Brilliant British Wool.
It’s that time of year when a third of our design team (it’s a small team) disappears and comes back a week later rather bleary-eyed and smelling slightly of wool. Lambing starts late in this part of the world, the northern farmers aiming to miss the worst of the rain and the last of the frosts (that didn’t quite happen), and Alex from our design team takes a week’s holiday (and spends most of his nights) delivering lambs on the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. If you’ve been a customer with us for some time, you may have seen his face on these newsletters before. And if you’re keen-eyed (and interested in such things) you’ll have seen a steady rise in the number of products we sell made from British wool. I’ve been an ambassador for what was then called The British Wool Board for nearly twenty years now, but it's only recently that we’ve seen a rapid rise in the amount of British wool in CC products. There are a couple of main reasons for this.
Firstly, a handful of British yarn spinners have spent the last few years creating great stock ranges of British wool yarns, blending different fleece types to get a super wearable product that combines softness and durability. They’ve also done a fantastic job of creating really beautiful colour ranges. All of this makes it easy for us and our knitters to develop great looking, great feeling products. And as more people buy and wear these products then these ranges will grow, and the number of spinners spinning with British wool will increase, and as demand grows more brands will create British wool garments and so on in a lovely virtuous cycle.
Secondly, you, our dear customers are keener than ever to buy British wool products, as evidenced by the multiple sell-out success of both our Austwick cardi-jacket and our Shetland jumpers since we launched them late last year. As consumers, we are waking up to the idea that we need to support UK farmers so that they can keep doing what they’re doing, preserving a way of life in our rural communities that many of us hold dear. It’s that same desire to give a bigger share of the economic pie to the people making and doing good things that underpins the ethos of Community Clothing, and lots of other great buy-local initiatives (like the one just launched by six of my extremely nice near-neighbouring farmers selling their happy, healthy, nature-friendly beef and hogget - if you’re near Settle please check out the Farmer’s Larder vending machine at the Courtyard Dairy). Last year, British wool made the best price it’s made in a long time. Your altered shopping habits are having positive effects on the UK economy and on peoples livelihoods.
We’ll be adding more British wool product later this year; Guernsey sweaters, more colours in Shetlands, an exciting hand knit for men and women (more on this soon), and a couple of new men’s sweaters in the same yarn as the Austwick (which I’m still wearing pretty much every day).
And on our soon-to-be-released new website, you will see a symbol on the product page that clearly identifies all the British wool items. You’ll be able to search for them too.
Brilliant British Wool.
It’s that time of year when a third of our design team (it’s a small team) disappears and comes back a week later rather bleary-eyed and smelling slightly of wool. Lambing starts late in this part of the world, the northern farmers aiming to miss the worst of the rain and the last of the frosts (that didn’t quite happen), and Alex from our design team takes a week’s holiday (and spends most of his nights) delivering lambs on the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. If you’ve been a customer with us for some time, you may have seen his face on these newsletters before. And if you’re keen-eyed (and interested in such things) you’ll have seen a steady rise in the number of products we sell made from British wool. I’ve been an ambassador for what was then called The British Wool Board for nearly twenty years now, but it's only recently that we’ve seen a rapid rise in the amount of British wool in CC products. There are a couple of main reasons for this.
Firstly, a handful of British yarn spinners have spent the last few years creating great stock ranges of British wool yarns, blending different fleece types to get a super wearable product that combines softness and durability. They’ve also done a fantastic job of creating really beautiful colour ranges. All of this makes it easy for us and our knitters to develop great looking, great feeling products. And as more people buy and wear these products then these ranges will grow, and the number of spinners spinning with British wool will increase, and as demand grows more brands will create British wool garments and so on in a lovely virtuous cycle.
Secondly, you, our dear customers are keener than ever to buy British wool products, as evidenced by the multiple sell-out success of both our Austwick cardi-jacket and our Shetland jumpers since we launched them late last year. As consumers, we are waking up to the idea that we need to support UK farmers so that they can keep doing what they’re doing, preserving a way of life in our rural communities that many of us hold dear. It’s that same desire to give a bigger share of the economic pie to the people making and doing good things that underpins the ethos of Community Clothing, and lots of other great buy-local initiatives (like the one just launched by six of my extremely nice near-neighbouring farmers selling their happy, healthy, nature-friendly beef and hogget - if you’re near Settle please check out the Farmer’s Larder vending machine at the Courtyard Dairy). Last year, British wool made the best price it’s made in a long time. Your altered shopping habits are having positive effects on the UK economy and on peoples livelihoods.
We’ll be adding more British wool product later this year; Guernsey sweaters, more colours in Shetlands, an exciting hand knit for men and women (more on this soon), and a couple of new men’s sweaters in the same yarn as the Austwick (which I’m still wearing pretty much every day).
And on our soon-to-be-released new website, you will see a symbol on the product page that clearly identifies all the British wool items. You’ll be able to search for them too.
Brilliant British Wool.
It’s that time of year when a third of our design team (it’s a small team) disappears and comes back a week later rather bleary-eyed and smelling slightly of wool.
Over 70% of clothing is made from oil-based plastics. Discover the impact and explore our plastic free range, made entirely from natural, biodegradable materials.
When we developed our kidswear we set out to make it brilliant: gorgeous organic materials, zero plastics, and the super-high make standards that we set for our adult clothes. Partly this was because we wanted to offer something better than everything else on the market, but partly because that’s the only way we know.
