FABRIC: CLIMATE BENEFICIAL™ WOOL

Region: New York Hudson Valley, USA

Fabric Name:
​Carbon Farm Network fabric

Origin:
 50% alpaca 50%wool

Who made our fabric:
New York Textile Lab, Hudson, NY

Natural history and ecology:
This textile in our collection was developed by New York Textile Lab as part of our Carbon Farm Network:  a group of designers who work cooperatively to purchase carbon-farmed fibers from partnering farms in our NYS  region. This Jacquard knit textile is made from 50/50 single alpaca/wool yarn. There are no dyes used in the manufacturing of this textile. The color comes from animal fibers.  

What makes this so special:
This 50% alpaca/50% wool was designed and woven by Laura Sansome of the New York Textile lab which brings NY designers and farmers together to create a decentralized, regenerative textile supply network. Textile Lab’s Regional Yarn Sourcebook links apparel, product and interior designers to regional farms and fiber processing mills and includes Climate Beneficial™ fibers grown on NY farms who practice Carbon Farming.

Linking farmers and designers through a Carbon Farm Network

“Our Carbon Farm Network  operates through democratic governance, enables collaborative value creation, and supports the distributed growth of small to mid-scale businesses. This way, everyone has a stake in the cultivation and marketing of Climate Beneficial™ textiles and clothing.”


— Laura Sansone/ New York Textile Lab

Laura Sansone

Meet Laura Sansone, creator of the New York Textile Lab, an initiative that brings together New York’s designers and farmers to create more sustainable products. Sansone’s work centers around the notion that designers and consumers should be in touch with the materials they use and wear, and the impact of their work—both positive and negative. Partnering with smaller farms and independent designers, Sansone shifts the typical centralized economic distribution model, including bolstering groups to promote the climate mission.

As Sansone sees it, she wants to shift the cycle of production, giving designers insight into the process before they receive their material, as she explained to ATW80F: “For me, the first thing is moving designers to the beginning of that value chain…connecting them directly to their resources. Because we don’t enter the value chain until we’re purchasing from a distributor basically right in the middle [of the chain], or from a fabric supplier. Moving designers to the beginning of that value chain is one way to start changing the shape of our economy…and that enables us to start to make better decisions about what we’re investing in, right? So we could be partnering with farms that are practicing carbon farming, climate beneficial protocols, or biodiversity. Or we could be investing in localism with our partners, right? It’s endless, the amount of—what I call—deep value flows that we could be embedding in our textiles and clothing, or whatever we’re making.”

Moving forward, Sansone is looking to organize her work with NYTL into an app where she can coordinate activities and interactions between the carbon farm network, which will allow the Lab to grow and expand its environmental pursuit to even more people.

More about this fabric…

  • A Carbon Farm Plan

    From Laura - Our Carbon Farm Network is organized as a purchasing cooperative, where designers work collaboratively to source fibers and make yarns for the commercial production of textile products. The membership fees associated with our Carbon Farm Network support the implementation of Carbon Farm Planning on the lands of our partnering farms. The amount of yarn we make is based on the capacities and limitations of the workable landscapes in our bioregion. This enables a distributed growth logic and a 'commons' approach to how we extract and regenerate resources from our lands as we produce our textiles

  • The Farms

    From Laura - We have 8 farms that are signed on to our Carbon Farm Plan. In February we reach out to farms with commitments to purchase fiber. The shearing takes place from April to the beginning of June. We collect the fiber that has been sheared, skirted (short waste fiber removed) and bagged.

  • A Collective Solution

    From Laura - We have our fiber washed at a few mini mills and one larger facility in preparation for processing into yarn. We then deliver the washed fiber to the spinning mills for processing into machine grade yarn. We make the yarn in 50/50 alpaca wool blend in three colors.

  • Yarn from regional wool

    From Laura - Our bioregional yarn that we have been developing through our purchasing cooperative has been in operation for four years. This year we received a USDA Climate Smart Commodities Grant to help us continue to grow our network.

  • Designer Partnerships

    From Laura - The yarn we’re developing has been used by Designers such as Wol Hide, Vincent James Designs, New York Textile Lab, Plia and Manymoons in the development of sweaters, accessories and blankets. 

    The cultivation of our bioregional fibers has GHG benefits and the production of our yarn and textile products helps to grow our regional economy.