Wool is back, apparently.
That means, I suppose, sheep are back too, which perhaps explains those ironic fox-print jumpers we're seeing in the shops at the moment. That Lauren Laverne was wearing one on the telly the other night.
Wool never really went away, though, did it? It may have receded slightly in the sense that our socks went from being 100% wool (or all-wool in the parlance) to 60% (wool-rich) to 30% (the percentage found in those three-pairs-for-a-fiver deals you get in the supermarkets). But it was always there, feeding the UK's moth population and sitting in furry balls in John Lewis waiting for doting grandmothers to swing by with knitting patterns dug out of their Golden Hands back numbers.
What is true, however, is that wool is now accorded a respect it didn't have previously. We all know about cashmere, of course, a luxurious and expensive fibre sourced from specific types of goat, and we may have heard of alpaca too. Those who don't think it's a resort in Mexico will recognise it as wool derived from a llama-like creature in South America. But how many other types of wool could you mention? Do you know your shoddy from your ragg? And what's a micron?
That ignorance is changing. Increasingly, these and other terms are being used as the trend for specificity – knowing where your raw materials come from – continues apace. "The obsession with traceability we've seen in the food industry is becoming a trend in clothing," Lyle & Scott design head Carolyn Massey has said. "People want to know the lineage of their garment."
Next month, for instance, Marks & Spencer launches a range of jumpers made from wool sourced entirely in the Pennines. At the other end of the spectrum, some high-end fashion manufacturers who rely on luxury fabrics are setting up their own farms so they can vouch for every link in the supply chain.
As luck would have it, this week is also Wool Week. A marketing push run by the Campaign For Wool, it has been going for a few years. But a muscular initiative for 2012 is the Wool School scheme, a competition for fashion and design students with the participation of retailers such as John Lewis, Topshop, M&S and Jigsaw.
Among the 10 winners were Claire Hunter from Heriot-Watt University and Laura-Jayne Nevin from Edinburgh University. Nevin's design for John Lewis has just gone on sale. Most eye-catching of the lot, however, is Henrietta Jerram's design for Topshop, a sort of Fair Isle-meets-Aardman Animations knit bearing the slogan "Sheep thrills". Judging that there's a bit of Gyles Brandreth in all men, Topshop has even made a version for blokes. Go on, I dare you. n
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