We promised you this at the end of May, immediately after shearing: we would tell you what happens to the wool from our Sopravissana sheep once it leaves the farm. After revealing the breed’s name last week, today it is time to tell you about the journey itself: the one that takes the raw fleece sheared in Lazio and turns it, months later, into a Lanaioli knitwear garment or accessory.
From shearing to raw fleece
It all begins with shearing, which on our farm takes place once a year, in spring, when temperatures rise and the sheep can do without their thick winter fleece. It is a delicate moment that requires expert hands: the wool must be removed in one continuous “blanket,” without unnecessary stress for the animal and without damaging its skin. The fleece that comes off, however, is not yet the soft wool you know: it is raw, full of lanolin, dust, and plant matter collected by the sheep while grazing. From here, the usable yarn for knitwear is still a long way off.
Washing, carding, spinning: the part you do not see
This is the least talked-about stage of the supply chain, but it is the one that truly determines the final quality of the yarn. Our raw fleece leaves the farm in Lazio and is entrusted to specialized Italian companies, which handle washing (to remove lanolin and impurities), carding (which untangles and aligns the fibres), and, when necessary, dyeing. Only at this point are the fibres ready for spinning, the process that transforms them into a continuous, durable yarn that can be worked with knitting needles or a crochet hook.
We deliberately chose to entrust these processes to specialized Italian companies, even when outsourcing abroad would have been simpler and less expensive: for us, a short supply chain does not mean only “Italian wool,” but also quality control that can be maintained only by staying close—both physically and through relationships of trust—to those who work the raw material at every stage.
The final step: from artisans’ hands to your wardrobes
The resulting yarn finally reaches the small Italian artisan workshops we work with, where the garment you will wear truly takes shape: a sweater, a scarf, a pair of gloves. These are the same expert hands that have been making knitwear for Lanaioli for years, accustomed to treating every yarn—whether short-supply-chain merino wool or regenerated yarn—with the care that a material produced through so much work deserves.
And then there are the people who, even further upstream, make all this possible: those who care for our flock in Lazio every day, those who decide when to shear, and those who select which animals to breed in order to continue improving the breed. They are not faces that often appear in fashion’s glossy photographs, but they are the true “first processing stage” of every Lanaioli garment, long before the wool reaches a loom or knitting needle. In the coming months, we want to tell you more about them, because the short supply chain, for us, always begins with someone.
Why we are telling you all this step by step
We could simply write “zero-kilometre Italian wool” on a label. Instead, we chose to tell you about every step—from shearing to washing, from carding to spinning, and finally to the artisan workshop—because we believe that knowing where a garment comes from and how many hands have worked on it changes the way you wear it. A Lanaioli sweater is not just a warm garment: it is the result of a supply chain we have chosen to keep short, traceable, and Italian, starting with the Sopravvissana breed we introduced to you last week.
In the next article, we will take a step back to explain why protecting an endangered sheep breed such as the Sopravvissana is not merely a matter of sentiment, but a genuine choice in favour of biodiversity and responsible business.
