The next big style brag for men? ‘It’s not cashmere. It’s yak’

Yak wool is menswear’s new luxe material – rarer and funnier to talk about than cashmere. But is it softer too? Our writer compares a pair of shirts.

Fashion inspiration: A white yak enjoys the Hovd River in the Bayan-Ulgii Province in western Mongolia. Picture: LightRocket via Getty Images

Not all guys talk about their clothes. Most, like me, stay mute unless the item in question boasts a cool fabrication detail akin to a Porsche’s flat-six engine.

But when offered the chance to try a purportedly ultrasoft 10 per cent yak wool shirt, I immediately sensed conversational possibilities.

When it comes to droll exchanges, the only words funnier than “yak” are “crumpet,” “Kalamazoo” and “marzipan,” though, these days, relatively little menswear is constructed from crumpets or marzipan.

As for the yak itself? It’s a lumbering bovine that grunts rather than moos and, in the wilds of the Tibetan Plateau, assumes vast dimensions that evoke a hairy Cybertruck.

Were it not a strict and gentle vegetarian, it could easily devour a precious, little cashmere goat.

Speaking of tasty, premium goats, I also asked to test a 64 per cent cashmere shirt to determine, through informal polling, whether it beat my yak number for softness and sumptuousness.

Todd Snyder Knit Cashmere Overshirt, $US998

American Trench The Carl Yak Shirt, $US249

Jacob Hurwitz, co-founder of American Trench, which sells the yak shirt, said the downy fabric sample “blew him away” when he first felt it in Japan.

Pressed for details, he allowed that the yak cloth’s softness left him more ecstatic than a “really good pizza,” if perhaps slightly less ecstatic than an “amazing cup of Assam black tea.” (He’s a self-described “tea junkie.”)

In blind tests, I asked 12 colleagues and relatives to first feel my $US249 brown yak shirt, and then the gorgeous, grey $US998 cashmere shirt from Todd Snyder.

Most chose the yak, albeit by a thin margin.

One woman said that, despite a hulking yak’s potential to devour cashmere goats should it tire of herbivorism, she couldn’t say whether the soft cloth felt more manly, “having never been a man”.

Another woman said the cashmere shirt looked and felt more luxe, but she docked points for its “oafish lumberjack” patch pockets.

A note on methodology: During their deliberations, all of my testees were barred from sipping Assam black tea.

While Hurwitz believes the 10 per cent of yak wool definitely contributes to his bestselling shirt’s softness, he hastens to add that the fabric, otherwise “high-grade” cotton, has been scrupulously “brushed” to amp up that tough-yet-tender effect.

As he explained, the fabric goes through a “comber, which has little picks that pull fibres out and create that fuzzy texture.”

And, yes, Hurwitz and his team considered the yak fabric’s potential to offer his customers talking points and even bragging rights.

“The yak factor really helped drive the sales,” he said, noting that the shirt, new for American Trench this past fall, “crushed” for the brand, selling better than any previous shirting in its line-up.

The yak, he stressed, “added something exotic. It would be a lot less interesting to go around saying ‘I have a really soft cotton shirt.’”

The Wall Street Journal