Why I bought 1,200 pounds of wool
The first 50 preorders have sold out. The Oatmeal Wool Cape is now available.
I bought 1,200 pounds of wool with no plan for it.
It belonged to the King family, who raise sheep at the King Ranch in New Mexico, a breed developed in this state and shaped by the high desert over generations. I bought the whole clip on a hunch, the same kind I had when I started Etkie twelve years ago.
Wool like theirs often never finds a buyer. It comes off the sheep, gets baled, and sits, or sells below market value. Some of it is buried because it costs too much to process. Most of what does sell leaves the country: about 70 percent of the American clip is exported, and for the last decade roughly three quarters of that has gone to China. The sheep industry told the House Agriculture Committee as much in 2023, and told the Senate in 2025 that China has more wool processing equipment than the rest of the world combined. Only three working mills in America can still spin yarn and weave it into cloth.
I had seen this before. When I started Etkie, Navajo women here were doing some of the most demanding handcraft in North America and pricing it at a fraction of what it was worth. Native jewelry had no luxury market. It was worn in Santa Fe and almost nowhere else. I wanted it worn in New York and Paris, by people who would pay what it was worth, and that market had to be built. The talent was never the problem. What was missing was the part in between: taking something already beautiful and making it fit in a world other than the one it came from.
American wool had the same gap. The King family’s fleece has been extraordinary the entire time. It can be made into cloth here, and beautifully, but it’s expensive, and the market has to be built on purpose. Nobody was going to build one for the Kings.
That was two years ago. There are now 150 capes.
How wool becomes cloth
Most people don’t know what turning wool into cloth involves. I didn’t either. A fleece comes off the animal carrying lanolin, dirt, and seeds. It’s scoured in hot baths and loses about half its weight, carded until the fibers lie in one direction, spun, and wound onto cones. Then comes warping, the step I still find hard to believe: someone sets hundreds of lengthwise threads in place by hand before the loom can run. Then it’s woven, washed, pressed, and finished, a craft of its own that can change the feel of a cloth completely.
- 01Scour
- 02Card
- 03Spin
- 04Cone
- 05Warp
- 06Weave
- 07Wash
- 08Press
- 09Finish
That’s eight or nine operations, once spread across different buildings in different towns. Nearly all of those buildings are gone.
One of the three that remain sits on a slope in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, part brick, part stone, with two smokestacks behind it. It dates to the 1840s. It had shut down before Jacob Long bought it and started it up again as American Woolen. The New York Times profiled him last year. I’ve spent much of the last two years there with Jacob and with Arthur and Tammy, who run the machines. No one had a specification for what New Mexico fleece would do on a loom. Fiber length, crimp, grease content, and how it takes tension all vary by where the wool came from, and the only way to learn is to run it and look at what comes off.
The clip kept arriving while we worked, one shearing at a time. That’s what it costs to insist on one ranch.
The King family
The King family came to Connecticut and watched wool from their own sheep come off the loom as cloth.
I’ve thought about that afternoon a lot. Most ranchers never see what their wool becomes. Most of us never see who made what we wear.
The makers
From Connecticut the cloth went to Katie and JR in New York, who cut and sewed the capes and are the best at wool I’ve found. The buttons came from T Skies in Albuquerque, who hand-hammered each one in silver.
- Fleece
- The King family · King Ranch, New Mexico
- Spun & woven
- Jacob, Arthur and Tammy · American Woolen, Stafford Springs, CT
- Cut & sewn
- Katie and JR · New York
- Silver buttons
- T Skies · Albuquerque
I made the cape because it didn’t exist.
I didn’t want a jacket. I wanted the piece you throw over jeans and it’s enough, and wear to dinner and it’s the whole outfit. Something that feels like Santa Fe and could still belong in a city.
It’s oatmeal, lined in 100% silk, and it’s $595. I spent years in high fashion, and I’ve tried on the best capes I could find in stores. I know ours holds up. It never leaves the United States, and I can name every person who touched it.
The world feels loud right now. This is a small thing I can do in the place I grew up, alongside people who are still making things in this country and making them extraordinarily well. The two years were among the hardest of my life, and the most hopeful. I’ve come to think that doing hard things on purpose matters more now than ever.
Every cape comes with a $100 Etkie gift code toward a cuff of your choice. It will arrive in your inbox within 30 minutes of your purchase. Shipping is free by UPS Ground.
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Sydney