Fibers Leading Designs. How the Typical Features of Woolen Yarn Can Drive the Design of a Collection of Knitwear Product in a Real Industry Application

Could the specific properties of a material influence the thinking and the making of a design product? this paper illustrates the results of an applied research activity made at the School of Design of Politecnico diMilano, with Lanecardate, a spinner company in Biella that, being entirely dedicated to woollen yarns, is a leader in the production of this specific material. Woollen yarns are made of short wool fibres, and for this reason they are commonly –and mistakenly– considered to have a lower quality than the longer, worsted yarns. Indeed, they appear softer, fuzzier, heavier, better insulating and crease resistant: all these qualities must be valued and become better and better through the washing process. The finishing is therefore the most important phase to be considered while designing with woollen yarns: once washed with specific treatments, this material will improve its qualities but, at the same time, it will change in volume and structure. This has been precisely the starting point, and the in-depth investigation area, in which the research was concentrated: with an experimental didactic activity, the purpose was to deepen and study, together with the company, how to increase, and exalt, the qualities of this unique product and how to transfer this knowledge from the typical clothing sector to hypotheses of use in other areas. The paper thus describes the phases of research, development and experimentation highlighting the aspects of incremental innovation achieved and transferred on the realized prototypes. In the contemporary scenario of the fashion design discipline, the scientific research on knit design is quite recent and deals with a very wide industrial sector where the companies that process and make yarns are among the excellences on the world stage. Here, however, the industrial development in the production of yarns is still linked to traditional operating methods. Consequently, the research presented in this paper had the aim of stimulating the company to research, by innovating both from the operational point of view of the use of the yarn, from the application point of view, and from the one of mixing it with other fibres, to demonstrate how the productive and technological constraints can be an opportunity for multidimensional innovation both on the process, on the product and, consequently, on the market.