THRILLING ME SOFTLY

Creative journeys rarely come more epic than Andrew Doyle's. And the Australian style entrepreneur's globe-spanning mission – to build the finest, and most responsible, knitwear brand in the world - is only just taxiing for takeoff, writes Nick Scott.

- Nick Scott

A Steinway piano's warm sonic nuances can be attributed to the close-grained Sitka spruce from which its soundboard is made. A fine leather's suppleness and tactility come down to its grain and molecular structure. Winemakers would struggle to coax subtle complexities from pinot noir grapes unless they matured slowly, in cooler climes, tenaciously drawing nutrients from limestone-rich soil.

When it comes to the best commodities money can buy, it all starts with the raw material; which, in the case of ultra-luxe knitwear, is obtained from the slender-framed camelids that reside in South America's central Andes.

“Vicuña is the softest wool in the world,” says Andrew Doyle, founder of luxury knitwear maker Formehri. "When you touch it, it feels, compared to cashmere, like cashmere feels compared to sheep's wool. And it’s insulative; you can wear a lighter-weight knit in vicuña and remain as warm as you would in a thicker gauge of cashmere. It also breathes really well.”

To learn how ultra-luxe garments made from this sublime fibre became Doyle's life calling, we need to rewind 15 years or so, with Doyle experiencing something of an epiphany. "I'd always been interested in the aesthetics of clothing,” he says, “and then, when I was in my mid-20s, I was in a little book shop one afternoon and there was this pocket-sized book written by [English menswear commentator] Simon Crompton, which was called Le Snob Guide to Tailoring. I read it in an afternoon, and I just felt like I'd found my home. I was like, 'This is who I am, and what I love! It clicked.”

Doyle was building a finance recruitment company in his hometown of Canberra at the time, and while he didn't give up the day job, so to speak, he did become a devoted menswear autodidact, and for many years shared his ever-broadening repertoire of insights into bespoke tailoring and handcrafted menswear with the world via his own blog, Timeless Man.