FINE WOOL · FROM A RANCH IN NEW MEXICO
The New Mexico Wool Cape
Fleece from the King Ranch in Yeso, New Mexico. Spun and woven in Stafford Springs, Connecticut. Cut and sewn in New York. Finished with a hammered silver button in New Mexico. 150 pieces.
Join the waitlist01 — THE PROBLEM
A lot of American wool never becomes anything.
It comes off the sheep, gets baled, and sits. Some of it sells for less than it costs to process. Some is buried, because there's no economical way to use it. About 70 percent of the American wool clip is exported, and for a decade roughly three quarters of that has gone to China. Fewer than five mills in the country can spin yarn and weave cloth, and fewer still take small orders like ours. It can be done here. It's expensive, and the market has to be built on purpose.
02 — THIRTEEN YEARS AGO
For those of you who don't know us, Etkie started thirteen years ago with sheer determination and no business plan.
Navajo women were doing some of the most demanding handcraft work in North America and pricing it at a fraction of what the skill was worth. Counterfeits are part of that; the market is flooded with them and they drag the price of the real thing down.
But the larger problem was that Native jewelry didn't have a luxury market. It was worn in Santa Fe and the Southwest and almost nowhere else. We wanted it worn in New York and Paris, by people who would pay what it was worth, and that market had to be built.
Talent was never the problem. What was missing was translation: a way to carry the work to people who would value it.
03 — WHERE AMERICAN WOOL GOES
We saw a similar pattern with American wool.
We saw the same pattern with American wool, and it started with one ranch. The King Ranch in Yeso, New Mexico, raises a breed developed in this state and adapted to the high desert over generations. Very few flocks are left in New Mexico, and the fine wool business has shrunk in the last couple of years. Even though they have extremely high-quality fleece, it just wasn't going to be turned into a luxury product made in America.
About 70 percent of the American wool clip is exported, and for the last decade roughly three quarters of that has gone to China. The sheep industry told the Senate in 2025 that China has more wool processing equipment than the rest of the world combined. Fewer than five mills are left in America that can spin yarn and weave it into cloth, and even fewer take small quantities like ours.
Not because it can't be done here. It can. It's just expensive, and the market for it has to be built with intention.
04 — THE KING RANCH · YESO, NEW MEXICO
Most people don't know what turning wool into fabric involves. We didn't either.
A fleece comes off the animal in one piece, still carrying lanolin, dirt, and seeds from the ground the animal walked on. Eight or nine operations, historically in different buildings and sometimes even in different towns. Nearly all of those buildings are gone.
One that isn't sits on a slope in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, part brick and part stone, with two smokestacks behind it. The building dates to the 1840s. It had shut down before a man named Jacob Long bought it and started it up again as American Woolen.
How wool becomes cloth
- SCOURING
- Hot baths, and the fleece loses about half its weight.
- CARDING
- Drawn across beds of fine wire teeth until the fibers all lie one direction.
- SPINNING
- Spun into yarn, then wound onto cones.
- WARPING
- Somebody takes the lengthwise threads, hundreds of them, and sets every one in place by hand before the loom can run.
- WEAVING
- Woven with weft, interlacing with warp.
- FINISHING
- Washed, pressed and finished, which is its own craft and can change the feel of a cloth completely.
05 — THE SAME ROOM
We've spent a lot of time in the last two years in that building, working through samples with Jacob and with Arthur and Tammy from American Woolen, figuring out what New Mexico fleece will do on a loom. There was no specification for it. Fiber length, crimp, grease content, how it takes tension, all of it varies by where the wool came from, and the only way to learn it is to run the wool and look at what comes off.
The Kings came to Connecticut and watched wool from their own sheep come off the loom as cloth.
We had spent two years trying to figure out what their wool could become. For the first time, we were standing in the same room looking at the finished cloth.
Most ranchers never see what their wool becomes. Most of us never see who made what we wear or the supply chain behind it.
At American Woolen, Stafford Springs
06 — THE CHAIN, BY NAME
Everyone the wool passes through
- Fleece
- King Ranch, Yeso, New Mexico.
- Yarn and cloth
- American Woolen, Stafford Springs, Connecticut.
- Cut and sewn
- Factory 8, New York.
- Silver button
- T Skies, Albuquerque.
THE WAITLIST
The first 50 pre-orders will receive a large Etkie cuff.
The world feels loud right now. This is a small thing we can do, alongside people who are still making things in this country and making them very well: the ranchers, the mill, and the sewing room.
For our first run of New Mexico ranch wool capes there will only be 150 pieces. Join the list and we'll write to you first.