In his feature story published today on Kit & Ace—the new clothing company founded by Shannon and J.J. Wilson, family of Lululemon founder Chip Wilson—Mike McCullough explains how the fashion label’s “technical cashmere” fabric, which differentiates it from other casual streetwear brands on the market, came to be:
Technical Cashmere’s roots go back to 2012, a period when Chip and Shannon were taking a break from Lululemon and living in Australia. That was when Shannon began thinking about what an admittedly well-off woman like herself wanted to be wearing—not for doing anything active, but every day. “When thinking about luxury, for me, cashmere always comes to mind,” she says. The material has drawbacks, though. “It pills. It bends out of shape. You have to dry clean it,” she says. So Shannon set her mind to building new properties into it. Working with an Italian textile mill, she interwove it with cotton, elastane and nylon to make a fabric that was as cosy as cashmere but also flexible and machine washable.
There are differing accounts of what exactly happened next.
Above, watch deputy editor David Fielding and executive editor Carol Toller put Kit & Ace’s washable cashmere to the test with a visit to our local laundromat. Then read the rest of the Kit & Ace story.
