Wool you or won't you?

 There's obviously still enough profit left in wool growing to maintain powerful marketing oganisations, recently two, now merged into one called Australian Wool Innovation.

But really, is there any point in spending millions and zillions promoting a fibre in places where doesn't want to be. Wool doesn't like being machine washed, permanently pleated, made to stretch, or made to look and behave like synthetic fibres. Technology has grafted all these abilities on to wool but the results have usually been expensive and disappointing.

There is still no better fibre for men's suits and trousers than wool in its worsted form. It is still the preferred fibre for mid to upmarket knitwear. And if you want a warm coat for men or women, it's got to be made from wool. But forcing it into other types of fashion outerwear will have, at best, patchy and poorly sustained outcomes.

When I was a strapping youth tramping the pavements of Flinders Lane with a bag of samples, the whole schmutta trade was about wool. People metaphorically rode sheep to work. In Melbourne, especially, the wool garment trade lasted nine months of the year for womenswear and the whole year for menswear.

But now designers, especially the young brigade, have to have their noses rubbed in wool to appreciate how wonderful it is (and how expensive) and then be implored and induced to include it in their collections. There is no doubt that this tactic sometimes succeeds short term but, afterwards, a new season is a new day and if we did wool this year, what have we got new for next year?

This is what the promoters of wool are up against. Rather than the selection of wool being a fundamental (as it used to be), with the creative energy then going into yarns and patterns and finishes, the fibre itself is now the novelty.

Designers try to marry styling to fabrics, not to fibres. If they're happy with the marriage, and the price fits the market they're serving, then the presence or not of wool is inconsequential.

I'm not knocking Australian Wool Innovation here. Rather I'm sympathising with its plight. Throughout the history of fashion, and particularly in the last 50 years, marketers have imagined that they could influence the public - and back through the trade to manufacturing - by clever or overwhelming promotions. Let me tell you, it never works. If the fashion marketers happen to stumble upon something that the public wants anyway, they will claim victory. But if the public doesn't want it, throwing money at it is simply tragic.

My feeling about wool is that it should be expensive and exclusive. It should never try to be clever with clip-on properties and it should never be pushed into the faces of designers.

There will naturally occur some seasons when the public is in the mood for wool, but it won't be because it has been coerced by promotions, no matter how lavish.

Black is the colour of my true love's season
The winter of our discontent is upon us. Whoever controls the weather up there has again failed to snap freeze the continent on the first of March and most retailers, it seems, are beating their breasts as their stock sits and waits for global cooling. Will they never learn? Will small retailers ever stop bemoaning the big retailers' terrible habit of reducing prices on winter merchandise because winter has failed to arrive at a time to suit their deliveries?

No, they won't. New winter season's merchandise always carries with it the hope that people will want it because it is fresh. And yea, some of it is, and some people buy it for fear it may not be around during the sales when the weather starts to encourage people to dress up. But most retailers will miss the winter bus because they arrived at the bus stop too early and went away again before the bus came.

Okay, so much for general observations, but what about the specifics of winter 2008? Well, the word is black, and more bloody black. Windows were full of black and when you look inside the shops there are racks-of-blacks.

Black comes with a sting in the tail. Yes it is chic and dependable but it kills fashion styling and it dates very slowly - if at all. The little black dress is the little black demon. It is a sales stifler, not this year maybe, but in subsequent years when it can be hauled out for too many encores.

I can't blame anybody in Australia for the black plague. It came from overseas and we dutifully copied it. But it certainly hasn't helped our winter demand and, by this time next year we'll somehow need to make black look dated.

By Fraser McEwing