Woolly Woollen Wool Wool Wool Part 1

But a toddling, little sprog was I when physical contact with wool was enough to flush my skin red raw; well, wool and facepaint, and what a big and bold fellow am I now, who wears wool everyday of the year? Not very, perhaps, but in the midst of reflection, my childhood allergy to wool may have set me on course to develop a lifelong obsession with the stuff.

Now at 23, I've got a bedroom filled with: woollen hats, from RossoBiancoNero1979 bobble hats to plaid flat caps; tweed jackets, and scarves from Harris Tweed to Highland Tweed; knitwear from Levi's to pieces hand-loomed in Leicestershire; and my new prized possession, a massive quilt of a Chester Barrie raglan overcoat – if this blog system allows me, you might find an image of some of these below!

Wool is even an ingredient in an electrolyte powder my brother and I are manufacturing for our soon-to-launch company, Lyte – a little bit of pre-press release information for you there, yea?

That's actually a good place to start. Good quality wool is actually nutritious, and the North West of England, actually has the best in the world. Herdwick sheep are native to Cumbria and their wool is exceptionally rugged and heavy. They can survive being snowed in for many days, just by eating their wool for sustenance. That's as natural a fibre as you can get! Now, Herdwick is not necessarily the best for every single use, but this fact demonstrates the kind of harmony the material has with the natural world. This kind of connection is something most synthetic fabrics lack, and it's lead to massive amounts of microplastics leaching off of our clothes and finding their way into our bodies, environments, and the food we eat – we're essentially wearing petrol!

Isn't this meant to be a filmmaking website? It's meant to be a Harry Main website, and it so happens that Harry Main is a filmmaker, but I understand – I do – How can we connect wool to filmmaking?

Very easily actually. During the early stages of the cinema industry, the black and white film elmulsions they used were orthochromatic; they were sensitive to blue light primarily, a little sensitive to green light, and barely sensitive to red, if at all. These film stocks were also sensitive, though, to ultraviolet light, which is insivible to our eyes, but very close in wavelength to blue light. Wool happens to reflect ultraviolet light really well, which prevents the Uv light from the sun from heating up the sheep too much, and prevents the degredation of the fibre by sunlight. You starting to catch my drift? You will. Say you're a Dp who is metering light for a scene and it looks exemplary on set and its reading really well on your meter and the director loves it and everything is great and good in life and so you say lets shoot this thing, imagine your shock when the guy wearing a white wool jumper looks like the angel coming to Mary. He has this kind of radioactive glowing halo all round him. The cause of this is the interaction between the sensitivity to ultraviolet light the film stock possesses and the high Uv reflectance that wool possesses. Someone get Hoyte Van Hoytema on the phone, because I feel this could be used as a technique in one of his films!

This lead to white wool needing to be limited in use on film sets, especially for male roles who needed to look more masculine. The darker, sharper lines were needed to depict seriousness.

So there you have it, if you're a 1920s moviestar, you can eat undyed wool, but you can't wear it on set. Of course, all of this changed once panchromatic film stocks became the standard. Since then, wool has been everywhere in cinema. In fact, less than 20 years after this orthochromatic film debaucle, the International Wool Secretariat partnered with woolgrowers to provide free fabric to cinema productions to protect the industry against synthetic fibres that were being mass produced at unprecedented rates. I have no doubt this wool jumper Marilyn is wearing has to do with this deal, too. Just look how cozy that jumper looks!

As of writing this post, I've realised that I actually don't have any photos of me in my woolen clothes, so I've let you down there, an excellent first impression to be sure; in the near future, I'll get all dressed up in my wool and get some photos taken of it and I'll write all about it in another blog post.

For now, it's a cold and dreary December, have you got your wool on?