Dormeuil

Luxury Fiber

Luxury suits and jackets cannot be made without luxury cloth. Luxury cloth cannot be woven without luxury yarn. Luxury yarn cannot be spun without long filament luxury fiber. Any short-cut in this process deems the finished fabric to be outside of the luxury cloth arena and the finished garment, just another run-of-the-mill suit or jacket.

So what is luxury fiber?

The wool fiber from a single sheep (the fleece) is often universal in diameter. A merino sheep that produces 18 micron fiber (this would be classed as Super 100’s) tends to produce that same diameter width of fiber all over the animal’s body. A human hair, by the way, is about 100 microns. When a professional wool grader (called a “Classer”) examines the wool from a single fleece or the wool from an entire flock (the clip), the Classer will measure the diameter width of the fiber to determine the Super count.

This Super count classification is an important element in the determination of the fiber’s quality, but it’s not the be all and end all. The Classer also looks for fiber length, fiber strength, fiber crimp, and fiber color. The longest filament fibers come from the sides of the neck and the flank and rib region of the sheep. These fibers are also strong because they have not been subject to a lot of rain, and direct sunlight. The crimp is the number of bends (or “frizz” factor) of the fiber which determines the strength and spinning capacity of the fiber. Like fine wine, wool fiber is a product of nature and a wet or a dry season will influence the characteristics of the fiber that is grown each season.

As you can imagine, after the Classer examines the wool fiber from a particular flock (the clip) or a sub flock (called a mob) only a small portion of that  is graded as long filament fiber that is strong, has high crimp, and is not discolored. This small percentage of the clip is luxury fiber.

Dormeuil, a 173 year old family owned and operated business, works with farmers in Australia and New Zealand to procure only the most luxurious fabric using only the longest filament luxury fibers. Rex Fabrics of Miami  is Dormeuil’s ambassador in Florida and Dormeuil’s authorized exclusive fabric retailer in North America. Rex Fabrics offers the entire Dormeuil cloth collection for genuine exclusive luxury suits and jackets.

Spinning Luxury Yarn

Luxury suits and jackets need luxury cloth spun with luxury yarn.

When a merino wool fiber is assessed by a Classer, the Classer looks at the fiber diameter width (the micron count) to determine the Super count classification. EG: Dormeuil’s famous 15.8 quality is made with wool fiber that is 15.8 microns in diameter and is classed as Super 150‘s. It is important to note that at 15.8 microns, this particular fiber is actually on the cusp of being classified as Super 160‘s.

The Super count is only one factor though. The Classer will also examine the fiber length, the fiber strength, the fiber color (is it clean), and the fiber crimp.

The fiber is then washed (scoured) to remove grease, dirt, and vegetable matter. The cleaned fiber is then carded. During the carding process the longest and straightest fibers are separated from the short fibers as well as the longer fibers that are bent and unsuitable for spinning worsted wool yarn. Only the longest filament fibers make it past this process. As you can imagine, when measuring length, strength, color, and crimp, only a subset of a subset of a subset makes it through to being spun into luxury yarn.

Dormeuil uses only the finest luxury fibers that are graded and classed for length, strength, color, and crimp. It is very much like using only the “filet mignon” of the merino fiber from each clip. The clip is the name given to the wool fiber grown from a particular flock (or mob) of merino sheep.

Like fine wine, luxury fiber has different characteristics from season to season as a result of the sunlight and the rain that the merino sheep have been living in during the year. Before the fiber is spun into yarn, these unique qualities have to be examined and assessed. The most skilled wool spinners in the world are based in Yorkshire, England. These multi generation artisans examine the fiber and will determine the temperature, humidity, and tension required to successfully spin the luxury fiber into fine luxury yarn. This calculation is both scientific and artistic. The spinner must have a flair for the creative, a seasoned knowledge of natural fiber, and a thorough appreciation for physics.

With Dormeuil’s latest creation, iconik, long filament high crimp fiber has been spun into extremely fine (but incredibly strong) yarn. Although this yarn is classed as Super 120’s, the fabric feels like a Super 150’s or better. The reason for this is the fact that less long filament fibers are required to be spun together to create the yarn. The result is a super fine yarn that can then be densely woven (2x2) into a luxurious cloth that not only feels as soft as a Super 150’s, but performs better than any other Super 120’s in the world. With a suit or jacket in iconik, you get the best of both worlds. Luxurious touch and high performance.

The high crimp in the fiber creates a certain elasticity in the yarn. This in turn, gives the woven fabric a little stretch in the weft without the need to inject synthetic stretch into the mix. The result is the perfect cloth for those tighter fitting custom garments or for suits and jackets for people (like myself) who lose and gain a little weight from time to time. The elasticity and bounce of the fiber also enhances the fabric’s crease resistance and crease recovery. For traveling, iconik will keep a suit or jacket looking fresh and clean. The memory within the fiber will ensure that the garment will return to it’s original form when hung up for the evening.

Top Making of Luxury Wool Fiber

Unlike piece dyed fabric (where an ecru colored pre-woven cloth is dyed to order), yarn dyed fabric is woven with yarns that have already been dyed. The result is a far better quality cloth that will have better color fastness and color consistency. There is, however, another level of quality for the fabric connoisseur: Top dyed yarns.

Top dyed yarns are actually made from fiber that is dyed before being spun into yarn. This is a very expensive process, but essential when creating rich colors within the yarn and the woven cloth. Like an oil painting, a top dyed yarn contains many “live” colors within its structure, rather than a single monochromatic base color. Fabric that is woven with top dyed yarns is full of life and energy because the yarns contain multiple colors within them. A royal blue top dyed fabric, for example, can have a small percentage of “live” scarlet colored fibers within the structure of the yarn.

Let’s take a few steps back before we get to the top dying process.

After the dirt and suint (natural grease) has been removed from the wool fibers, the scoured product is dried in a dryer consisting of a series of drums, much like a clothes dryer. This process is critical in ensuring that the wool is dried enough to optimize the removal of vegetable matter during the next process of carding while at the same time retaining sufficient moisture to minimize static electricity build-up in subsequent processes. Carding uses rollers of varying sizes rotating and counter-rotating to “tease out” the wool fibers using teeth or pins on the carding rollers and eventually creates a continuous sliver of parallel fibers. Some of the carding rollers also help to remove heavy clumps of vegetable matter by using beating blades on the wool sliver.

The carded sliver then passes through the process of ‘gilling’ and ‘drafting’ whereby the wool fibers are further straightened or separated into parallel strands through a succession of machines called gills, then drafted when rollers operating at different speeds transform the carded sliver into a much thinner and very uniform product.

The wool is now ready for combing, which is the process of separating the long and very short fibers within the sliver, as well as removing all residual vegetable matter and aligning the wool fibers in as perfect a condition as possible.

The final product is called wooltop. The quality of combing the wooltop is critical to ensure that the best and most uniform product is presented to the spinner. The spinner will be looking for the best quality wooltop in terms of sliver weight, cleanliness, and minimal neps and pinpoints (small balls of entangled fibers). Only top quality wooltop can produce the very best quality yarn.

When  fibers are dyed before the spinning process, the wooltop can be built up with a myriad combination of colors and the result is a brilliant color that cannot be copied or recreated by any other process.

The entire collection of Dormeuil’s exclusive top dyed luxury fabric is available at Rex Fabrics in Miami.

An English Setting – Cloth Like No Other

Once premium long filament merino fiber is dyed and spun into yarn, the yarn is transformed into luxury cloth. The weaving process, like the spinning process, takes a great deal of experience and know-how and incorporates both cutting edge technology as well as time trusted production systems that have been in use for generations.

Dormeuil proudly produces the majority of the House’s fabrics in England. Weaving extremely fine, delicate yarns requires a unique set of skills and Dormeuil’s weavers are a small group of artisans who still possess these skills. The weavers must translate the complex structure of the cloth while respecting the quality of luxury yarns to avoid damaging or ruining this precious commodity in the weaving process. These delicate yarns will be woven into high performance fabrics, but must be handled with extreme care in the process.

The warp yarns are prepared on a warping machine which prepares the yarns according to the warp requirement of the fabric being woven. The warp yarns are transferred from a swift to the weaver’s beam. Dormeuil’s Ambassador Super 180’s cloth, for example, has an incredible 8,500 warp “ends” on the loom’s warp beam. Because of the almost microscopic yarns involved, the machinery incorporates integrated cameras and spectrophotometers to eliminate human error by accurately confirming that the colors are correct.

Luxury cloth is woven at a slower speed (eg: 350 picks per minute) while the average speed of worsted weaving is closer to 450 picks per minute. Dormeuil’s weavers are proud of the fact that they are producing something that cannot be made or recreated anywhere else in the world. This is not an opinion. This is a traceable and measurable fact. Heritage, pedigree, knowledge, experience, skill, pride, and state-of-the-art loom technology are all combined to weave limited edition exclusive fabrics at the very end of the quality spectrum.

An English “setting” describes the construction of the fabric and is a unique characteristic of British milled cloth. Unlike many “soft hand” fabrics woven with a single ply yarn in the weft, Dormeuil incorporates two ply yarns in both the warp and the weft. These two ply yarns are woven with both density and precision. The result is a fabric with more substance, superior dimensional stability, and performance above and beyond anything achievable with a weaker construction. British milled cloth is not only made to last, it is woven to look superb throughout the life of the garment. Dormeuil’s cloth doesn’t sag and bag out or lose shape; The drape, finish, strength, and consistency is built into the heart of the fabric.