From the paddock next to where it all began.

Shortlands Station sits in the Maniototo, neighbour to the old Eden Hore farm — the high-country run whose couture collection gave this whole brand its story. So the wool in these jerseys grew a few paddocks from where Lohi began. We rather like that the men’s woollens and the linen share a horizon.

The station, run by Dave Crutchley, supplies 29–32 micron hogget wool — a hard-wearing, honest fibre — which is processed into the finished jerseys and socks, then sent home to be sold here in Ranfurly. Wool that left the Maniototo to be made, and came back as something you can wear.

“Ride the gravel over Danseys Pass and you’ll likely pass the very sheep whose wool you’re wearing.”

Dave Crutchley, Shortlands Station.

Wool that pays its way home.

The wool is processed through AgWool New Zealand — a cooperative Ken Algie and Rick Cameron started in 2017, when the return farmers were getting for wool barely covered the cost of shearing. With wool being naturally fire-resistant, moisture-absorbing, odour-resistant and biodegradable, that seemed criminal to its founders.

So AgWool built a different model: the farmers fund the programme and own the wool right through the process, with full transparency, and every business that helps complete the garment earns a fair return for its work, with no middlemen quietly taking a cut. In their first pilot run, farmers received more than $25 a kilo for wool that might otherwise have barely covered shearing costs, though those first jerseys were still made up overseas — these days, that happens here in New Zealand too. Fair trade, from the hill country to the finished jersey. It’s the same conviction behind everything under our roof — that things made properly, by people paid properly, are simply better things.

Something for everyone, under one roof.

It’s the menswear in a store full of women’s linen — often a pair of socks is what gets him through the door while she browses, and the jersey’s what he leaves wearing. And it’s the most local thing we sell: wool you can trace to a hillside you can see. Provenance you don’t have to take on faith — Dave checked out AgWool’s whole process himself before we agreed to stock it.

• Wool: 29–32 micron hogget, from Shortlands Station, Maniototo
• Grown by: Dave Crutchley, Shortlands Station
• Made: in New Zealand, processed through AgWool’s farmer-owned cooperative
• The range: men’s woollen jerseys and socks
• Wool is: naturally fire-resistant, odour-resistant, moisture-absorbing, biodegradable
• Found at: Lohi Linen, 8 Charlemont Street, Ranfurly

Worth the drive — or the ride.

You’ll find the jerseys and socks in store at Ranfurly, alongside the linen, the Eden Hore story, and a glass of Central Otago wine at The Thirsty Moa next door. Whether you’ve come over Danseys Pass or down the Pigroot, come and try on the wool that grew just up the road.