With winter upon us, I’d like to offer a few pieces of woolly wisdom. The first applies to all woollens, from knitwear to tweeds.

I was once photographing a fashion shoot at the back of a Savile Row tailor’s shop when a customer came in with a very long face. From a carrier bag, she produced what looked like a child’s Harris Tweed hacking jacket and proceeded to demand compensation. Apparently, she had bought the jacket the month before as a size 12. However, while wearing it out on a hike round Hampstead Heath, she had been caught in a downpour and it had dried four sizes smaller.

No heat, no shrinkage
The salesman politely enquired as to how exactly madam had gone about drying it. “I hung it up on a padded hanger in the airing cupboard,” came her reply. “Ah,” said the salesman, “there lies the problem. Had madam read the leaflet that comes with all our garments, she would be aware that the correct way to dry any garment fashioned from sheep’s wool is over the same amount of time it would take wet wool to dry while still on the back of the sheep.” Madam left the shop, sadly sans compensation. So, no heat, no shrinkage, keep those wet woollies out of the airing cupboard and nowhere near radiators.

Paradoxically, the opposite applies, should you have a woolly that has stretched out of shape in the wash; stick it in the tumble drier for a couple of minutes – no longer – and that should do the trick.

From the horse’s mouth
The next tip I gleaned from my one-time next-door neighbour, who happened to own one of Scotland’s best cashmere clothing companies.

There is nothing as warm as cashmere, the name given to the exceedingly fine hair that grows on the throat and belly of goats whose lot in life is to endure bitterly cold nights on bare mountains across Asia.

It is said to be eight times warmer than sheep’s wool and, for decades, was a byword for luxury – until M&S got in on the act. If you are buying for warmth rather than style, keep in mind that it comes in vastly differing qualities, ranging from chainstore to deluxe – you get what you pay for. Cashmere is expensive because of its scarcity – it takes a goat around four years to grow enough hair to make one sweater. To classify as cashmere, the diameter of the yarn has to be less than 19 microns. To put that in perspective, the diameter of human hair is 75 microns.

Cashmere care
According to my neighbour (we’ll call her Mrs B), woven cashmere garments should be dry cleaned; cashmere knits should be hand washed in soap flakes fully dissolved in barely lukewarm water and then rinsed in 19 – yes, that’s 19 – changes of fresh, lukewarm water. Knits should then be rolled up loosely in a thick towel before being spread out on a flat surface to dry. Cashmere sweaters should never be hung on a hanger; they should be stored flat and folded in acid-free tissue paper. They should never be worn on two consecutive days and stains should be treated immediately with cold water – hot water will set the stain. Follow that simple regime, said Mrs B, and your cashmeres will keep their looks for a lifetime.

What she didn’t tell me, and what I learned the hard way very recently, is that putting cashmere in the washing machine (I did it by accident) is simply a quick and easy method to make thick, scratchy felt – I now have the most expensive duster in Ireland.

Moth holes
At this time of year, there’s nothing so annoying than discovering that moths have got at your carefully put-away cashmeres. If they have, it is almost certainly because you stored them last spring without washing them. The merest whiff of perfume acts like a big placard reading Free Lunch. There are dozens of specialist firms that can solve the problem with invisible mending – you can expect to pay around €20 per moth hole. For woven garments, I prefer a discreet patch to an invisible mend. There is something incredibly wholesome about a neat patch and, these days, it sends out all the right, thrifty signals.