Why Is Silk So Expensive?

Silk is expensive because it is, start to finish, made almost entirely by hand and by hand of a creature that works at its own pace. It takes several thousand silkworm cocoons — and the mountains of mulberry leaves to feed them — to make a single kilogram of silk, and every stage from leaf to loom needs human care. Labour alone accounts for roughly half the cost. There simply isn't a shortcut.

It's a fair thing to wonder when a good pillowcase costs what it does. The answer turns out to be less about luxury markup than about a genuinely slow, fragile, hands-on craft.

So why does silk actually cost so much?

Because almost none of it can be rushed or automated. A silk farmer first has to grow groves of mulberry, since the Bombyx mori silkworm eats nothing else; then rear the silkworms through their short, demanding lives; then harvest and sort the cocoons; then unwind, twist, dye and weave the thread. Studies of sericulture put labour at somewhere between forty and fifty per cent of the total cost — more than the worms, the leaves and the land combined. Silk isn't dear because someone decided it should be precious. It's dear because it is genuinely difficult to make.

How many silkworms does it take to make silk?

Thousands, for an amount you could hold in one hand. To produce a single kilogram of raw silk takes on the order of three thousand cocoons, and those silkworms will have eaten more than a hundred kilograms of mulberry leaves between them to do it. Each cocoon is the work of one caterpillar over three or four days, spinning a continuous filament around itself. When you realise a pillowcase represents a small farm's worth of leaves and a great many tiny lives' labour, the price stops looking like a markup and starts looking like arithmetic.

Why can't it just be made by machine?

Because the very thing that makes silk wonderful also makes it stubborn. Each cocoon is one unbroken thread, and the prize is to unwind it whole — break it, and you lose the long, smooth filament that gives silk its strength and sheen, and you're left with short fibres that pill. That unreeling is painstaking, delicate work that resists brute automation. The rearing is no easier: silkworms need a narrow band of warmth and humidity (roughly 23 to 28°C, kept humid), and they sulk, sicken or spin poorly if the conditions drift. Machines are happy to weave the finished thread; it's everything before that which still needs hands.

Is cheap "silk" a red flag?

Often, yes. If a "silk" pillowcase costs less than a weeknight takeaway, the sums don't add up — real silk can't be made that cheaply, so it's almost certainly polyester satin wearing the name. That said, price alone isn't proof of quality, since plenty of dear things are dear for the wrong reasons. The reliable signals are concrete: a stated momme weight, the words "100% mulberry silk", and an OEKO-TEX certification. Real silk earns its price; it shouldn't have to hide how it's made to justify it.

So is silk worth the money?

For something you use every night for years, the maths is kinder than it first appears. A well-made silk pillowcase lasts years rather than months, breathes and regulates temperature in a way polyester can't, and is genuinely gentler on your skin and hair. Spread the cost across the nights you'll actually use it and it's one of the better-value small luxuries there is — a few cents a night for something that treats you well while you sleep.

If you'd like silk that's honest about what it is and what it costs, our LS Silk NZ pillowcases are 100% mulberry silk, 22 momme and OEKO-TEX certified.

There's a quiet dignity in a thing that can't be hurried — that still depends on a leaf, a caterpillar and a careful pair of hands, much as it did five thousand years ago. Silk costs what it costs because that's what care costs. And once you've felt the difference, you tend to decide it was never really expensive at all.