Designtex announces Wool Library, four foundational textiles that deliver all the benefits of wool as a biobased material to deliver high quality and performance paired with a soft, luxurious hand. These four constructions are expertly woven in Italy and created to be a staple in style and durability for a long time to come, just like your favorite sweater.
“Designtex has a legacy of bringing hard wearing natural fibers to the market. One of our very first materials (60 some years ago) was a Mohair Velvet that is still in the line today and wool has long been a staple fiber in our offering and industry. Wool is great because it’s natural and naturally hard wearing, thermoregulating, and renewable,” says Catherine Stowell, VP Design, Designtex.
The collection’s four styles – Basket, Checker, Micro Tweed, and Heather – are high on flexibility and impact, and just like wool itself, are classics. Their individual personalities emerge when paired with Wool Library’s color palette of 190 hues, providing options from vibrant and bold to subtle neutrals. Wool Library offers the perfect tonality for every project.
Given a second chance at life, Checker, Basket, and Micro Tweed each contain a high content (70%) of postconsumer recycled material from the fashion industry. Reutilizing discarded wool garments to create new yarn preserves resources and places less stress on the environment. These three products can contribute to the LEED Materials and Resources credit for recycled content and have been certified by the mill to GRS, the Global Recycled Standard 4.0. This collection is free of added chemistry, including finishes, PFAS, flame retardants, and antimicrobials.
Preparing postconsumer recycled wool for its next life involves a few steps: discarded, reclaimed, and gathered clothing is sorted by fiber, color, content, and quality. The garments are broken back down into colorful fibers that are washed, blended together, and spun into a new yarn. These fiber blended yarns are woven and finely milled into soft, deeply colored new fabric for upholstery. In the case of Wool Library, this process occurs in Prato, Italy, which has a long history of recycling clothing from the fashion industry dating back to the 12th century.
Stowell shares, “The craft that the suppliers bring to the recycling process is impressive, I love that you can see the evidence of the raw materials in each heathered yarn. The plain weaves with expert milling give the product a luxurious, soft hand that I just love. This recycled and renewable collection introduces three new styles and recolors a longtime favorite in 190 fantastic, fiber-blended colors that add to the Designtex line.”
Design Details Wool Library will become an essential part of designers’ go-to working palette, bringing together sustainably sourced postconsumer recycled wool and an abundance of color and texture with which to mix, match, and experiment.
Wool Library textiles are soft, durable, renewable, and postconsumer recycled. Choose from a robust colorway of 190 colors. The collection’s four weave structures provide flexibility and impact. Wool Library has no added finishes, PFAS, flame retardants, or antimicrobials. The collection is biobased, biodegradable, thermoregulating, and naturally flame retardant. Checker, Basket, and Micro Tweed have the added benefit of being 70% post-consumer recycled. Checker, Basket, and MicroTweed can contribute to the LEED Materials and Resources credit for recycled content and have been certified by the mill to GRS, the Global Recycled Standard 4.0. These products have publicly available transparency documents (Health Product Declarations).
Products: All of the textiles in Wool Library blend beauty, utility, and sustainability. They can stand up to the demands of high-traffic environments and have no antimicrobials, no flame retardants, no PFAS, no added finishes, and are naturally flame retardant.
Basket: Basket is a solid textile with a tactile basket-like texture and visible weave structure that delivers immense versatility and impact, available in 31 colorways.
Checker: Checker is a small-scale, 2-color traditional checkerboard pattern, woven with beautiful heathered yarns. Its 49 colorways allow for combinations that range from sophisticated to surprising and whimsical.
Micro Tweed: Micro Tweed uses two distinct heathered yarns with a small-scale texture that discreetly reveals subtle color variations highlighted across the pattern. Available in 50 colorways.
Heather: Heather is a Designtex classic – soft, supple, and reminiscent of classic suiting fabric. It has been recolored, refreshed, and expanded to 60 colors.