From the 1980s onward, a wave of offshore manufacturing, synthetic materials, and fast fashion quietly lowered the bar for what clothing could be.
We're now in the middle of a genuine reversal. People are reading labels. They're asking questions. They want to know the story behind what touches their skin every day.
The quality of a garment is decided long before it reaches the needles. It starts with the yarn - and that's exactly where we start.
Our yarn selection draws on years of working with high-end luxury mills. The spinning of yarn is a craft, not a commodity - and the fibre we choose is the single most important decision we make in producing every garment.
Baby alpaca is the finest grade of alpaca fibre, shorn from young alpacas in the Peruvian highlands. It is naturally hypoallergenic, contains no lanolin, and has a silky softness that improves with every wear. Unlike wool, it doesn't pill easily and retains its shape over time.
Our Camel yarn is made from the fine downy undercoat of Bactrian camels sourced from Inner Mongolia and China. Similar in fineness to cashmere, it has an exceptional warmth-to-weight ratio and is available in deep natural brown or ivory. A rare fibre; a lasting impression.
Our Cirrus yarn blends the finest cashmere with New Zealand possum down and silk. Possum fibre is hollow, making it unusually light and warm. The silk adds a luminous drape. Each fibre earns its place in the blend for a reason.
We know exactly where our yarn comes from, who spun it, and how. That's not a marketing position, it's just how we've always worked.
Michell are the global leaders in sustainable alpaca manufacturing - vertically integrated from breeding alpacas on their own farms to retail. We source our baby alpaca yarn directly from them. For over 95 years they have refined every stage of the process in-house, which is why consistency and quality are built in from the start.
Woolyarns are one of New Zealand's specialist luxury yarn spinners, and the makers of both our Cirrus and Kaamera yarns. Their expertise lies in blending unusual fibres with precision - the kind of work that requires both speciality technology and decades of accumulated knowledge.
Ahipao is not shy about how we work. You're welcome to visit our factory on Waiheke Island and see in real life what goes into every garment. We are proud of always choosing the right way, and that starts long before the knitting does.