Leader Of The Alpacas

The catwalks of Europe will soon be graced with high fashion made from a very special fibre produced in a remote part of Lancashire

- Roger Borrell

The wild moorland of East Lancashire seems a million miles from the glamorous world of catwalks and supermodels associated with the Milan fashion industry. And yet a slightly comical, camel-like creature from South America links the two.

Lancashire has one of the world’s top alpaca herds and demand is rocketing for the quality fibre produced by shearing these fascinating creatures. Even the great Italian fashion house of Versace is producing some evening gowns using cloth woven from animals kept at Blackberry Alpacas in Laneshawbridge near Colne.

Harvey and Claudeen Brown farm 250 acres and they’ve been in the alpaca business for just over a decade. The couple – Claudeen is from Clitheroe and Harvey originates from the Cotswolds – decided to sell their engineering company and looked for a small farm where they could look after their horses. They ended up in Oswaldtwistle.

‘It sounds a bit corny but we wanted to get back to nature and we loved every minute of it,’ says Harvey. ‘At the same time, we wanted to find a way of making a living but it’s incredibly difficult to do that with a small farm.

‘Then, I got talking to a friend in haulage. He was transporting two alpacas to Italy. I was astonished to discover these top-grade stud alpacas were each worth between £13,000 and £18,000.’