The Cashmere Collection: Fashion With Compassion

One of the world’s longest running, most successful Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs, The Cashmere Collection is an internationally recognized fashion event that underpins the brand’s marketing platform year ‘round. It has won more than 50 top awards including the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) Golden World Award of Excellence for Integrated Marketing and Communications, and the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) Gold Award for Best Public Relations Program in Canada, not to mention it’s most prestigious hardware to date – the 2019 IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) “Best of the Best” Gold Quill Award.

From Cotton to Cashmere

Cottonelle, a category leader, had dominated the Canadian marketplace for more than 35 years in 2004, when its maker, Kruger Products, challenged Canada's top Public Relations Firm, Strategic Objectives to conceive an innovative Marketing and Social PR strategy to re-brand Cottonelle and transfer brand equity to an entirely new name, Cashmere Bathroom Tissue. All without losing its market-leading position. Cashmere’s new, premium, luxury positioning would be, and remains, “Nothing feels like making a difference, nothing feels like Cashmere.” Our challenge? How do you make news for bathroom tissue?!

Support a Crucial Cause with Unconventional Fashion

Industry research showed that consumers in the brand’s prime demographic (women aged 25-54) are interested in fashion and gravitate to products that support an important cause. Our thoughtful solution was to make good news for the brand by leveraging its namesake fabric to create The Cashmere Collection, a memorable, annual showcase for Canada’s top fashion designers and their original Bathroom Tissue Couture, all crafted in luxuriously soft Cashmere Bathroom Tissue — all in support of Canadians affected by breast cancer.

Today, Cashmere supports breast cancer efforts at the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS), one of the top five national partners supporting the breast cancer cause and the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation (QBCF).

PR Brand Platform

To keep the collection fresh we create a dynamic new theme and roster of designers every year. Our fully integrated fund- and awareness-raiser has featured more than 240 top Canadian fashion designers to date and has raised multi-millions of dollars for breast cancer.

Cashmere depends on our annual collection to provide captivating content for its website, social channels, advertising, and trade and consumer-marketing activities, which makes it imperative to introduce exciting new elements every year. The collection has featured a wide variety of celebrity curators, supermodels, performers, and spectacular papercraft fashions including mature, accessible, plus-size, gender fluid, and Indigenous designs, and a stellar cast of Canadian designers through the years!

Annual Fashion Show and Photo Shoot

Each year-long campaign culminates with an exclusive, end-of-September live fashion show in Toronto, Canada’s media hub, to kick-off October Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A brilliant line-up of Canadian fashion designers is recruited every year to showcase their vision of a future without breast cancer, interpreted in one-of-a-kind Bathroom Tissue couture. We produce a high-fashion photoshoot and conduct an intensive media relations strategy beginning in early May and running through November to generate copious mainstream, digital, and social media coverage from coast-to-coast-to-coast and around the world. Each year is guided by a unique and newsworthy theme, be it a Crystal Ball to commemorate the collection’s 15th anniversary, our Masquerade Ball, produced under lock-down, or 2022’s Celestial Awakening.

The 19th Annual Cashmere Collection

Our last and final Cashmere Collection returned to the runway on September 22nd, 2022, for its 19th successful year with Celestial Awakening. An in-person event, for the first time in three years, the collection challenged 12 Canadian designers to create awe-inspiring, runway-worthy gowns inspired by the celestial heavens, sun and stars above us at a 250-person audience.

Cashmere Gives Back

Throughout the month of October, Canadians are invited to purchase limited-edition Cashmere in support of Breast Cancer efforts at the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) and the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation (QBCF). Twenty-five cents from the sale of every specially marked pink package (up to a maximum of $65,000) goes directly to raise funds and awareness for the cause, throughout October’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. Plus, the public has a chance to vote for their favourite design every October; for every vote Cashmere donates $1, (up to $15,000), to the Canadian Cancer Society and Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation in the winning designer’s name.