Hasta La Ideas

The Swiss ski makers join Italian garment maker for a technically driven set of understated wool outerwear

On a recent trip to Gstaad with Bentley (more on that next week), I had the pleasure of meeting the team from Zai, the high end, handmade Swiss ski manufacturer. Patrick, Daniela and Thomas (pictured here) all happened to be wearing incredible ski suits. As it turns out, Zai has recently branched into outerwear with the Cassacca, an aesthetically subdued, technically advanced outfit for the slopes. In teaming up with exclusive Italian garment and fabric manufacturer Loro Piana, Zai is able to select from the world’s finest wools and cashmeres for the Cassacca. This complimentary alliance is founded in Zai’s commitment to innovation and design and Loro Piana’s uncompromising dedication to material standards and craftsmanship.

For the main upper Zai uses a combination of 94% wool, 5% cashmere and 1% elastane to give the wearer proper freedom of motion while skiing. The fabric blend is treated by Loro Piana’s Storm System, laminating a pliable membrane and sub-layer of microfiber for additional insulation. Once completed the fabric is treated with Rain System, a unique waterproofing process effective at both keeping moisture out and allowing the material to dry surprisingly fast.

As a garment first and foremost it’s engineered to enhance one’s skiing experience, however the Cassacca caters quite well to the Swiss tradition of après activities. The understated aesthetic is sleek, while avoiding being too sporty—a mark that’s not easily hit in the outerwear world. This “essential” design is limited to just four earth-tone colorways to keep in line with Zai’s traditions in wooden ski making.

Zai’s limited production skis expertly blend natural and man made materials for a superior ski. While the weekend warrior can appreciate the beautiful crafstmanship, these skis will be most appreciated by those working towards a triple digit day season. Standouts from the winter ’12 ski collection include the classic Testa with a walnut vaneer and the revolutionary Nezza, made almost entirely of an innovative compound called Zaira.The two hand built skis represent Zai’s superlative use of material on opposite sides of the design spectrum.

As with all superior things in life, quality comes at a price. Zai’s Cassacca sells online for $4225 while their handmade skis are officially sold through retailers in over 19 countries. Use Zai’s national directory for a list of dealers in your region.

The rapidly expanding line of locally sourced, ecologically sound wool promotes individuality

A fledgling startup specializing in knitwear is now expanding from custom orders and art fairs into a full Fall 2012 product line. What had been Myrrhia Resneck’s one-woman operation at the 25th Street Collective and local business incubator in Oakland, Myrrhia Fine Knitwear has grown to supply wholesalers as demand spreads, so far mainly by word-of-mouth.

Aesthetics aside, the use of locally-sourced Merino wool and the rejection of the cut-and-sew technique yields virtually no waste, and the brand maintains a commitment to fair trade in every step of the production line. While more labor intensive—and expensive—the thoughtful process reinforces Myrrhia’s dedication to ecological practices and social responsibility. “A huge percentage of our landfills are fabric as well as the chemical pollution in our waterways from fabric dying processes,” says Resneck. “The carbon footprint of the apparel industry is significant.”

The 32-year-old entrepreneur from Santa Cruz, California abandoned a lucrative legal career to focus full-time on creating her own line of knitwear, drawing inspiration from creating pieces that emphasize individuality. “People’s form of expression is too often in what they buy and there are often limited options: Whether it’s the blue one or the black one on the rack,” she says. “I’d like to help foster self-expression and individuality if I can. And the products I make are trying to show the dynamic energy in each person.”

Her pieces continue to gain popularity. Aside from selling direct at Oakland’s monthly Art Murmur street exhibition she also sells internationally from her online store with a customer base already established across North America, Britain and Scandinavia.

Designers Not Tom have created an installation where coloured dye rises by capillary action out of paint tins and along tree branches wrapped in wool.

Dyed in The Wool is a collaboration between Not Tom and Loui Thomas for the Wool Modern exhibition at La Galleria on Pall Mall.

The movement of dye along each branch resembles the natural movement of water up trees.

The result is a gradient along each branch between the natural wool and the coloured dye.

Wrapping the 150 sticks and tree branches in wool took almost a month to complete.

The paint tins that the wool-wrapped branches sit in are arranged around the edges of the room. They are also installed in the gallery’s windows and can also be found in the windows of Pringle of Scotland’s shop on Sloane Street, London.

Other Dezeen stories involving wool include a system for mending holes in woollen fabric, knitted safety vases and wrapped furniture.

Following a successful exhibition from 7 to 28 September for Wool Modern at La Galleria the installation is touring the world for the next year. It is currently at Galleria KaufHof, Alexanderplatz, Berlin.

Harry Osborne from Not Tom gives some more information on the project here:

The show is part of Woolmark’s campaign for wool and coincides with Wool Week.

Not Tom was commisioned by Woolmark and show curator Charlotte Lurot to create an original piece for inclusion in the Wool Modern exhibition in La Galleria, Pall Mall.

Our response to the brief for a wool themed installation to surround a room was our piece “Dyed In The Wool”, created in collaboration with Loui Thomas.

The outside edges of the room are lined with assorted paint tins filled with various coloured dyes. Stood in each jar, and set at random angles are large sticks and sections of tree branches completely wrapped in natural wool top. If the wool is dampened, capillary action causes the coloured die to rise up the sticks, eventually forming a gradient from the natural colour of the wool to the bright colour of the dye.

The full effect of the installation is that of a strange woollen forest, with a subtle, colourful glow around the bottom of the room. We liked that the mummification in wool of the dead branches is juxtaposed by the capillary action re-creating the natural movement of water up a living branch. Meanwhile it acts as a demonstration of dyeing processes.

It was an arduous task to hand wrap the 150 sticks in wool, taking nearly a month to complete (and calling in lots of favours!) but we think the overall effect has been worth the effort.

The sticks have become something of a totem for the Campaign for Wool, with them also being installed in the gallery windows, the windows of Pringle of Scotland’s Sloane Street shop and included in the promotional video for the exhibition in association with Harrods.

See also:

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Ink Calendar by Oscar Diaz	Dejection-moulding by Manuel Jouvin	Avifauna by Maarten Kolk & Guus Kusters

Artist Ellen Lesperance weaves new meaning into knitwear with an exhibit honoring women activists

Fair Isle fans have long fetishized the winter staple, but Ellen Lesperance‘s upcoming exhibit at Seattle’s Ambach & Rice Gallery explores the sweater as more than a cozy way to keep warm. Named “The Strong, Star-Bright Companions,” after an elegiac poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the show features Lesperance’s gouache paintings of sweaters worn by female activists, as well as three actual sweaters knitted by the artist herself—all rendered with precise attention to detail.

Lesperance painstakingly replicates the pattern and gauge of yarn in large paintings, piecing the whole pattern together from photographs into flattened-out diagrams. Much of her source material came from archival photos of the Greenham Commons Women’s Peace Camp. For nineteen years, from 1981 to 2000, women camped out to protest the storage of nuclear missiles in Berkshire, England. While they waited, they knitted—incorporating their ideologies, in the form of fish and axes, into intricately innovative patterns. “I’ve been knitting for over 20 years. I used to work at Vogue Knitting in New York, and I’d never seen patterns like these,” Lesperance said from her home in Portland, OR.

The exhibit also features the artist’s tightly-gridded visions of sweaters worn by contemporary women, like Nawal el Saadawi, the famed Egyptian feminist activist. And Lesperance commemorates the darker side of activism in the form of triangle-shaped patterns that serve as death shrouds for activists who died in the line of duty, including Helen Thomas, who was driven over at Greenham Commons Women’s Peace Camp, and Italian activist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and killed on a symbolic peace protest while hitchhiking to Jerusalem. “They were definitely maligned for being stupid young girls,” said Lesperance. “There’s definitely an interest in elevating them.”

By memorializing and replicating these sweaters, Lesperance also lends a deeper resonance to the simple, utilitarian act of knitting a sweater. As Rosa Parks might have suggested, in the face of greater forces there’s something very powerful about the act of sitting down, taking your time and creating a useful object of beauty. “Sweaters can be worn,” said Lesperance. “You can stretch out the experience of being with the work. You could wear the sweaters for years, if you wanted to.”

“The Strong, Star-Bright Companions” is on view through 15 May 2011 at Ambach & Rice.

Line shoes with lambswool to warm feet all winter long

Urban living means you don’t always need all the trappings of a technical boot but if your city-slicker shoes are lacking in warmth, you may want to consider the instant coziness an insole can add. While some of my favorites are a pair hand-felted by a family friend, I was lacking time for a crafternoon so I was happy to find these 100% lambswool versions at NYC’s Cowboy Shoe Repair.

Made from cuddly fleece, the wool layer is bonded to a latex rubber layer so that they stay put inside shoes. I’m not sure why Germans excel at foot care products exactly, but the Polar model is one of several that the German maker Tacco offers on their site. Pick it up directly from Tacco’s site for €3 or from Shoe Hardware for $5.