INSPIRATION:

This project was born out of the love for animals and nature that has defined Inma since she was a child.

She's the one who convinced our parents to let us have dogs. She washed them, took care of them, rescued them and, under her care, cured them. Throughout her life, she has always had at least one dog that she’s raising as part of the family.

In recent years, a Spanish water dog named Hippie joined the family. A magnificent creature covered in a thick coat of golden-brown fur who has been the inspiration for this project.

Being of restless mind, as Inma pet and washed her dog's fur coat, seeing Hippie already needed a trim, it occurred to her what a pity it was that something so soft and so warm went to waste. When she took him to be groomed, she asked the stylist to save the clippings for her so that she could process them by hand, and ended up creating prototypes of surprising quality.

She shared her discovery and her idea with us, her siblings, who usually work as a team, and we fell in love with it. We had to start this project.

Alicia, Raúl and Pepín.

The project

Why we do it

WaterDogWool comes to be in 2017 to channel the possibilities of a material that surrounds us in our daily lives and which until now we have not known how to value.

To do this, we collect this product, which is currently discarded by stylists and breeders, and turn it into a top-quality textile material.

How we do it

We have created a collaboration strategy with breeders and stylists throughout Spain who are willing to deposit the product resulting from grooming this breed into our containers.

Once enough of the product has been collected, we will work only with donations. In this way we will not encourage mass breeding. We support animal welfare.

From there, the raw material is subjected to common processes that are performed with any other animal fiber. Slow and artisan processes that increase the value of the textile itself, recovering trades that were being lost because of the lowering of prices due to mass production.

Collaborators

Among this project’s collaborators we want to make special mention of Javier Torreira Martínez, a canine stylist from Cadiz and owner of Leocan. For two years, with great care, he has been selecting the best coats from his work with Water Dogs. If it had not been for his generous spirit, it would not have been possible for me to do this project. Afterall, I only have one dog!

Juan Lacida, a specialist in animal therapy with an illustrious career as a canine stylist, is also collaborating on the project.

From the first prototypes, we have begun to ask for project collaborators, which supports everything from the environment, to breeders that guarantee us quality products, having a quite positive feedback.

Some of the breeders who are willing to collaborate with the project:

Benefits

No animal abuse.
This project is based on a production strategy that eschews the models of massive exploitation used in large-scale husbandry and the mistreatment of animals in the shearing process, with practices such as muesling.

Respect for the environment.
Although the environmental footprint of the dog wool waste is not necessarily significant, it is a step toward fashion ceasing to be one of the most polluting industries on the planet.

In addition, another contribution of this material that we had not considered in the beginning, is the decreasing the use of dyes, perhaps one of the most polluting processes in textile processing. This is due to the fact that we can obtain natural black wool both in thread, textile and trimmings, in addition to a rich range of earthy colors.

Always loyal

Our commitment as a brand is to water dogs and to the environment.

We will use as few resources as possible to obtain the material. When this consists of a mixture of fibers, we are committed to using sustainable and ecological sources that support our company’s philosophy.

We are committed to setting reasonable production quotas and not to overprice the product so as not to encourage mass breeding, which, what’s more, would hardly be profitable.

This, together with the commitment of the breeders with whom we intend to establish a close collaboration, will produce the same wool that until now was being discounted in the normal breeding process of these dogs.

Initial results

Clothing and fabric samples

Below we have laid out different results achieved after cleaning the whole product.

We learned to differentiate the product suitable for picking, combing, and carding, which will serve us for felting, spinning and weaving the product which, due to its natural dreadlocks called cords, will serve us for the applications and trimmings that make up our designs.

We felted the materials, crocheted the cords from a coat of black fur in order to fasten the braided pieces by hand using a frame to the gauze fabric; we made felted balls. We also manufacture with the corded fur, tuft by tuft, meters of spun material make accessories containing the essence of what inspires us.