Ruth Alice Rands

Founder of Gloucestershire-based womenswear brand Herd

At the core of Herd are two principles: provenance and nature. A desire to nurture heritage ecosystems rooted in place, which have evolved around the landscape and are soil specific to that place. British wool is perfect in that way, due to a centuries-old relationship between land, fibre and manufacturing ability — it can still be grown, scoured, carded, combed, spun and knit in one region. When I started, farmers and factories had very low expectations of what could be done with British wool and how much customers would pay for it.

Herd uses only 100 per cent pedigree Bluefaced Leicester fleeces — a little-known British breed with an exceptionally fine fleece — and we are the first to create a single-breed, single-origin North of England yarn, which is suitable for luxury knitwear. The network of farmers I brought together responded well. The Bluefaced Leicester breed is more delicate than the hill breeds, so farmers have more contact with them and keep them in smaller numbers. The farmers often have favourites and they were pleased to see the wool being used.

At the beginning, I was selling the Bluefaced Leicester yarn to other brands to make their own knitwear, telling the story in their own languages, with their own images. That really provided a platform for our network of farmers to grow; but at the same time, it became problematic, because these brands were talking about the innovations in fibre and yarn development, hyper-local supply chains and plant dyeing that we had created and funded. That was a tension in the brand for a few years, and it's why we stopped supplying the yarn.

For Herd, Made in the UK is non-negotiable. For sourcing fabrics other than wool, we have to look further afield, because the UK doesn't grow cotton or linen. We are now about to showcase heritage ecosystems that support the manufacturing of raw materials close to where they are grown — be that French linen or Indian cotton. I think materials should be grown where the climate and the infrastructure makes sense, rather than trying to force it with chemicals, polytunnels and lots of energy, just for the sake of saying it’s made locally. The cutting and sewing still happens in the UK, as does the finishing and its trims.