Why Bare?
The Short Version
Bare Cloth is a simple concept, we celebrate our local resources, both natural and human, in ways that help sustain our community, economy, and environment, all through making beautiful, quality fabric and garments from sustainable wool.
The Long Version
Here at Bare Cloth, we practice the concept of a fibershed in everything that we do. This means that we strive to create a cycle of production that sustains our local community, builds a resilient economy while also supporting the natural environment that sustains us. All of our products and production occurs within the region of the Northern Minnesota Fibershed, which stretches 200 miles from our location. We build relationships with the farmers that raise the sheep, the Northern Woolen Mills in Fosston that processes the wool specifically for our machines and the wearers that get to take home our products.
Bare Cloth uses only local wool raised on northern Minnesota farms. We also do our best to work with farmers who use ethical and sustainable practices to raise their fiber livestock. Within our region, we have a large array of colors, shades, and tones that naturally exist in the local livestock. Because of this, we have not found a need to dye our fiber used for products or yardage. While we do not dye for production purposes, we do continue to explore. We experiment with local, naturally occurring dyes found within our region to discover new sustainable and ethical practices for fiber-dying into the future.
Our name, like our cloth, comes from many different ideas, thoughts, and musings, but the main theme is the word "bare". We strive to go from raw medium and material to the finished product with as little processing as needed. We don't believe in complexity or over-processing things that work naturally in their bare state. We believe quality and simplicity go a long way.
Bare Cloth Supply Chain
Bare Cloth products are solely made of wool from local farms in northern Minnesota. We strive to support and work with farmers who use environmentally sustainable practices to take care of their sheep while creating a more luxurious and sustainable product.
The wool from local farms is then cleaned, carded and spun at the Northern Woolen Mills in Fosston, Minn.
The finished product is beautiful eco-wool cloth that can be woven as plain weave, twill or tweed and herringbone.
Bare Cloth products are solely made of wool from local farms in northern Minnesota. We strive to support and work with farmers who use environmentally sustainable practices to take care of their sheep while creating a more luxurious and sustainable product.
Why wool?
There are many reasons why Bare Cloth only uses wool in our fabric and products.
We use wool because it is the most sustainable and abundant fiber in our fibershed. A fibershed is the practice, process and provision of using solely local fiber, local dyes and local labor to meet fiber needs in an environmentally, economically and socially sustainable way. We are lucky to have fibers in our region that perfectly align with our climate needs in the north country.
Besides being our personal favorite fiber in our fibershed, wool has many other beneficial properties ...
- Fire retardant
- Naturally wicks moisture from skin
- Can help maintain body temperature, even when wet
- A breathable fiber and regulative fiber that warms when the body is cold and cools when the body is warm
- Naturally water resistant
- Odor resistant, minimal buildup of odor over time
- Flexible and strong fiber perfect for heavy, long-term wear
- Biodegradable, wool naturally decomposes and the nutrients, proteins and organic matter can naturally re-enter the local eco - system at a very fast paced rate, at times less than a year.
- Wool is a sustainable resource because of the minimal input for maintaining the livestock that produce wool fibers