The Rake: Scabal and the Rebirth of Wool Pt. 2

SCABAL AND THE REBIRTH OFPART WOOL II In the previous issue of the rake, our study of Scabal and Woolmark’s joint mission to push wool fabric excellence into ever more exciting pastures took us from the hallowed ground of Savile Row to the hive of artisanal activity that is Scabal’s HQ. For the next part of this journey of discovery, we head north, to the heart of England’s wool textiles industry, and then to the other side of the world to get to the source of this miracle cloth and understand the worthy ethos of the Scabal Noble Wool Club.

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t’s impossible to overstate what an extraordinary gift evolution has given us in the form of sheep’s fleece. It is fire resistant and wrinkle resistant, and it absorbs and releases water vapour in harmony with rises and falls in natural humidity, which is why it keeps the wearer warm even when it gets damp. Even when stretched 70 percent beyond its natural length, it returns to its original length when the tension is released.

No wonder it’s been used to make human clothing since the Stone Age, across cultures the world over.

And, wool being to The Rake what silicon is to the computer obsessive, it’s with some anticipation that we find ourselves, one brisk winter morning, heading to Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, to witness first-hand the skill, precision and assiduousness with which raw fleece is turned into premium fabric at the Scabal Mill — an institution with half a millennium of cloth-handling experience behind it.

It is here that history’s most innovative and ambitious textile pioneers have enriched the world of menswear with the introduction of Super 120s, 150s, 180s and 200s cloths, as well as achieving other stunning feats, such as the incorporation of diamond chips into fabric.

The first thing that strikes the visitor is the extent to which the staff exude the same quiet pride in their work, the same industrious devotion to the pursuit of excellence, as we found at Scabal’s HQ a few weeks previously. The second is the amount of machinery on display in this vast, singlefloor operation: not just super-fast looms but sophisticated mechanisms such as a unique, state-of-the-art warping 176

machine — the only one of its kind in the UK — that can control the tension of every single yarn when creating warps between 50 metres and 5,000 metres.

Yarns arrive at the Scabal Mill in batches of 60-70 tons, which are stored in regulated temperature and humidity to keep them stable. All yarns purchased by Scabal have a minimum of five percent ‘conditioning’: the amount of water content present to ensure the yarns remain consistent in tension and resistant to breakages while they’re being woven.

During the warping stage, giant machines — hugely intricate precision mechanisms of polished, mint-green painted steel that wouldn’t look out of place in the Hadron Collider — split large cones of yarn into the correct size for the length of cloth required, before vertical yarns are strung into place in single lengths, like the strings of a harp. The sophistication of the onsite equipment is spellbinding: while Scabal and its staff have a heartfelt respect for tradition, they would never let nostalgia block their path to excellence, and technical innovation is part of their ongoing quest for fabric perfection.

This is manifest to anyone witnessing the action today, as one machine threads the warp in place, before being passed seamlessly on to another one that inserts the weft thread-bythread. Despite the automation, it’s a time-consuming process, yet the mill deliberately keeps the machines running slowly — they’re capable of 470 weft insertions per minute, but are generally run at around the 300 mark, and never run above 380, to minimise mistakes or the possibility of damaging the cloth.

Thus the whole process feels not so much industrial and more

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large-scale artisanal. Whereas other mills tend to produce units of up to 10,000 metres, the Scabal Mill produces only shorter lengths to order. And its hi-tech Rapier Looms ensure the mill can work flexibly and efficiently with these smaller lengths.

“The Dornier loom is, for us, the most gentle loom for weaving very fine worsted yarns,” says the Scabal Mill’s Managing Director, Ronald C. Hall. Dornier is the German manufacturer of high-tech weaving equipment favoured by Scabal. “Other looms are much faster, but Dorniers are more gentle and caring. And we don’t even run them at full speed.”

The final process takes place in the Victorian part of the mill, the mending shed. Here, a stretch of exquisite fabric laid out on a table, dappled by light from the mullioned windows, is being scrutinised with magnifying glasses, the eagle-eyed menders repairing tiny faults in the lengths of finished cloth as they go. Each mender is not only naturally gifted — it requires a highly skilled eye — but trained for three years to do their job. “You have to have different skills and understand different kinds of faults,” Hall explains.

Following this stage, the cloth goes out to the world’s leading textile dyeing and finishing companies, appointed by the Scabal Mill for this all-important task because of their professionalism and technical brilliance. Here, the cloth is scoured, rolled, dried, pressed and cropped, a process whereby another set of rollers, with ultra-fine knife blades, shaves excess fibres from the surface of the cloth and ensures it is smooth and even. Soft Yorkshire water is apparently the key, as it’s kinder to the cloth. The fabrics are then pressed at more than 100 degrees Celsius to ensure they keep their shape and retain their permanent finish, which is key to giving the cloth softness and drape.

All in all, what becomes evident during our visit is the fact that the Scabal Mill’s passionate, diligent employees take very seriously their status as custodians of the company’s heritage and reputation. And they’re not alone in doing so. Another, often overlooked, party in Scabal’s pursuit of fabric perfection plies its millennia-old trade more than 10,000 miles from the rain-dashed streets of Huddersfield.

RAW BEAUTY Steinway pianos are handcrafted over 12 months by around 450 highly skilled artisans. Yet even with this collective expertise, the pianos would not have their rich, warm timbre 178

were it not for the close-grained Sitka spruce — only those with annual growth rings measuring 8-12 per inch — used to make the soundboards. Château Pétrus can apply any amount of timehonoured know-how to creating its superb red wines, but their efforts would be in vain were it not for the quality of the Merlot grapes produced by the thick clay soil of eastern Pomerol.

No matter how skilled the craftsmen are when it comes to producing the finest commodities the world can offer, their work is dependent on the provision of the very finest raw materials nature can provide. So it is with wool cloth, which is why, for the past 50 years, The Woolmark Company, which owns the Woolmark symbol and is one of the best-known textile brands in the world, has been working tirelessly to ensure that the raw fleece Scabal dutifully converts into fine gentleman’s apparel is the finest it can possibly be.

The ways it does this are manifold. The Woolmark Company, established in 1937, invests heavily in research and development, advancing the standard of fibre and inspiring the world’s leading fashion designers to craft more and more garments from wool.

It works with the global textile and fashion industries at every level, developing better fabrics and driving consumer demand.

It has built a reputation as the global authority for quality wool products, and has developed excellent relationships with figureheads throughout the fashion world.

It has championed wool through awards programmes (the Woolmark Prize was first launched in 1953) and has sustained Australia’s oldest industry (the first bale of Australian wool was sent to England in 1807) through times of trouble, such as World War II, when production of inferior synthetic fibres became more prolific.

Woolmark also works tirelessly to serve the interests of the growers, and ensure their methods retain Australian Merino’s status as not just world-class in quality but a natural, biodegradable and renewable resource. Among these growers is Murray Picker, who is one of the Scabal Noble Wool Club members whose family has been farming wool for several generations on a property in Bigga, a village in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia. When The Rake visits Picker, his family property seems to have a certain terroir: touching the ground, you can almost feel the quality of the soil that will gradually, thanks to the endeavours of highly skilled workers in multiple disciplines, transubstantiate into equally superior fabric.

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Murray Picker and Gregor Thissen.

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Gregor Thissen.

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“The history of this country is all about wool,” Picker tells The Rake, his strong Australian accent and plaid shirts a far cry from the glitzy malls of Paris and Milan, where the fruits of his labour will end up. “My ancestor, William Picker, came here roughly in the mid 1860s and settled very close to this plot, and through the generations sheep farming has remained in the family. We’re now the sixth generation running this place.”

Like those who process his fleece on the other side of the world, those in Picker’s industry, he says, learn from the generation above from a very early age. He was taught the trade alongside his three brothers, who still work with him today, by their father. “It’s not something you can just walk in and do,” he says. “You learn from a young age and you grow up with it, then live with it. You don’t see many people from any other upbringings going into wool — it’s very rare. It’s a long process, an ongoing process. Even now, my father is still teaching us some pointers here and there.”

Picker goes on to explain that genetics and breeding is

and dedication that they put into their work — they put their lives into it. I really like their connection to the soil, and to the countryside and the animals. Working with these guys, we can enhance the product and make it even better — better fabric, with better crease resistance and recovery, which means when you travel with it, it retains its shape better.”

It was to this end that Thissen, late last year, came up with the Scabal Noble Wool Club — an initiative that would serve the interests of ecologically sustainable, economically fair farming. “Here at Scabal, we have always pushed the boundaries of what’s possible with wool,” he says. “It was while visiting one of these remarkable ultrafine wool farms that I realised that this part of the industry needed both protection and preservation.”

To qualify to be a member of the Scabal Noble Wool Club — which is named after Scabal’s new world-beating fabric, ‘Noble Fleece’, the first in a series of fabrics based on a new, carefully concocted selection process — growers must satisfy rigorous criteria. Firstly, they must breed pure Saxon Merino sheep, based on heritage bloodlines, on granite-based soils “I thought it would be interesting (which the sheep love), usually around 600m above sea to bring the market closer to the level. Secondly, the wool must meet certain crimping standards (this refers to the number of bends per unit source, and the source closer to length along the fibre, which has a huge bearing on the market. I was really struck crease resistance, elasticity, durability and thermoinsulation). Finally, in adherence to the importance by the people I met, and the heritage (Thissen himself is the third generation of passion and dedication they put of a fabric-producing family), growers will be favoured into their work — they put their if they are working in the same field, figuratively and literally, as their ancestors. lives into it.”

For Thissen, the cultural gulf between the remote, a major aspect of wool farming — “the wool gets finer, and expertly run sheep farms and the hallowed precincts of Savile we’re always controlling the style and character of the wool Row is all the more compelling for the inherent paradox. “The they are looking for,” he says — like other farms in the region sheep farms are very rugged and rustic environments, so the soil quality also contributes hugely to the quality of what is the contrast between those and the end result — this superproduced: wool with perfect texture, elasticity and crimp. sophisticated product — is just mind-boggling,” he says. “It’s For Scabal Executive Chairman Gregor Thissen, a closer interesting to see that people who live in this environment have relationship with the people Down Under who provide Scabal’s the vision to produce something that is ultimately so refined and raw material is invaluable in part because of consumers’ luxurious. This feeling of people being rooted in the soil and growing appetite not just for quality but for traceability and earth across many generations, and passing on the flame to the provenance. “More and more menswear consumers are next generation, is very compelling.” concerned about what goes into the product they buy and We couldn’t agree more. If there’s one thing The Rake has the sustainability of the supply chain,” he says, “so I think learned on this life-enriching journey, it’s that the pursuit of there’s a real opportunity for our industry and for us to inform perfection is a multifaceted affair: a collective enterprise that people about what goes into their suits.” involves coaxing the very best out of nature, then harvesting Thissen visited Australia in September 2013. “I really and handling its spoils with precision, flair and know-how wanted to go more in-depth, right into the roots of the wool accumulated over centuries. In tandem, Scabal and The industry,” he says. “I thought it would be interesting to bring Woolmark Company are embracing this noble task with zeal, the market closer to the source, and the source closer to the persistence and perspicacity. And they’ll never stop. After all, market. I was really struck by the people I met, and the passion the perfectionist’s work is never done.

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