Woolmark stands for all-wool & all-quality

Press, 26 April 1979, Page 15

Woolmark stands for all-wool & all-quality

' The Wooimark symbol wa_> designed by 'Francesco Saroglia, an artist employed by the advertising agency of the International Wool Secretariat branch in Italy. His entry was judged the winner of a 1964 international competition. and he came to the design by tying strips t>f paper in a variety of |snots until he arrived at a Satisfactory form. ' In 1937, far-sighted wool-growers from New Zealand, Australia and South Africa — who supplied 80 per cent of the world’s wool —set up an embryo organisation called the International Wool secretariat. * These countries began, in the early ’19605, jointlv as the board of IWS, to seek their miracle. And

the answer they devised — to world problems which threatened the very survival of their fibre — was the Woolmark programme.

Englishmen viewed this new symbol as a ball of wool, Italians as a ball of spaghetti, Americans joked that a pretzel must have gone round the bend. But from 1964, Woolmark was wool’s world-wide guarantee.

No product anywhere had permission to use that label unless it was onehundred per cent wool — that’s to say, pure wool. And wool, what’s more, straight from the sheep’s back — new wool, or virgin wool.

The technical tests of Woolmark for fibre content are strict. Tolerance for accidental non-wool impurity is a mere 0.3 per cent. Another 5 per cent non-wool is allowed if — but only if — it’s used for visible decoration.

Why does Woolmark place this strict emphasis on wool content? Because wool has properties different from any other fibre.