Surf Wear 20

Finisterre Surfwear Pull the Wool Over Their Eyes. Willingly.
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 05. 7.09
Fashion & Beauty (clothing)
Buzz up!

Finisterre Founder Tom Kay photo

Remember the British technical surfwear company, Finisterre, whom we found were making some really cool gear with innovative knits of merino wool from New Zealand? We alluded then to some ultra-fine wool that they were exploring much closer home. In North Devon, Just a couple of hours up the coast from their base in Cornwall, as it turns out. Well, some more of the story has recently been revealed. And it involves a rare breed of sheep that has almost been lost.

As it was put to us, the tale goes, that during the 1970s, up in Scottish Aberdeen, the Macaulay Institute, an international research centre for “the environmental and social consequences of rural land uses” was hard at work breeding a sheep that could endure British weather, whilst still producing a fine gauge wool. Over a 25 year period they managed to crossbreed the hardy Shetland sheep, with the sumptuously soft wool bearing Saxon Merino. Apparently whereas Shetlands could produce wool with a fineness of about 28 microns, the Bowmont, as this new breed were called, blitzed it, with some producing 15.5 microns. (For reference, the softest Merino commonly used in sports apparel these days is about 17 to 18 microns.)

Alas, as Finisterre, put it, the British wool industry had, at the time, fallen out of bed, and so many hard years of breeding were left to dwindle into the fields of mixed sheep farms the country over -- with many Bowmonts being crossbred out.