Just when you thought it was safe to come in from the sheep ranch and merino had been mixed with every other fabric imaginable, along comes new outfit Frankly with a range of base layers made from a blend of merino wool and organic cotton no less.
Straight Outta Down Under...
The brand launched in the UK at the beginning of November with a European web site following on from its introduction down under in July. The fabric is called Neobi and is made from a combination of organic cotton and non-mulesed merino wool and comes in a 200g weight, that's a medium sort of fella.
Neobi is, says Frankly, all natural and completely biodegradable with no synthetic or elastane content and the brand makes some impressive claims – it's said to actively move moisture away from the skin, doesn't 'lock odour into the fibres' and doesn't use any sort of chemicals to aid wicking.
More Durable Than Pure Merino
On top of that, the cotton content of the material toughens things up compared to pure merino wool, making it suitable for use by walkers and climbers. Prices are at the premium end of the market with the men's and women's ranges composed on a short and long-sleeved tee along with a zip-neck top, retailing from £49 to £85.
Interesting stuff, particularly given that cotton is generally viewed as being one of the least suitable fabrics for technical base-layer use and merino wool, while it handles moisture well, tends to dry slowly, even though it holds moisture comfortably away from the skin.
Cotton On The Outside
As far as we can tell from the web site, rather than being a uniform blend like, say, Rab's MeCo, the material uses merino wool on the inside against the skin, with the cotton on the outside with a 35% wool and 65% cotton breakdown by weight.
We like merino a lot and MeCo – which blends merino and Cocona from coconut husks is one of our favourite new fabrics – so we're not going to make any assumptions about how this'll perform. The idea of using a high cotton content for a base layer fabric seems a little counter intuitive, but then again, things don't always do quite what you expect in real life.
More info at www.franklyfrankly.com.
