In general menswear is made from one of three fiber types: wool, cotton, or a synthetic.
Many men know how to care for their cotton and synthetic clothing; those that don't are fortunate that garments made from these fabrics are often inexpensive and darn near indestructible.
Wool is different.
Wool can be easily damaged by heat and chemicals – even over exposure to cool water can weaken the fibers and ruin the garment!
In this article, we give you all the basic facts you need to stay up on your wool clothing's uses and care.
Wool Fabrics
1. Why Wool?
Wool is extremely versatile and is possibly worn on more parts of your body than any other material.
Wool, in different weaves and cloths, crops up in menswear from head to toe:
- Stocking caps & other hats
- Neckties
- Suits & jackets
- Sweaters
- Coats & other outerwear
- Gloves
- Long underwear
- Trousers
- Socks
Why all the wool clothes? It's a little more temperamental than cotton or synthetic fibers, so some men may be tempted to look for cotton alternatives in all these clothes. And you can usually find them — but it's not always the right choice. Wool makes use of a few basic properties that cotton lacks:
- Appearance. Wool can be woven into thick fabrics with a deep, rich texture. It can make anything from very fine and silky threads to thick, coarse yarns. The resulting fabrics can range from thick, hairy, and coarse to extremely lightweight and smooth to the touch. In any form wool has a richness and body to it that even the finest cotton products can't really match.
- Warmth. Wool holds heat in extremely well. It's what animals grow to stay warm in the first place, after all, before we shear it off for clothing — the fine hairs trap air and keep it in close where the body's heat can warm it. Even a thin wool jacket or sweater adds a lot of warmth to you, especially when movement and exercise are keeping your core temperature up. Warm-weather “tropical” wools have to be woven deliberately loose from very fine fibers to keep it from doing too good of a job insulating the wearer.
- Resiliency. Tailors favor wool for suit jackets because wool cloths hold their shape and last a long time. You hang wool jackets rather than folding them because of the fabric's tendency to take a shape and hold it — folds or creases in wool can take a long time to work out! The tough fabrics hold up and resist worn patches much longer than an equivalent garment in cotton could. Twenty or thirty years is nothing to properly-treated wool; fathers can often pass good suits onto sons if they grow into the same size.
- Water Resistance. A somewhat unsung property, wool is also highly water resistant. Untreated wools that still have the fatty lanolin from the original animal can be almost waterproof, and even fine wools give you some protection. Wool fibers are highly absorbent and can soak up around 20% of their weight in water before it starts to leak through. Sailors and fishermen in extremely wet and cold climates have traditionally worn tightly-woven sweaters of raw wool for their protection.
So there's a reason for putting up with wool care and wool prices. The “luxury” fabric is also a highly practical one — good-looking and sturdy.
We'd recommend that suits and overcoats, at the very least, be made primarily from wool (some suits may include a small blending of synthetics for sturdiness or flexibility, and overcoats are often waterproofed with additional materials).
The best cold-weather sweaters will also be wool; thinner sweaters meant for layering in the early fall and late spring do better in the less heat-retaining cotton.
2. Which Wool?
Clothing manufacturers love to talk about hands, weights, and all sorts of other things when you're buying wool. Most of it's just talk. There's only a few basic things you actually need to know to choose the right wool for your garment. Ignore the rest.
- Base Material. The animal the wool came off of makes a big difference. Cashmere, made from goat hairs, is silky and fine — almost too fine for suit jackets on its own — while “camelhair” is almost always a blend of sheep or goat wool and some of the softer hairs from camels; their hairs alone would make a painfully rough and scratchy garment. The thread the hairs have been woven into makes just as much of a difference. Some processes comb the hairs over and over again until they make a very smooth and even thread (“worsted” threads, often used to make suits, are a great example), while others, like the threads used in tweed jackets, are left large and coarse.
- Construction. There are two basic methods of making garments from wool: woven cloths which are then cut into shape and knitted garments made from interlaced yarns that give the garment shape themselves. The former makes a tighter, smoother surface; knit garments are traditionally rough and bumpy on their surfaces. Knitting is most common in sweaters, and is often used to build textured patterns directly into the surface of the garment. Some weaves also lend a visually-apparent texture to the surface of the cloth.
- Weight. Wool cloths (as opposed to knitted wool) are weighed by the yard. Many “three-season” worsteds and flannels used in men's suits weigh in around the 10-12 oz. range. Thick tweeds and winter suits may go up to around 16-20 oz., while “tropical” wools can go down to 6-8 oz. Weight often affects price — a good wool in a lighter weight is often more expensive than a similar suit in something heavier might be. Coarser threads tend to have more weight to them than finer.
- Fineness. The other measure used on wool is its “fineness.” This is a number representing the number of spools a spinner can make from one pound of the raw wool. Since the property is inherent in the wool rather than the thread or the finished fabric you'll see yarns for knitting with fineness ratings as well as finished cloths used in suits and jackets.The higher the number the softer the feel of the fabric — 80s and 90s are something of a “default” for basic men's suits, while the “Supers” (numbers higher than 100) are very fine to the touch and can actually get a little fragile and hard to care for once they get up past 120 or so. Sweater and sock yarns tend to cover an even broader range depending on how tightly the manufacturer plans on knitting them.
You'll need to take all of these with a grain of salt, since there isn't a whole lot of international regulation on wools. A bolt of “Super 120” with a 10 oz. weight from Taiwan may not feel anything like something with the same numbers from Italy.
Good tailors tend to spend a lot of their time seeking out reliable sources for good wools. There's a reason most bespoke garments are based primarily on the cloth they're cut from rather than the size or style.
3. Caring for Wool
Wool's an animal product rather than a plant — it has many of the same frailties that our own bodies do. The strength in its fibers is made from proteins that can be damaged or destroyed by chemicals, heat, or physical wear and tear.
For all that, wool's stronger by weight than cotton and more resistant to natural dirt and wear than most man-made synthetics. Treat it well and it should be the most durable fabric in your wardrobe.
- Heat. Direct heat is the most damaging thing for wool. It changes the structure of the proteins in the hair, which changes the shape of the threads and distorts the garment (or puts a hole in it). This is why wool is steamed and pressed with unheated weights to smooth it out rather than ironed. Minor wrinkles and crinkles can be dealt with by hanging it in the bathroom while you take a hot shower (the damp, warm air will loosen the wool and help it sag back into a flat shape). Anything that can't be taken out by this improvised steaming and a couple hours of wearing or hanging on a good wooden hanger should be left for a cleaner to take care of.
- Wet. Wet wool looses about a third of its strength. Once a wool garment has become wet enough to soak through you need to avoid stretching it any. Take it off and lay it out flat rather than hanging it (but don't put it too near a heat source to dry it — see above!). If there's any kind of stress point in the garment such as the ridge of a narrow coat-hanger or the edge of a table bending the wool as it dries you're likely to get a permanent, unwanted crease.
- Dry-Cleaning. Given that both heat and water weaken wool it probably shouldn't be a surprise that you can't use a normal machine washer on them. Dry-cleaning is the basic method for cleaning wool garments. It's reasonably cheap and doesn't need to be done too often — give your wool clothes a quick brushing whenever you take them off (you can find fabric brushes meant for this in most menswear stores) and only take them in for cleaning when they're soiled or you're worried about odor. Regular dry-cleaning does stress the wool fibers and turn them brittle over time, so give your garments time to “rest” between cleanings.
- Storage. Wool storage needs to combat three main enemies: heat, light, and insects. The first we've already covered — just make sure your closet doesn't get up to oven-like stuffy heat in the summer and you'll be fine. This is mostly a concern for garments stored in the attic or other long-term places.Light can fade garments over time, so if they're not being stored in a windowless closet you'll want some dark hanger-bags to slip them in. Insects are the biggest danger — make sure anywhere you're storing wool clothes has mothballs in the corners, preferably the newer kind that aren't made from toxins that can leech into the clothes themselves over time. The last vital part of storage is a good, thick wooden hanger for jackets — you want something with the curved shape of your shoulders rather than a thin wire band to keep the wool shoulders in a rounded, uncreased shape.
None of this is really very hard: keep the wool dry, unheated, and stored somewhere that it isn't creased and isn't going to be damaged. That and basic cleaning with a brush and the occasional trip to the dry-cleaner's is about all the maintenance wool clothing takes.
In Summary – Wool Is A Great Fabric For Men
Well cared-for wool gives you warmth, strength, and style.It's still the standard by which other menswear is measured — artificial fabrics are trying to compete, but the look they're all trying to imitate is the deep, lustrous pile of natural wool.
We hope you'll take the information in this article and turn it into a wardrobe full of quality garments — and if you ever need help caring for them, come back and drop us a line.
