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Wool Week 2023

The Campaign For Wool and its annual Wool Week originally began in October 2010 with a launch event that saw London’s historic tailoring street Savile Row transformed into a pasture upon which fifty sheep grazed.

Herding Sheep

There was a shepherd, an immaculately turned-out sheep farmer called Harry Parker, who bought his flock from Wiltshire to London for the high profile one-day event, and even two trained sheep dogs to herd the flock for the watching public.

Over 100 companies participated in the first Wool Week.

Reduce Waste

For this year's Wool Week, which is a whole month in fact, we've been working with a company that has used our woollen cloth waste cut-offs to weave a new recycled cloth suitable (excuse the pun!) for high quality tailoring. That UK-based company is called Eco-Luxe.

Spending months collecting the tailors excess fabric cuttings, Eco-Luxe founder Su Thomas collated over 200 kg of textile waste to ‘kick start’ the bedding-in of the first ‘fibre opening’ machine in the UK.

It was then converted from waste pieces of cloth into a yarn, before being woven into cloth at a micro mill in Scotland.

Luxury Herringbone

So far 36 metres of grey herringbone luxury cloth, the first of its kind used in Savile Row tailoring, has been produced. We'll be using our length to create an travel overshirt.

It's truly a step forward to a future with zero-waste tailoring and highlights our recognition of the need for sustainability and the importance of reducing textile waste that goes to landfill from bespoke tailoring.

WHY CHOOSE WOOL? Well it's Natural, Renewable, Biodegradable, Breathable, Resilient & Elastic, Multi-Climatic/ Trans-Seasonal, Easy To Care For, Odour Resistant, Safe Non-Allergen Solution and Naturally Flame Retardant.

Peter Ackroyd of The Campaign for Wool commented: “The Campaign for Wool is delighted to see the development of a scheme to ensure tailors on the Row spare no effort in ensuring almost zero waste occurs in the already ecologically efficient creation of bespoke clothing. To see further life given to what would be considered waste is particularly encouraging. Wool, unlike the vast majority of fibres, at the very end of its life, is perfectly biodegradable and if buried, actually enriches the soil.”

Support

His Majesty King Charles III, quoted when he was His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, Patron Campaign for Wool: “It is abundantly clear to me that we need to make changes to the way we think about the production, use and the disposal of clothing and textiles if we are going to get anywhere near to meeting the United Nations climate change goals set for the industry.

A major part of that change has to be moving from a linear system to a circular one, where textiles and clothing are produced sustainably, enjoy long use, and are made using natural materials, such as wool, which will biodegrade naturally and quickly at the end of their useful life.”

To read more about the Campaign for Wool: https://www.campaignforwool.org/

To view ‘Why Wool Matters’ short film: https://youtu.be/m21Xn8R7188?si=xALCyQvGMh7uEwbb

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