A sustainable, circular material that carries the essence of the mountains, the care of shepherds, and the enduring resilience of Portugal's ancient sheep breed
Each piece is slow-made by hand from Burel; A pure 100% sheep wool fabric, dense, weather-resistant, historically worn by shepherds and mountain workers to endure the cold of Portugal’s highlands.
Burel is no ordinary wool. Spun from the fleece of the Bordaleira, a hardy mountain sheep native to Serra da Estrela in Portugal, it embodies resilience and adaptation.
A country shaped by wool
Portugal has been working wool for more than eight hundred years. Sixteen native sheep breeds still graze its hills and plains, and shepherds have long sorted them into three families by the fleece they give: Churra, coarse and long; Merino, fine and soft; and Bordaleira, which sits between the two.
That middle ground is what makes the Bordaleira special. Raised at altitude, through hard winters, it grows a fleece that is longer and sturdier than merino but finer and more even than churra, with a gentle crimp and plenty of body. Strong enough to take a beating, supple enough to shape. It is the wool Burel has always been made from.
Opening the fleece
The wool reaches the mill already washed of dust and its natural grease, pressed into heavy, tightly packed bales. A machine known as the loba — the wolf — pulls those bales apart, loosening the fibres, blending their natural shades and softening them. The opened wool is then left to rest for a few hours before the next step.
Carding
Carding is where order begins. Rollers covered in fine teeth comb the fibres again and again until they lie in the same direction and the colour and texture are even throughout. The wool comes out as a thin, airy veil, which is split into narrow ribbons and rubbed into soft strands called roving. In Serra da Estrela, some of the carding machines still at work are more than a century old: built to run on steam, later converted to electricity, and never retired.
Spinning
Roving has shape but no strength yet. On the spinning frame it is drawn out and twisted into yarn, made thicker or finer depending on the cloth it is meant for. The yarn is then wound onto large bobbins for the warp and onto small pirns that sit inside the shuttle for the weft.
Weaving
On the loom, warp and weft become a raw, open cloth, still far from Burel. Each length is weighed and measured, then checked by hand, inch by inch, against the light. Knots are snipped away and any thread that came out thicker or thinner than the rest is corrected.
Fulling
Artisans transform this native fleece into Burel through a meticulous, traditional process: washing, spinning, weaving, and fulling the wool to create a felted fabric that is dense yet soft, durable, insulating, and water-resistant.
Fulling is the final and most dramatic step. The woven cloth is soaked in hot water and pounded for hours in a fulling mill. Under the heat and the rhythm of the hammers, the fibres lock into one another and the fabric shrinks by roughly a third, sometimes more. What went in as a loose weave comes out as felt: thick, compact and almost seamless, able to shrug off wind and rain.
Why we use it
Nothing about Burel is fast. From the sheep on the mountain to the finished cloth, it passes through many hands and many days, and every step depends on knowledge passed down through generations of shepherds, spinners and weavers. That patience is what we want our garments to carry: a fabric made to be worn for years, repaired when needed, and handed on.