100% Vicuña Classic Coat

Vintage 1958 Pure Natural Color Vicuña classic sheath gusseted dolman wrist-length sleeve coat…43” - knee length fall/winter coat with welt pockets on princess lines and over-sized leather buttons fully lined in dyed to match luxurious silk crepe. Light-weight with warmth of a much heavier coat due to the unique properties of the vicuña fibers. Vicuña is a protected species that provides the world’s finest most valuable natural fiber—therefore most expensive. Why? The fiber diameter is half that of cashmere, hollow air-filled fibers trap and insulate providing puffy fleece, giving the softest feel and lightest weight so wearer can enjoy a thinner coat w/superior warmth. Vicuña were near extinction, attempts to raise domestically failed, they exist only in the high elevations of the Andes where Peru’s Convention on the Conservation and Management of Vicuna dictates the time-consuming process of gathering the vicuna's slow-growing wool which makes it all the more exclusive. Only once every three years the animals are captured in a “ritualistic rodeo” by the Native Communities of the wild Andean plateaus, a census is taken and they are sheared using ancient methods that do not harm the animal and the fiber is combed entirely by hand. Keeping vicuna populations wild is cheapest most efficient approach to safeguard them but limits availability thus commands prices for a vicuña coat as high as the finest natural fur coats. Note tiny moth hole near back hem.