Why Wool Is The Best Fibre (For Outdoor and Adventure Sports)
We're now deep into winter, and all our trips outdoors are prepared for by wrapping up warm in our most practical, insulated and waterproof winter gear. We’re talking snow gloves, buffs, hardy waterproof jackets over a down - and a woollen hat. At Chasing the Dawn, we’re big advocates of using wool as a fibre for outdoor sports clothing, and not just because it is one of the most sustainable, recycled and reused fabrics produced.
Wool has a magnitude of benefits, many of which are particularly useful when you are taking part in outdoor and adventure sports. It naturally holds warmth, and acts as a fantastic insulator - it also has natural water resistance, is sweat wicking and feels great against your skin. As big fans of wool, and the process of using wool to create practically and beautiful outdoor clothing, we would always recommend using it as a fabric of choice when looking to invest in new outdoor equipment.
Why? Here are five reasons we think you should buy wool clothing for all your outdoor adventures:
Why wear wool?
It’s soft on the skin:
One of the naturally properties of wool fibre is that, if chosen right, it is fine enough to be very soft on the skin. In-fact, there is a lot of research to suggest that just wearing wool doesn’t only feel great - but also has health benefits for your skin too.
A study in 2018 by AgResearch, funded by Australian Wool Innovation, found that in comparison to wearing polyester, wool keeps your skin more hydrated. Polyester, worn over a period of 4 weeks, was found to increase the risk of redness and inflammation, where wool had no negative impact. The conclusion of the research was that wearing wool had positive health benefits for the skin and promoted the maintenance of healthy skin.
This information and research was conducted to help consumers understand the impacts of their purchases. In this case, wool was a significantly more positive choice to a man-made fibre.
Wool naturally balances body temperature:
Wool is a heat regulator - when you wear it, it regulates your body temperature in the same way it would on a sheep. We think one of the coolest things about wool, and wearing it for outdoor sports, is that when you’re too hot it has the ability to transfer your heat and moisture along every natural fibre and release it into the cooler environment.
If you’re cold, the air trapped in the fibres of the wool acts as an insulator, meaning the wool reacts to the fluctuations of our body temperature and has the ability to best adapt to what we need and the environment we’re in.
One of the reasons we’re dedicated to using only traditional methods is that the more you process wool, the more it loses this natural ability - but all wool will actively regulate your temperature, no matter what adventure you’re on or what exercise you’re doing.
Wool is weather resistant, and heavily felted wool is almost entirely waterproof.
If you’ve ever seen a sheep stood in a field through a cold North Yorkshire winter, you’ll know just how weather resistant wool can be. These animals aren’t just hardy, they’re built to endure cold UK weather.
The outermost layer of a wool fibre is made of overlapping scales which shed liquids very quickly. This means it can repel a certain amount of water - and it can even absorb up to 30% of its own weight in water before it begins to feel wet to touch.
What does this mean? Well, it means staying dryer and warmer for longer on adventures - it means being protected from the elements with no chemical help.
It is worth mentioning that the more you wash a wool product, the less efficient it becomes at resisting the weather - wool is also stain resistant, and doesn’t naturally need washing regularly so try to refrain from doing so too often.
As a fibre, wool is breathable and sweat-wicking.
Wool is what can be considered a ‘moisture wicking’ fabric. Much in the same way it regulates temperature, wool actually absorbs a small amount of water at the core of its fibre, and then also wicks moisture out through air openings within the material.
The result is that even when you’re working at your hardest, the wool will remain mostly dry to touch.
We’re big believers that anything you choose to wear when you take part in outdoor sports should enable you to go further. Wools ability to not only stay dry for longer than man-made fabrics but also stay warm when water does eventually penetrate it’s fibres is a fantastic way to prepare yourself for cold winter weather in the UK.
All about sustainability? Wool is 100% biodegradable and 100& recyclable.
It’s also a completely natural product, and ours is also ethically grown on local farms to ensure the impact to the planet is minimum.
It’s necessary for sheep to be sheared every year - if they weren’t, they would over-heat through the summer and it can cause multiple health problems that left untreated can lead to death. Unlike other animals, sheep are unable to shed their wool - so they rely on humans to do it for them.
In the UK, it often costs more for a farmer to shear their sheep than they can actually get for the price of their wool. In some cases, this loss can see these beautiful fleeces being burned rather than used for something productive.
Just by buying these fleeces to make into beautiful hats, we’re reducing the waste and giving back to the local farmers that support our business. At the moment, we seem to have sheep fleeces everywhere!
By its very nature, as long as producers have an understanding of where the wool is from and how the sheep were raised, wool is more sustainable than man-made (and even some nature, such as cotton) products.
It is also entirely biodegradable, and 100% recyclable. In-fact, wool has been recycled for hundreds of years. There are multiple ways it can be recycled, enough that it really should be its own blog post - but you can rest safe in the knowledge that when you purchase ethically and sustainably produced wool, you’re making an investment in a minimal environmental impact (In our case, just the energy we use to heat the water to wash the fleeces in).
