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I have worked with wool all my life as a designer. There's so much more to it than knitwear - it's an amazingly versatile material and can be used in so many different ways from chic to rustic.

I love a good wool suit, and I appreciate the fact that it's a natural fiber. I know where it comes from, and I know how it's bred. And it's built to last. It breathes, and it feels good.

After all, the wool of a black sheep is just as warm.

We all go back to our roots. My father went to the central west, went to Ilfracombe in 1919. He was the manager of the wool scour there. And, Ilfracombe was right at the heart of Australia's great wool industry, and my mother was a teacher at Winton.

Growing up in a cold place, in Southern Ontario, Woolrich was a brand of choice for us because it was always warm and comfortable. The parka with the fur on it was standard fare for us. It's extraordinary that they have kept up with the times. Beyond the parka, they have changed, and they have some pretty hip, cool items which I wear.

A lot of my climbing and hiking gear is all wool because I can wear it for a week straight and it doesn't smell. And when you get hot and sweaty in a cold temperature, it stays warm.

When you sling a saddle atop a llama's back, just after he's rolled in the dirt to scratch the unscratchable tickle of having lugged an ungrateful hiker's 90 pounds of impedimenta another eight miles along the trail, you're struck by how matted, coarse, and snarly the wool seems. But that's why it makes for versatile outdoor wear.

When I was starting, there were wool mills in the U.S. that could make you anything. The U.S. used to produce the most beautiful cotton denim in the world. Now all that is gone.

Here we grow the flax and grain; here we raise the meat they eat, and the wool to keep them warm; we cut trees to build their houses and firewood to heat their stoves.