Shear Perfection

One designer hopes to revive a once-profitable Dutch wool industry by drawing on local inspiration.

- Tamy Cozier-Charles

About four miles off the coast of North Holland sits Texel. It’s the first and largest of the Frisian Islands and the most unusual. This Dutch archipelago is characterized by quaint villages, white sandy beaches, and picturesque pine forests set among rugged dunes. Its rolling green pastures are dotted with schapenboeten, or sheep sheds, that hark back to a time when wool production was lucrative— but that is no longer the case.

“Wool from New Zealand and Australia is much cheaper than our wool,” says Dutch industrial designer Roland Pieter Smit. After China, the South Pacific exports the bulk of raw and manufactured wool products. Meanwhile, competition from alternative fibers based on synthetic and plant materials, which mimic the look and feel of wool, is among the factors contributing to market share loss globally. But Smit hopes his project, Wolwaeren—a collection of locally sourced textiles from the wool of Texel sheep—will help revive the island’s waning fleece industry.