Inside the mill at Biella

Biella sits at the foot of the Alps, and the water coming off them is the reason the mills are there at all. It is soft, nearly free of lime, and it has been scouring wool in this valley since the thirteenth century.

We spent three days with the weavers who make our winter cloth. The building is loud in a way that photographs never convey — sixty looms running at once produce a sound you feel in your sternum. The people who work there talk over it without raising their voices, having long ago learned the frequencies that carry.

What surprised us was how much of the quality is decided before the loom. The blending happens first: bales from four countries opened, weighed and layered so that the fibre length stays consistent across a whole season’s yarn. Get that wrong and the cloth pills in the second winter rather than the tenth. Nobody sees this step. It takes two days and it decides everything.

The finishing is slower still. Cloth comes off the loom open and loose, and is then washed, milled, dried, cropped and pressed over the better part of a week. Each pass tightens it slightly. The finisher stops when the hand is right, which is a judgement no instrument makes for him.

We came back with two cloths for the winter run and a much clearer sense of why the lead time is what it is.