2007 Archives: Izzy Lane: Sustainable, Ethical Wool Fashion
‘Tis the season. Even with global warming boomeranging our temperatures between downright frigid and Africa hot (Bueller!), since every store in the nation right now is crowding its shelves with piles of soft and downy cashmere, wool and other gooey-dewey, wrap-me-up-in-front-of-the-fire-and-pour-me-a-cocoa sweaters, it’s only natural that we’d want to jump on the bandwagon and pile on the fleece—even if it is 85 in the shade.
One fabulous reason to join us in a cowl-neck is Izzy Lane, brainchild of Isobel Davies, the proudly vegetarian visionary behind Britain’s wildly successful organic food delivery service, farmaround organic. When negotiating with suppliers for farmaround, Davies discovered that farmers were burning the wool sheared from their sheep rather than selling it to manufacturers in other industries. Because 80 percent of the wool used in Britain’s clothing industry was imported, the native farmers couldn’t compete with the low prices—it would actually cost them more to properly shear and sell the wool than it would to just hack it off and burn it. (Sounds fun for the sheep, no?) Davies also found that many sheep were sent to slaughter because they had the unfortunate luck of being male, lame, infertile or in possession of a black spot on an otherwise white fleece.
Being a sheep lover (And come on now, who isn’t?), Davies decided to create an economic model that would preserve the sheep, support the British clothing industry and make great clothes that we Americans can now buy online. We love, love, love that real-life beautiful (but not pre-pubescent or starving) Davies herself models most of the clothes on the site, communing with the flock of native Shetland, Scottish cashmere and endangered Wensleydale (now numbering only 1,800 in the world) sheep on the lush green grass of her Sheep Sanctuary in Scotland. Look for select pieces in Cashmere, Wensleydale or Shetland that range from a simple boatneck sweater to a dramatic bolero, as envisioned by forward-thinking designers like Sarah Banks (skirts and jackets) and Gabbi Carter (knitwear).
