FÅRTEX®
For the sheep it is as lovely to be sheared as it is for you. It’s freedom. Normally, sheeps visit their hair dresser twice a year. But in countries like Sweden, 60% of all sheared wool ends up as landfill. Reasons are several, but primarily it’s because the clothing industry decided they only want soft merino wool from New Zealand & Australia, which is so sad! The Swedish wool is fantastic and worth to be taken care of.
This wool is:
biodegradable,
environmentally friendly,
antibacterial,
fireproof,
warm when it's cold
keeps you cool when it's hot
it keeps the insulation capacity even if the material becomes wet.
All our wool is mulesing free! How this treatment of animals has been accepted by us as consumers is unimaginable. Mulesing is the removal of skin from around the breech of the sheep to prevent parasite infection. Mulesing cause pain and stress to sheep, and can be considered animal cruelty. The Swedish sheep lives under good conditions and due to the cold climate they never gets that sort of parasites.
We have visited the sheep farmers ourselves to buy and collect the wool and drive it to our local washing partner at the island of Gotland. We purchased all wool. Prickly, dirty, sheared in spring or autumn. FÅRTEX® is an insulation you will not see, only experience because it's as an insulation in the clothes. We can use the wool the rest of the industry ignores. And we pay the farmer for all their work of breeding the sheep.
The wool still needs to be rough cleared. There must be no straw or faeces in the wool when it is sent to the washers. We lay out the wool on a long table and clear the wool from hay and other material. Time consuming or mindfulness, you choose how you look at it.
The wool is washed at the Ullkontoret the beautiful island of Gotland, Sweden's only large-scale wool laundry.
An important part of our vision to make the farmer to garment process 100% local. The wool is never leaving Swedish borders. This is totally unique to Wool rebel. When you buy a Wool rebel garment, you not only make a sustainable decision, you support local handcrafting.
Ullkonteret is heating the water using wind power and wooden pellets. Water is recycled and only environmentally friendly detergents without dangerous chemicals are used for washing.
The washing line consists of five washing tubs in a row. In each tub there are large "forks" that rotate the wool through the water. At the end of each tub are rollers that squeeze wash back into the tub while the wool continues to the next tub.
After washing, the wool dries up in a drying room using large fans. Finally, our clean wool is pressed into bales and driven to our wool carding machines in Småland.
The wool carding machinery we use is located in a small village in Småland. Fantastic entrepreneurs running an environmentally conscious carding business primarily used by the premium car industry and "Hästens sängar".
For us it wasn’t a straight journey to Småland. We have carded at small scale carding workshops around half of Sweden, and also turned to the leading wool carding partner in Europe, used by every other single clothing brand. Including our Swedish peers. This European wool insulation supplier is great, but they added polyester into the wool and we wanted a 100% local process. Anything else would kill our vision of hyper local farmer to garment production.
After 3 years of testing and prototyping FÅRTEX® is now a sophisticated, fluffy wool insulation made from 100% pure wool. No polyester additives or similar. FÅRTEX® is only available in Wool rebel garments.
Finally, FÅRTEX® is sent to our Micro manufacturing facility in Stockholm. Using unparalleled skilled craftsmen, every Wool Rebel garment is hand made by one single person and his sewing machine. FÅRTEX® is encapsulated by outer and inner fabrics to perfection.
Your garment is now ready, with FÅRTEX® inside. The local loop is unbroken, you will receive a Wool Rebel garment where your wool was collected from Swedish farmers and ended up in your garment without ever leaving Sweden. Not even during final assembly.
We really like visiting the manufacturing in their bright, clean and modern premises and do so as often as we can.
