|Luxury Cotton & Merino|
In the late eighteenth Century at the dawn of the industrial revolution, the English developed a method of spinning wool and cotton in almost identical quantities. William Hollins and Company, a spinner and knitter in Nottinghamshire, England, developed the original fabric that was used for decades in sportswear, military uniforms, and outerwear.
The genius of his method was that the yarns were indigenously spun combining the warmth of very soft lambswool and long-staple cotton (from far-flung corners of the trade routes of the English Empire), to engineer a very light fabric of exceptional warmth and durability. The chief characteristic of wool is the individual fiber’s ability to trap body warmth and wick moisture; while the chief characteristic of cotton is its smooth and absorbent nature. The expert blending and spinning of the right percentages of these unrelated fibers became a miracle of the age.
A more commonly acceptable blend of 81% cotton and 19% lambswool, which was woven as a twill and brushed into a flannel, was produced from the beginning for workwear and more rugged intensive activities. This traditional blend is today the basis of our exclusive Luxury Cotton & Merino fabric.
We found that the longer fibers of today’s merino sheepswool spin tighter and more completely with our long-staple cotton than the older lambswool (little lambswool fibers, although soft, are very short ). This tightness of yarn establishes the durability while holding the vivid dyes in these yarn-dyed patterns, which have been carefully selected and executed from our textile pattern library.