Norwegian poncho lambswool

Do you know the soft, thick, warm lambswool blankets from Røros Tweed? We love these cozy colleagues, which keep us warm at our desk or on the sofa in winter and ensure that we can sit out on the terrace for long evenings in summer. The only drawback: if you just want to get up for a moment, you first have to peel yourself out of the blanket and then wrap yourself up again, and often lose the lovely warmth in the process. Røros Tweed therefore came up with the clever idea of producing a poncho - in itself not a novelty in the world of clothing, but the special thing about these models is that they are made from the same tightly woven, soft cloth made from fine lambswool as the Norwegian manufacturer's blankets. With a generous material weight of 450 g/sqm and the double-roughened surface, the voluminous wool fabric can store the heat-insulating air well. The fabric is nevertheless supple and elastic and has a beautifully soft drape.

Woven as a double face with different-colored sides and neatly tied at the edges, the poncho can be worn on both sides. The incision in the front makes the poncho a ruana, strictly speaking - at least in South America, where a linguistic distinction is made between the closed and the open form. The poncho has a very generous cut overall: at two meters wide, it is large enough to wrap yourself all around. Even the shoulders are covered and - advantage poncho - naturally remain covered because a poncho does not slip easily. Thanks to its back length of one meter, the poncho easily reaches over the knees of even tall people, so that they are always warm and soft on the wool fabric. This particularly pleased our almost 1.80 meter tall product manager, who immediately bought such a wool poncho for her home office (in a cold old building) and wouldn't want to swap it for any blanket in the world.

One of the aspects that make the Norwegian textile company Røros Tweed special is the high degree of its vertical range of manufacture. Their in-house manufacturing includes even the design process while developing the designs in cooperation with well-known local and international designers. And it’s a matter of honouring local traditions and skills for Røros Tweed that all production processes — from shearing to weaving — are based in Norway. But there is more to it.

The initial motivation behind starting something new in the Norwegian mining town of Røros was a philanthropical one. The industrialist Peder Hiort (1715–1789) bequeathed his fortune to a foundation under the condition that the institute should use the money to purchase wool so that the needy of Røros could use it for their woven piecework, which the foundation would buy up in turn.
Røros Tweed still lives up to this tradition of responsible trading, tracing back to the Hiort Foundation. Moreover, they have their production honed in on technical advancements and ecologically conscious procedures – the design and manufacturing processes factor in saving resources, reducing costs and minimising waste. Production materials qualify by their reusability, plus, the production cycle constantly reintegrates any remnants.

Røros Tweed exclusively resources their wool from sheep farms in the area. The climate in the mountains is extremely harsh, but there is an advantage to this: The farmers can dispense with pest control since the region is mostly insect-free and, therefore, with chemical treatments of the wool.