Moral fibre
Discover a clothing label with a deep respect for Australian merino wool and learn about the integrity of the farmers who produce it.
Natural, biodegradable and sustainable, Australian merino wool is also one of the world’s most luxurious yarns. Cushla Chauhan discovers a clothing label with a deep respect for our homegrown fleece and in Tasmania, learns about the integrity of the farmers who produce it.
It’s autumn on Tasmania’s Flinders Island and in the town centre of Whitemark a savage wind rips the esplanade spraying salty showers from the churning green sea onto the wharf. Clouds form freaky formations that sweep across the sky like a celestial slide show, and an angry rain lashes sideways. Then, it’s over. Blue sky, sunshine, stillness.
For locals on this island in the Bass Strait, the erratic climes are not remarkable. But for visitors to this stunning outpost northeast of Tasmania’s mainland, the wild weather along with epic landscapes, bitingly fresh air and rich biodiversity represent why Tasmania as a whole is considered so singularly spectacular.
It’s that rugged beauty that John Kellett sought too, the CEO and founder of luxury merino wool apparel brand Maatsuyker heading to the island to shoot his Melbourne-based label’s latest collection.
While Flinders makes the perfect backdrop for Maatsuyker’s urban-utilitarian cold-weather capsule, it’s actually another Tasmanian island, and the brand’s namesake (pronounced Mat-sighka) that was the brand’s inspiration. Rocky, wind-ravaged and desolate, Maatsuyker Island became home to Australia’s most southerly lighthouse in 1891, and today, it’s only lighthouse keepers who are permitted access.
“It’s got this incredible past, this legacy, and we’re sort of inspired by this mythical man on that island,” says Kellett. “The landscape informs and frames the design process, so the brand has a strong utilitarian edge, oversized pockets, hard-wearing fabrics, heavier seams, bar tacking and military-style metal buttons.”
Though Maatsuyker’s design directive is clear, the genesis of the label is unexpectedly rooted in academia. As part of his MBA studies
at the University of South Australia, Kellett developed a strategic plan for Australian Wool Innovation, which owns Woolmark, the peak industry body for Australian merino wool.
From his research emerged the realisation that while Australia produces 90 per cent of the world’s fine-apparel wool, local production of fine apparel was somewhat lacking. “Although we have a country-specific advantage, a unique skill in growing this fine merino, we’ve failed to value-add as a country,” he explains.
Maatsuyker, launched in 2017, was born of Kellett’s desire to see the supply chain brought closer to home, with the label’s Australian merino wool garments proudly designed and made on home shores. Initially intended as menswearonly, it has now moved into womenswear, after the enthusiastic uptake of female customers buying garments for themselves.
There are myriad reasons merino is so prized. As well as being the finest and softest sheep’s wool in the world, making up only one per cent of the world’s fibre for apparel, it’s durable, warm, breathable, temperature regulating, odour-resistant ,100 percent natural, renewable and biodegradable. It’s also deeply entrenched in Australia’s mythology and heritage.
Charles Downie is a sixth-generation superfine merino wool producer who along with his wife, Sally, and their three children, runs Glenelg Estate in Tasmania’s Upper Derwent Valley. Inside the family’s regal 19th-century sandstone homestead hang photographs of Downie’s Scottish ancestors, their stern expressions glaring from the frames. While those faces of yore seem worlds away from the young, warm and laidback family here today, the legacy of the forefathers, the pride, knowledge and sense of place, remains strong.
“While each generation might be a span of 20 or 30 years, that time is just a blink of the eye,” reflects Downie of his lineage. “When you take a step back you realise you’re only here for a very short period. All of us want a sustainable business that depends on a healthy landscape and healthy animals. The farm will be here long after you’re gone and you want to try and do what you can to leave it in a better position.” That ethos of working to preserve, protect and improve the natural resources of a farm is one shared by the 60,000 woolgrowers in Australia, and the reason Woolmark refers to them as custodians of the land.
Downie points out that basic farming processes have not changed radically over the past 100 years, but notes that new technology – such as electronic tags that track a sheep’s health and traits such as fleece and body weight – as well as shifts in consumer demand and climate change have meant farmers have had to respond and adapt. “Consumers are interested in the origins of their product and animal welfare is a big thing,” he says. “They want to know that the animals are looked after and that the land is looked after.”
Kellett, too, acknowledges the growing importance of traceability. “People are increasingly interested in where their goods come from, where the source material has come from,” he says.
For consumers committed to buying ethically, the Australian wool industry’s policy of transparency offers the assurance that they’re able to trace the merino wool back to the property where it was produced.
From a hilltop on a wool farm in Tasmania, the value of that feels especially tangible. Gazing outwards to pastures dotted with sheep and below to the still calm of the River Derwent reflecting wide sky and blazing autumnal trees, the purity of the environment is visceral. It’s a given that merino feels luxuriously soft against the skin, but there’s something about connecting to its origins that conveys a sense that it’s a more honest and meaningful purchase, too.