Inside the workshop in Biella

An hour north of Milan, the Alps begin in earnest, and so does the only knit-jersey mill we trust with our merino. Four generations of the Pellizzari family have made cloth here. We brought a notebook.

The town of Biella is a quiet thing. Stone walls, low cloud, the smell of wet wool from the river mills. Giulia Pellizzari — fourth generation, the one who finally insisted on solar panels — meets us at the gate at seven, having already been at her bench since five.

The merino we use here is 17.5 micron, sourced from a single station in New South Wales the family has bought from since 1962. It is knit on machines older than most of our employees, recalibrated each morning by hand.

The new machines are very fast. They make a perfectly good cloth. We make this cloth.

Yarn first

The fibre arrives in raw bales, is washed in the soft water of the Cervo river, then spun on a downstairs floor we are not permitted to photograph. The yarn is left to rest for ten days before it goes anywhere near a knitting frame.