A quiet mill in Ayr is fighting to keep Scotland’s luxury cashmere alive. While Paris and Milan chase trends, workers here mend raw yarn by hand, skills that are vanishing fast as veterans retire and few young people step up.
Alex Begg has supplied top fashion houses for over a century, yet today the factory floor echoes with worry. The average age of staff has dropped from over 50 to around 40, but that progress feels fragile in a town where jobs in fashion usually mean a train to Glasgow or London.
Hands That Know the Yarn
Maria Wade has spent decades as a greasy mender. She spots flaws in raw cashmere before it ever gets washed, stitching tiny repairs that machines cannot match.
“You don’t get many people mending raw cashmere anymore,” she says, running her fingers across the soft, oily fleece. “It’s a dying trade.”
Her role, like darning, fringing and weaving, belongs to a slower era. Fast fashion taught a generation to throw away instead of repair. Schools stopped teaching needlework. The result: entire crafts are walking out the door when people like Maria retire.
King’s Foundation Steps In
Hope arrived through an unlikely partnership. The King’s Foundation, based just up the road at Dumfries House, now runs intensive textile courses that teach exactly what fashion colleges often skip: how things are actually made.
Trainees spend weeks learning supply chains, sustainable dyeing, hand-fringing and production realities. Then they get placed in working mills like Alex Begg.
Emma Hyslop, 28, is one success story. After earning a fashion design diploma in Glasgow, she joined a six-week King’s Foundation course and discovered a world-class mill literally in her backyard.
“I had no idea this place existed,” she says, twisting perfect fringes on cashmere bound for a Spanish luxury brand. “It’s right on my doorstep, and we’re making scarves for some of the biggest names in the world.”
Bigger Than One Mill
The crisis stretches across Scotland’s textile belt. Hawick, once called the “home of cashmere,” has lost mill after mill. Johnstons of Elgin and Lochcarron still fly the flag, but they face the same problem: not enough young hands.
Latest figures from Skills Development Scotland show textile manufacturing jobs fell 40% in two decades. In Ayrshire alone, skilled vacancies now sit open for months.
Lorna Dempsey, technical transformation director at Alex Begg, says local colleges produce designers who can sketch, but few who can operate a doubling machine or spot a slub in greasy yarn.
“We need people who understand the material from sheep to scarf,” she explains. “That’s what the King’s Foundation gives us.”
Hidden Gems Worth Saving
Scotland still holds unique strengths. Its water is soft, perfect for washing cashmere. Its cold climate helps produce the finest undercoat from goats in Mongolia that Scottish mills turn into scarves sold for thousands in Tokyo and New York.
Begg x Co, the mill’s own label, now appears in stores from Liberty London to Bergdorf Goodman. Demand for genuine Scottish cashmere has never been higher, driven by buyers who want provenance over fast fashion.
Yet without fresh talent, even rising sales cannot save the craft.
“We are a hidden gem,” Dempsey says. “But gems get lost if no one is there to polish them.”
The King’s Foundation has expanded its Future Textiles programme for 2026, with new courses in natural dyeing and heritage weaving. More mills are signing up. Early signs show the pipeline finally filling.
Young people like Emma Hyslop prove the path works. From classroom to factory floor in months, earning decent wages while learning skills that once took decades.
Scotland’s cashmere story is not over. It just needs more young hands willing to touch the yarn, feel its grease, and fall in love with making something that lasts.
What do you think: can ancient crafts survive in a throwaway world? Share your thoughts below.
