Hand-Knitted Sheep Wool Jackets for Men and Women

Where Your $50 Goes

Each of these jackets takes an artisan several days. Not several hours with a machine doing the work. Several days of one person knitting.

Most of what you pay goes to that person. The rest covers the fleece, bought directly from Nepali shepherds, and the washing, sorting, and spinning that happen in the same workshop before anyone picks up a needle.

That is the whole cost, because that is the whole chain. There is no fibre trader, no mill, no importer, no brand licence and no retailer standing between the artisan and you, and no margin taken by any of them. The same jacket carrying those six margins is a several-hundred-dollar garment, and the difference is not craft, and it is not wool. It is distance.

This is what hand-knitted wool costs when the person who knitted it is paid properly and nobody in between takes a cut. Nothing has been taken out of the garment to reach the price. What has been taken out is the distance between the artisan and you.

If you want to see the wool before committing to a jacket, our hand-knitted gloves come from the same fleece, made by the same artisans, and exchanges are free either way.

Which of the Three

Same wool, same price, same free size. The build is what changes.

Buy the knitted hooded one if you want a jacket to wear all winter. It is the only one with pockets; it has six colours, and it has the most reviews.

Wool Jackets for Women

Every jacket here is free size and unisex, which on a knitted jacket is a real answer rather than a way of skipping the sizing work. Hand-knitted rib stretches and recovers, so one piece covers a range of builds that a cut-and-sewn coat could not.

What most women choose in practice is the knitted hooded jacket in black, and it is the right instinct. A black hand-knitted jacket reads as outerwear rather than as knitwear, works over almost anything, and the stitch texture keeps it from looking flat the way a plain black coat does. Brown and dark blue do the same job with a little more warmth in the tone.

Wool Jackets for Men

The same three jackets, and no separate men's version, because a hand-knitted free-size jacket genuinely does not need one.

Most men take the knitted hooded jacket in black, dark blue or brown, and it is the most practical thing we make: attached hood, full zip, two chain-zip pockets that actually close. It works as a winter jacket in dry cold and as a mid-layer under a shell when the weather turns. Cut generously enough to go over a hoodie.

Brown is the one that looks most like what it is, which is hand-spun mountain wool. If you want the craft visible rather than hidden, take that.

Black, Brown, Red: Choosing a Colour

The knitted hooded jacket comes in six: black, brown, red, purple, blue and dark blue. That is the widest choice of anything we make, and it is the only piece on the site where colour is a real decision rather than whatever the batch produced.

• Black is the one most people should buy. It goes with every coat-and-trouser combination you already own; it reads as outerwear rather than as a jumper, and on a hand-knitted surface it never looks as flat as black usually does, because the stitch texture catches light.

• Dark blue does the same job and is slightly softer against most skin tones. Blue is the brighter version of it.

• Brown is the honest one. It is closest to how the wool looks before dyeing, and it suits anyone who wants the handmade quality to be obvious rather than disguised.

• Red and purple are for people who want to be seen. A strong colour on hand-knitted wool behaves completely differently from the same shade on a machine-made coat, because the surface is irregular and the colour shifts as it moves.

Colourways are knitted in small batches, so what is listed is what exists this season. If a colour is showing now, it is not guaranteed to be there next month.

As a Winter Jacket

Worth being straight about, because "winter jacket" covers two different things.

In dry cold, this is your outer layer. Himalayan fleece has more crimp than lowland wool, meaning more natural wave in each fibre, and crimp is what traps air. Hand-knitting leaves that fabric looser than any machine would, so it traps more still. That is why these feel warmer than their thickness suggests, and why a hand-knitted jacket outperforms a machine-knit one of the same weight.

In wind or driving rain, it needs something over it. Knitted fabric has air gaps by design. That is precisely what makes it warm and precisely what lets wind through. It is not windproof and not waterproof, and anyone telling you a knitted wool jacket is either one is selling you something else.

What wool does that synthetics do not is keep insulating once damp. A soaked fleece jacket stops working. Wet wool is heavy and unpleasant and still warm.

Length, Fit, and Ordering Without a Size Chart

The honest section, because this is the real objection on a $50 jacket bought from another country.

Free size on a hand-knitted jacket means a generous, relaxed cut. It will sit looser than a coat you would buy in your usual size, and it is meant to: these are worn over a jumper, not over a shirt alone. Hand-knitted rib stretches and recovers, which is what lets one size work across a wide range of builds, and it is why these do not come in S, M and L.

Length sits around hip level rather than thigh or full length. If you are looking for a long wool coat, these are not that, and no amount of copy will make them that.

How to Wear It

Over a jumper, not instead of one. That is the short version, and it is the way the cut is designed.

• With jeans and boots is what these were made for and where they look most natural. The texture does the work, so nothing else needs to be interesting.

• Over a hoodie works because the cut is generous enough to take one. Zip the jacket, leave the hood of the jumper out. This is how most people under thirty actually wear it.

• Under a shell when the weather is against you. The jacket is your insulation, and the shell handles the wind.

• With something plain if you are wearing the rainbow or patchwork jacket. Both are loud enough to carry an outfit on their own, and pairing them with another pattern is the only way to get it wrong.