Every luxury brand has a founding year on the label. Some are old. Some are newly invented. Some are technically accurate but strategically misleading — a workshop that existed in 1965 does not automatically confer craft lineage on a brand launched in 2024.
We want to be honest about what "Since 1965" means for us.
What It Is
In 1965, the family that would become ANCYR began working with Himalayan Angora in the Kullu valley, Himachal Pradesh. Not as a luxury venture. Not with export ambitions. As a production craft — breeding Angora rabbits, combing fibre, and making Angora products for regional sale, using the knowledge that only comes from working with the animal and the material at altitude.
The knowledge accumulated over the following decades is real. Three generations of people who understand how Angora behaves in Himalayan humidity, how to breed for fibre quality at altitude, how to calibrate a spinner for pure Angora yarn, how to finish a woven piece without collapsing the halo. This is specific, documented, tested knowledge — rooted in the Kullu valley and its particular climate.
That knowledge is the asset that "Since 1965" points to.
What It Is Not
It is not a claim that ANCYR as a brand has been selling luxury shawls since 1965. It has not.
It is not a claim that we have operated continuously without interruption. There were years of less production, years of recalibration.
It is not nostalgia. We are not interested in presenting the 1965 production floor as a romantic ideal. The old methods are retained where they produce better outcomes. Where modern methods improve quality without compromising material integrity, we use them.
The Discipline of Not Inflating Heritage
There is a temptation in luxury branding to make the founding year do more work than it should. To let the implication of "since 1965" suggest unbroken excellence and global prestige.
We resist that. What we have is specific: craft knowledge from a specific region, about a specific fibre, built up over a specific period of time. That is enough. It does not need embellishment.
The year on our label is a reference point, not a performance.
What This Means for Altitude I
Altitude I is the first collection under the ANCYR name. It is not the first shawl we have made. It is the first time we are making shawls under a name that carries the full weight of our craft position — and that comes with a responsibility to be precise about what that position is.
The pieces in Altitude I are informed by decades of production. They are not nostalgic objects. They are the clearest expression of what we know how to make, made now.
That is what heritage means to us.