The Family Business of Fabric

One way we continue to honour our roots as a British modern luxury brand is through our fabric choices. Specifically, by partnering with heritage craftspeople and historic businesses to bring our contemporary vision to life. That’s what led us to Moon in West Yorkshire, British textile stalwarts and one of the last remaining vertical woollen mills in the country.

Established in 1837, Abraham Moon & Sons, now shortened to Moon, are proud purveyors of what they call ‘quality British cloth’ and the perfect choice to help us create some of the bespoke fabrics we’ve used throughout the winter collection. 

The family-run business has over 185 years of experience designing, dyeing and weaving woollen fabric, and today is one of the last remaining vertical wool mills in the UK. The Yorkshire mill is where it all starts and finishes – from dyeing and blending the raw fibre to weaving and finishing the final cloth, everything is overseen in-house to ensure the exceptional quality Moon is known for. We paid the mill a visit to see how our bespoke fabric is created.

Sourcing the Wool

Moon knows the best fabrics start with the best fibres. Which is why from British Shetland wool to fine merino, they source from trusted suppliers around the world, with a strong focus on traceability and animal welfare.

Choosing British wool where possible was very important to our design team. Alison, ME+EM’s Senior Fabric and Trims Developer: 

‘We wanted a really authentic heritage feel to this fabric, so we selected the rustic Shetland wool to give us that traditional hand feel and raw aspect.’

Selecting the Palette

As with all our fabrics, the color choice is crucial. Moon let us explore their vast archive of colour cards, and if the exact shade we wanted didn’t exist, they used their mélange-mastery to create rich heritage tones that complement our collection palette. On closer inspection, you can see just how many different shades of thread go into creating the bespoke pattern.

‘The original inspiration behind this fabric has definitely been the heritage aspects of Moon. They have amazing patterns and designs, some of them having been in the collection for decades, giving us a lovely historical perspective. Color was a key consideration for this, so we used the mélange colors together with authentic khaki tones to give us the final selection of the fabric.’

Alison, ME+EM Senior Fabric and Trims Developer

Weaving Begins

Yarn chosen, colors created, and fabric designed, now it’s time to weave. Every stage of production, from dyeing and blending to the raw fibre weaving, is carried out on site. This ensures that Moon’s team of experts retain complete control over quality, consistency, and finish throughout every stage of the process. When it comes to adding the classic ME+EM intelligence, that’s where Tanya, our Head of Design, comes in.

‘We love the idea of a texture clash within this style (Herringbone Bomber Jacket). So we were looking for two fabrics that had a weave structure which complemented each other and tonally worked really well together. This fabric stood out as the right choice for this jacket, partly due to weight. It's 370g, and it's got quite a light drape to it, which for a bomber jacket felt right.’

The Final Product 

The Modern Heritage Style

On creating the Herringbone Bomber:

‘The starting point for this jacket was looking at vintage British military outerwear. We really loved the idea of looking at vintage weave textures, so this jacket incorporates both plain Panama weave and also herringbone designs. The Moon archive has a huge array of different weave structures and the idea of marrying that together with the vintage military outerwear felt like a perfect partnership.’ 

Tanya, ME+EM Head of Design