Buyers of the softest, finest and most expensive shawl in the world will find it even harder to find the luxury item now that Indian-controlled Kashmir has banned the production of shahtoosh shawls.
Wildlife activists are delighted, saying the move will help protect the highly endangered Tibetan antelope, whose superfine underfleece is used for the shawl.
The shahtoosh (Persian for 'the king of wools') was originally worn by traditional north Indian families who prized it as a dowry item. The first shahtoosh to reach Europe is believed to be the one Napoleon bought in 1796 and presented to Josephine. She was so pleased with it that she set a trend which spread throughout Europe.
More recently, in the 1980s it became a fashion statement of the international jet set.
The shawls are so fine they can pass through a ring, yet they are warm enough for icy winters. Each strand of the Tibetan Antelope's hair is said to be 6.5 times thinner than a human hair. It developed this underfleece to protect it against temperatures that can dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius in the area it inhabits, the remote plateaus of Tibet and Xinjiang and Qinghai provinces of China.
The number of antelopes has dropped from several million 100 years ago to fewer than 75,000 today. It takes three antelope to make one shahtoosh and poachers kill about 20,000 every year.