Amanda Dorset, from Wilson and Dorset, is a passionate advocate for wool. Photo / Jodie James
Amanda Dorset, from Wilson and Dorset, is a passionate advocate for wool. Photo / Jodie James
Amanda Dorset has gone fully woolly.
And that should come as music to the ears of strong wool growers, as the Wānaka businesswoman - co-founder of Wilson and Dorset with her husband, Ben Wilson - is a passionate advocate for the fibre.
For 16 years, the couple has made sheepskinfurnishings, having spied an opportunity to do something “cool” with New Zealand sheepskins.
Having been looking to buy a sheepskin, she found it hard to find a suitable one.
“Some fleeces may as well have been synthetic, they were so over-processed,” she recalled.
That was something that she found “fundamentally wrong” in a sheep-producing country where, in about the 1940s, 80 per cent of homes had wool carpets. Now it was about 15 per cent.
The business had evolved in an “old-school, organic way” from having products in family and friends’ homes - which created a following - and selling at pop-up markets, to opening a homeware store in Wānaka selling designer floor rugs, shaggy bean bags, cushions and “stone” sets which acted as bolsters or floor furniture.
But there was one niggling frustration; Dorset was “sick to death” of crafting natural, 100 per cent woollen products for a market of conscientious consumers, and then having to stuff them with synthetic fillings.
Passionate about sustainability and what was good for the planet, she felt having to use synthetic - or plastic - in her products was disingenuous.
Enter chef and restaurateur Al Brown, a keen supporter of Wilson and Dorset, who introduced her to Harry Urquhart-Hay, one of the founders of Wisewool.
At the company’s plant near Matamata, New Zealand strong wool was engineered into woollen “buds” and woollen “cloud”.
Working with Callaghan Innovation and the University of Otago’s textile department, Wisewool learned how to harness the compressional resilience of wool.
That meant synthetic filling could be replaced with a natural alternative where loft was required - from puffer jackets and sofas to pillows and cushions.
When the filling arrived at Wilson and Dorset, Dorset recalled how she feverishly “couldn’t wait to rip that bloody synthetic fill out of cushions sitting in my warehouse”.
Now, Wilson and Dorset’s sheepskin cushions and stackable “stone” sets were filled with Wisewool filling. Being fully woolly meant the products had so much more integrity to them, she said.
“As the world learns more about the peril the planet is in, there’s rising demand for 100 per cent renewable, sustainable and biodegradable fibres that offer style, form and functionality.
“We could no longer, in good conscience, contribute to the climate emergency by filling our natural woollen products with petrochemical-based synthetics,” she said.
Some of the wool fill which is going into Wilson and Dorset’s sheepskin cushions. Photo / Jodie James
Dorset acknowledged they could have used other natural products, like feathers, but, for them, it had to be about wool, in particular strong wool, which made up about 85 per cent of New Zealand’s wool clip.
By using it inside Wilson and Dorset’s cushions, more than 600kg of imported polyester fill would be saved each year from eventually ending up in landfill.
Soon its shaggy sheepskin beanbags would also be filled with wool, saving a further 350,000 litres of “nasty synthetic beans” from being manufactured and used. The all-natural products would also decompose eventually when their job was done.
Urquhart-Hay said using wool fill was good news for New Zealand, the planet and for strong wool locally.
“At Wisewool, one of our key values is to improve strong wool prices for our farmers.”
Dorset said she grew up with wool - “it was part of our world” - and she was also about the 40th employee in the early days of break-through Merino clothing company Icebreaker.
She believed the “pendulum was swinging” - there was now brave, courageous and outside-the-box thinking about wool, coupled with the realisation that plastics were ruining the planet.
Consumer surveys showed people were feeling disconnected from nature and had nagging doubts that they were not leading the life they should be.
They felt like connecting to nature and that was driving their buying decisions.
New Zealanders were also “hard-wired” to understand wool, she said.
And Wānaka itself had become somewhat of a hub for “wool coolness”, with the likes of Christina Perriam and Mons Royale basing their brands in the town.
