Alpaca fur: what it is called, how it is used, what it is worth

All four words are used for the same animal, and which one is right depends on whether the skin is still there.

Alpaca fur is the pelt: fibre on skin. It is what a fur rug is, and it is what our pieces are cut from, because a toy made from a pelt keeps the fibre lying the way it grew.

Alpaca fleece is the coat taken off a living animal at shearing, in one piece, before it is sorted.

Alpaca fibre is the trade word for the sorted, cleaned material once it is on its way to being spun. It is the word you will see in a mill.

Alpaca wool is what most people say, and a spinner would correct them: wool properly means sheep. It is used so widely for alpaca yarn that arguing about it has stopped being useful.

If you are buying, the practical difference is only this. Fur means skin, so it is sold by the pelt and by the piece; fleece and fibre are sold by weight.

The light browns and creams are what the herds give in volume, so those are the shades anybody can fill at short notice. The dark browns are a smaller share of every clip, and the darkest are genuinely scarce: an animal that grows a near black coat is not a common animal, and a large piece takes a great deal of one colour.

That is why a supplier who says every colour is always available is telling you something about their stock rather than about alpacas. Ours runs light to dark in a fixed order, and the page says which end is scarce.

Dyeing is the other route. It is done on the palest fur, because a pale base takes a colour most evenly, and it turns availability from a supply question into a scheduling one.

Four things, and none of them is a surprise once they are written down.

• Fineness. The finer the fibre, the more it is worth. The fur of a young animal is finer than the fur of a grown one, and it is priced above it.
• Colour. Scarcity, not taste. The dark end of the range costs more to sort and to fill.
• How much of it a piece takes. A 50 cm alpaca is not twice the price of a 23 cm one because it is not twice the material, and a rug is a different question again.
• The hands. Cutting and sewing a pelt is not a machine job, and that labour is most of what you are paying for in a finished piece.

What none of that tells you is a number, because a number without a size, a quantity and an incoterm on it is not a price. Ours are published rather than quoted on request: the bands are on the ordering page, per size and per order size, ex works Lima.