Member Information: Glencroft launches distinctive Yorkshire Dales wool undertaking with native farmers

Countrywear clothes model Glencroft is to launch a traceable ‘Farm to Yarn’ Yorkshire Dales wool assortment in 2022

Clapham-based Glencroft was awarded £5,000 in grant funding from the Yorkshire Dales Nationwide Park Authority’s Sustainable Growth Fund to assist the modern undertaking. It hopes to pave the best way for the manufacturing of extra sustainable and completely traceable wool yarn merchandise.

As a part of the Clapdale Wool Challenge, Glencroft will buy wool fleeces from native farms inside a five-mile radius of Glencroft’s Clapham dwelling at a aggressive value. The wool will then be scoured, processed and spun in quite a lot of native factories and mills in Yorkshire.

The distinctive high-end and extremely sustainable Yorkshire-made yarn, which can be traceable from farm to finish product, can be used to make a spread of sustainable woollen knitwear, knitting yarn and tweed merchandise, which can be bought on-line by Glencroft.

Impressed by the same undertaking within the Lake District, Glencroft proprietor Edward Sexton, has introduced collectively a crew of British wool and style design specialists to create a Yorkshire equal. The range can be made utilizing conventional and fashionable sheep breeds of the realm.

Through the use of breeds from the hills which encompass us in Clapham, we are going to produce a wool that relates on to the economic system right here in 2021 – not simply the standard uncommon breeds just like the Dalebred, however a mix of the previous and the brand new.
This yr we are going to use wool from two native Clapham farms – Dawsons of Bleak Financial institution and Whitakers of Bowsber Farm – each of whom farm their sheep within the fields round us.

Edward Sexton, Glencroft

By working intently with native farmers and incorporating them into the worth chain from sheep shearing to manufacturing of the tip garment, I wish to guarantee farmers are handled pretty for his or her produce and assist them to attain a greater value for his or her fleeces – significantly these breeds not usually related to high quality countrywear.

Edward Sexton, Glencroft

The Clapdale Wool Challenge will create a round economic system within the Yorkshire Dales permitting native farmers to be paid extra for his or her fleece, with 10% of income fed straight again to native farmers.

The Flock, creators of British breed-specific traceable yarn, along with knitwear model KnitLab North, can even play a job within the feasibility of the initiative which, at a time of plummeting wool costs, is bucking the nationwide development by investing on this conventional materials.

‘By coming along with Glencroft and KnitLab as educators, designers, farming advocates and producers, to create farm-specific, traceable yarns utilizing British breed fleeces at a industrial stage, we will elevate this wool above and past the greenwashing so prevalent within the style trade in the meanwhile.’

Zoe, Co-Founder at The Flock

The design, improvement and manufacturing of the Clapdale Wool assortment, which is able to embody jumpers, scarves, hats and flat caps, can be undertaken by British knit design consultancy and fellow Make it British member, KnitLab North.

The precise provenance of every product can be detailed clearly on labels which is able to permit shoppers to see the precise sheep breeds used within the yarn, their qualities, historical past and the way they relate to the Yorkshire Dales.

Glencroft has already acquired the primary 100 kilograms of uncooked fleece which is prepared for processing from their partnering farm, and it’s hoped that the yarn and knitwear assortment can be available for purchase within the first half of 2022.