Khunu / Yak Wool from the Himalayas
What to wear when its really cold. How about Yak Wool from the Himalayas.
A company called Khunu makes sweaters with Yak wool that is 20% warmer than the now famed Merino wool and it resists pilling and snagging better than cashmere, it’s also better for the animal. There is a new race for more sustainable, durable and humane materials in the garment industry that offer folks a new level of style and sophistication. Yak wool may be one of those materials and it isnt practical for large scale clothing manufacturers. So cherish your Yak wool sweater.
Regular wool is shorn off the sheep, which can lead to the animals’ suffering when they’re shorn in winter. Yak wool is combed off the yaks, instead of shorn. Many sheep even die from winter shearing because without their wool they have no protection from the elements. The yak herders also benefit because they can now make money off the yak hair, which they were either using themselves or just throwing away. Khunu also gives 2% of each sale back to the yak herders to assist the community with medicine, food supplies and education.
Khunu was founded in 2009 by Julian Wilson and Aaron Pattillo, two friends who met in 2006 while living in Beijing. Neither originally set out to be in the clothing business (indeed neither had any background in the industry whatsoever), but they both shared a vision to create a company that harnessed their passion for the outdoors and adventure travel and the evolving field of social entrepreneurship. Khunu is the brainchild of that effort.
The initial idea was developed further during a bitterly cold mid-December trip to the Tibetan plateau. Through a hearty dose of good fortune, the pair found themselves camped out at nearly 5,000 meters with a gracious family of Tibetan nomads. Yaks became a main topic of discussion and the two trekked out of the mountains two weeks later and made their way back to Beijing with a sack full of yak wool. Over the course of the following year they pursued an idea many said was either impossible, foolhardy or naïve. But at each hurdle they persisted. Their pursuit took them back to the far reaches of the Tibetan plateau and then north to the steppes of Mongolia, where they participated in yak wool auctions and spent many hours bouncing around the back of Russian made jeeps. Along the way they met an eclectic mix of people – eager development and NGO types, wool scouring specialists, textile experts, finance people, large animal veterinarians, high-end fashion designers, genetics researchers, production people, web gurus, as well as their mentor and now Chairman Ian Stewart – photographer, entrepreneur and co-founder of “Wired” magazine.
The motivation for Khunu originated much more from a desire to help the people we had met. It was only later in doing laboratory testing and comparison that we discovered a number of the superior properties of yak wool – namely that it’s warmer than merino wool and more resistant to pilling than cashmere.
Looking back, in the exploratory phase of the business, I always thought we would hit some wall and realize why it was effectively impossible to make a high-quality yak wool sweater. We certainly realized why it was so difficult: the remoteness of the animals, the low yields of the fibre and the non-industrialized nature of the whole approach. That’s essentially why it hasn’t been done on a large scale by the clothing industry. So we came to realize each of those elements but thankfully we never hit that ‘impossible’ wall.
At the Source – Yaks, Nomads and the Himalayas from Khunu on Vimeo.
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