In 2020 the South Africa Mohair Cluster, a non-profit funded through the dti, partnered with SA Fashion Week to give three young studios a year of raw materials, marketing and mentorship: Lukhanyo Mdingi, Judith Atelier and MmusoMaxwell. Their mohair collections, shown at the first digital SA Fashion Week that October, paired oversized volumes with clean lines and played mohair's love of colour against soft, traditional weaves, SA Fashion Week announced. Mdingi works with artisans who source or make unique textiles; Judith Atelier builds minimal, tailored womenswear; MmusoMaxwell draws its tailoring from African heritage.
The new guard, as Mohair South Africa's review of 2024 records:
Gugu Peteni of GUGUBYGUGU built her SS25 collection, Echoes of Self, around merino and mohair, including a mohair sweater and a 100% mohair scarf, and took it to Paris and New York fashion weeks.
Kat van Duinen presented An Ode to Africa, mohair worked with ostrich feather, in partnership with Mohair South Africa at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town.
Stephanie Bentum hand-knits and felts throws from dead-stock and end-run mohair, using the fibre's lustre and resistance to pilling. The work won the 2024 Twyg award for innovative design and materials.
The studio in Prince Albert. On the edge of the Great Karoo, the Frances V.H. Mohair studio does what almost no one else does: every step from fleece to finished piece, on site and by hand. Fifteen women wash and open the fibre by hand to keep its softness, then spin, dye, weave and embroider it. Most had no textile training when they joined. Founded in 2017 on mohair from the founder's own family farm, the studio makes rugs, tapestries that tell stories of the region, and small runs of clothing, Homo Faber reports. Its pieces include a Spider Knit jumper, a SOFA mohair jacket and the Good Hope Tapestry, made with the artist Graeme Black.
This is what it looks like when the meal is cooked at home: South African fibre, made by South African hands, carried under South African names.
VIII. The ledger
Follow the money along the same road the fibre travels, and the picture is clear. South Africa leads the first stages and leads them brilliantly. The stages where a kilogram of fibre becomes a garment people long for happen mostly elsewhere.
The journey at a glance
In South Africa: Farm and shear (Karoo and Eastern Cape) → Auction (Gqeberha, avg R403.86/kg, April 2026) → Comb into tops (Stucken and Samil, ~98% of the clip)
Exported as tops (Italy 39%, China 26%, 2022)
Mostly abroad: Spin and weave (Biella, China, the UK) → Design and make (tailors and fashion houses) → Brand and sell
The first three stages happen at home; the rest happen mostly abroad. The handover comes after combing, when the fibre leaves as tops.
What South Africa earns. The country's clip was worth about R940 million in its greasy state in 2024, Mohair South Africa says. The industry supports around 30,000 jobs. Combing adds value before export, and the best farms earn exceptional prices: the April 2026 top bale fetched R1,110 a kilogram against an average of R403.86. In Lesotho, wool and mohair together brought in about M800 million in the 2024–2025 season.
We sell the ingredient. Others sell the meal.
That line is not a complaint. It is an accurate description of where the margin sits. About 80% of South Africa's mohair still leaves in a relatively raw form, Homo Faber notes. Spinning, weaving, design, branding and retail are the stages where a fibre's price multiplies, and most of them happen in Biella, in Asian mills and in European fashion houses.
One fibre, two prices. At auction, an average kilogram of greasy mohair earned its farmer R403.86. Now look at the same fibre as a finished object. A king-size throw of 100% South African mohair, hand-woven by the Frances V.H. studio in Prince Albert, retails for CAD 595 at Obakki, an online design store. That throw is the exception that proves the point: it was spun, dyed and woven in the Karoo, so far more of its value stayed home.
IX. The reckoning
A story that celebrates this industry has to stand in the shearing shed with open eyes. Twice in eight years, undercover footage has put the welfare of angora goats in front of the world.
2018. In January and February 2018, investigators for PETA Asia filmed at 12 South African goat farms and a slaughterhouse, FashionUnited reported. PETA alleged that workers dragged goats by their horns and legs, that shearers paid by volume left animals cut and bleeding, and that some goats were killed while conscious. Farmers said such incidents are extremely rare. Mohair South Africa said only two farms appeared in the footage and commissioned an independent audit by SAMIC; PETA disputed that count. The market did not wait for the argument. H&M, Zara's owner Inditex, Topshop's owner Arcadia and Gap Inc. pledged to drop mohair, and by August PETA counted nearly 300 retailers. The NSPCA laid cruelty charges against four farmers that August, it said.
The response. The industry rebuilt around proof. The Responsible Mohair Standard, developed by the non-profit Textile Exchange with Mohair South Africa, was released in March 2020. It writes the Five Domains of animal welfare into its criteria, sends third-party auditors onto farms and tracks certified fibre from farm to finished product, Textile Exchange says. Months later, Mohair South Africa partnered with Oritain, which uses forensic science to verify which country a fibre came from, Textile World reported. Buyers began to return in 2020, Mohair South Africa's director, Marco Coetzee, told AFP.
2026. On 21 January 2026, PETA Asia released a second investigation, this time from several RMS-certified facilities in South Africa and Lesotho. PETA alleges that workers struck goats with brooms and poles, dragged them by their horns and legs, and sheared one goat with a large open wound, and that dead goats were filmed discarded at one site. It says one facility has ties to Paul Smith's mohair supplier, according to its release. These are PETA's allegations; ESONILE has not visited the facilities. Textile Exchange told The Ethos that the treatment shown "falls far short of the standards the Responsible Mohair Standard (RMS) requires," and said the certification body would review any farms confirmed as certified.
Mohair South Africa's response. At the time of writing, we could not find a published response from Mohair South Africa to the January 2026 footage. ESONILE invites the organisation to respond, and will publish its answer in full. These are the questions we would most like answered:
Have the facilities in the footage been identified, and what has happened to their certification?
How is the shearing floor checked between scheduled audits?
How are shearing teams paid, and does pay reward speed over care?
What will change before the next shearing season?
The goats carry this industry, in every sense. How they are handled will decide whether the world keeps buying, and whether South African mohair can be what it deserves to be: the most trusted luxury fibre on earth.
X. Keeping more of the gold
South Africa does not need to invent a mohair industry. It already has the best one in the world at the stages it controls: the finest kid fibre, the auctions the world depends on, a processing industry through which more than 80% of the world's mohair passes, and a new generation of designers who know exactly what to do with the result. The question is not whether South Africa matters to luxury fashion. It is how much of the value it creates the country chooses to keep.
Five moves would change the ledger:
Make care the measure. Welfare is the industry's licence to trade. Unannounced audits, and pay that rewards care as well as speed, would protect the fibre's name more than any campaign.
Spin and weave more at home. The Stucken Group already spins and dyes yarn; its Hinterveld mill weaves blankets, throws and fashion fabric. These are proof of concept, not exceptions to celebrate and forget. More capacity at this stage is where the next share of value lies.
Build African mohair labels. Every MaXhosa knit, every GUGUBYGUGU sweater, every Frances V.H. throw keeps the story, the craft and the margin at home. Each one needs buyers, at home and abroad.
Sell the provenance. South Africa now has tools that few fibre producers can match: a welfare standard, third-party audits and forensic origin testing. Proven origin is a luxury in itself, and South African mohair should command it.
Widen the circle. Programmes like the Mohair Empowerment Trust bring new Black farmers into a trade long shaped by multi-generation family farms. Their success is the industry's future.
Lauren Moore, Mohair South Africa's head of communications and sustainability, put the stakes plainly at the industry's 2025 brand reset. "We are the custodians of something extraordinary," she told The Herald.
She is right, and the evidence is everywhere once you know where to look. It is in a 21-micron bale from Oudtshoorn that fetched R1,110 a kilogram. It is in a silver trophy engraved in Florence for South African farmers. It is in a cloth called Cape Kid in a London swatch book, a knit that carries Xhosa beadwork onto a runway, and fifteen women in Prince Albert turning their own district's fleece into rugs, tapestries and jackets.
The golden fleece will keep growing in the Karoo. The next decade will decide how much of its gold comes home. The next time you touch a lightweight suit with that quiet glow, or wrap yourself in a throw that catches the light, look at the label. Then ask where it began. There is a good chance the answer is here.
Sources for this story include Mohair South Africa, Farmers Weekly, FashionUnited/AFP, the Eastern Cape Development Corporation, Textile Exchange, the Zegna Foundation, Permanent Style, GroundUp, The Herald and PETA, linked throughout.
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