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| | Please click below to purchase our beautiful products   Welcome to J&V's luxurious collection of Pashmina's, including the Wedding Pashmina, something for Wimbledon or the Races. Light and incredibly wearable Alpaca wear, offering Alpaca Summer Ponchos, an exclusively designed range of Baby Alpaca Stoles by Rosario de Armenteras, and a specially created summer coat from the purest Baby Alpaca. Alpaca fleece is a light-weight, lustrous and silky natural fiber. While similar to sheep’s wool, it is warmer, not prickly, and is lanolin-free, making it non-irritant and hypoallergenic. It is luxurious, soft, fine and wonderfully glossy. Many people who cannot wear sheep’s wool choose to wear alpaca clothing. Alpaca is warmer than wool and goose down yet breathes better than thermal knits. These animals live above 12,000 feet in the Andes Mountains. The fleece is what allows them to survive -30 degrees F nights and still be comfortable during warm days of intense sunlight. Alpacas are indigenous to the Andes Mountains of South America where they roam and graze on the large altiplano. The altiplano, a huge steppe-like area, straddles the east and west sides of the Andean peaks at an altitude of between 12,500 and 14,000 ft. The extremely harsh weather conditions of blistering winds and freezing temperatures creates the environment that is home to the alpaca and its herders. The alpaca survives these freezing winters due to its natural fibre. The nomadic peoples hunted the alpaca around 10,000 BC and used the animal for its warmth. It wasn't until around 4,000 BC that alpacas began to be domesticated. The region most widely known for its alpaca craft and specialization was southern Peru around Lake Titicaca. The finest textile products were available only for royalty. For the peoples of Pre-Columbian Peru, the most important channel for artistic expression developed out of weaving. The peoples in the south mastered this ancient craft and have passed it down through generations of skilled artisans. Alpacas come in many shades from a true-blue black through browns-black, browns, fawns, white, silver-greys, and rose-greys, we have kept the original Alpaca shades in our collection of Alpaca clothing and alpaca accessories. There are two types of alpaca: Huari which produce a dense, soft sheep-like fiber, and the mop-like Suri with silky long locks which you can see clearly on our Baby Alpaca summer coat, trimmed with the different types. Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of Ecuador, southern Peru, northern Bolivia, and northern Chile at an altitude of 3500 to 5000 meters above sea-level, throughout the year. Temperatures at which alpaca’s live can be as low as minus 20, so you can be assured that alpaca wear will always keep you warm! Alpacas are valued for their exquisite fleece which is used for making hand-knitted and hand-woven items. These include blankets, baby alpaca stoles, coats, jumpers, hats, gloves, scarves, ponchos and a wide variety of textiles. Alpacas have been domesticated for thousands of years. In fact, the Moche people of Northern Peru often used Alpaca images in their art, and Inca rulers wore alpaca as a symbol of their power and wealth. | |||
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