On the same mountains, skiers and mountain bikers are wearing Merino from the same sheep that roam the hills. It’s no coincidence. Here’s the story of how Mons Royale built its philosophy around nature’s performance fibre: Merino wool that didn’t need improving.
Tuohy’s Gully Track plummets down from the saddle below Queensberry Hill back into the Cardrona Valley. It’s a thrilling mountain bike descent deep in New Zealand’s South Island. Here, mountains break the horizon, ski runs line the hills, rivers bubble through tussocks, and snow lingers on the peaks for most of the year. In the distance, Wānaka can be seen against its namesake lake. Aside from a few mountain shelters, there’s little here. But all around, Merino sheep roam the wild mountain terrain, because Tuohy’s Gully is also a sheep station run by Willie and Sarah Scurr.
The sheep they breed are Merino: tough, hardy mountain sheep known for their soft, superfine wool. Tuohy’s Gully is one of the eight farms that supply wool to Mons Royale, the Merino apparel specialists based just down the road in Wānaka.
Somewhere in the early 2000s, pro skier Hamish Acland saw a gap between functional base layers and the graphic tees that were in style but weren’t designed for athletic performance. ‘On one hand there were stinky synthetics, and on the other, Merino brands were a snoozefest,’ says Hamish. He saw a need for mountain base layers that authentically fit into everyday life. When he met Hannah, a New York designer who grew up on a sheep station in New Zealand, they founded Mons Royale.
While traditional wool clothing might have a reputation for being ‘boring’, Mons Royale specialises in apparel that is anything but. Their bold and energetic designs are loved by mountain bikers, skiers, hikers, and adventurers alike – both on and off the mountain.
Out on Tuohy’s Gully, both the sheep and mountain bikers wear the same wool, and for good reason. Merino wool is nature’s performance fibre, as the Mons Royale team will tell you. ‘It’s the greatest fibre on the planet, because nature built it to do for sheep what we ask it to do for the garment,’ says Ryan Cosgrove, Head of Sourcing, Material and Production. ‘Sheep are born and live outside year-round, so their wool needs to work through all the seasons. It performs in both summer and winter, heatwave or snowstorm.’
It’s worth getting briefly into the science of what makes Merino such a good fibre for performance materials. Merino wool itself is very fine, which is why it doesn’t itch like regular wool. Look under a microscope, and you’ll see it’s naturally crimped, creating air pockets that trap heat and keep you insulated. Merino wool also wicks moisture away from your skin, absorbing up to 30 per cent of its weight in vapour before you feel wet, then releasing it into the environment. The result? You stay drier, more comfortable, and your core temperature stays regulated. It’s also naturally odour-resistant, which means you can wear it far more between washes. Ryan again sums it up best: ‘It keeps you cool when you’re hot, and warm when you’re not. You just can’t engineer that – so we don’t. We borrowed from nature and put it in a T-shirt.’
As any visitor to New Zealand will know, sheep are part of the landscape. More sheep than people, and all that. Another important part of the culture and economy is found slightly farther up the hill: skiing and other winter adventure sports. And that’s exactly why Mons Royale is based in the mountain hub where the two worlds collide. Mons Royale is all about showing up where its riders do, authentically sharing the mountain passion and growing the community that lives and breathes mountain adventures.
For Mons Royale, the two have always been intertwined. And right from the start, they understood that Merino wool needed to be more than just a performance fibre: it needed to fit into the culture with designs people actually wanted to wear.
‘We were starting a whole new position for Merino wool,’ says Hannah Acland, Co-founder and Creative Director. ‘We took that fibre and turned it into a bright base layer, put big, bold graphics on it, and positioned ourselves in a totally new space.’
Once the wool has been sheared, scoured, combed, and spun, the design team craft it into performance wear designed for the rider’s lifestyle. ‘Our brand is about doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing,’ says Hannah. ‘We’ve boldly gone ahead and carved out our own path, creating our own distinctive look and feel.’
Browse through the Mons Royale range, and you’ll see they’ve expanded far beyond base layers – there are jackets, trousers, shirts, shorts, and accessories, all made with Merino wool. Some products are 100 per cent Merino; others are Merino blends incorporating natural fibres such as hemp, cotton, or lyocell. Others still blend Merino with synthetic fibres, but looking to the future, Mons Royale has staked out an aim, and with it, their next adventure.
‘Our overarching mission is essentially to create nature’s performance apparel that doesn’t screw the planet and inspires a life of action and adventure,’ Tom Brownlee, Head of Brand Marketing, says. ‘It basically comes back to the belief that we see a world where natural fibres have replaced synthetic materials.’
Every farm supplying Mons Royale wool also holds ZQ, ZQ+, or RWS certification, which sets independently verified requirements for animal welfare, land management, and social standards.
When Sidetracked speaks to Hannah, they’re working through the next B Corp recertification. ‘Merino wool makes up just one per cent of global textiles. And of that, less than 10 per cent is ethically certified. And that was mind-blowing to me. Certified Merino is a precious material.’
With their Wānaka HQ in the same valley as many of the farms that supply their wool, the team can head out and have a cup of tea with the farmers on any given day. ‘The ability to go and see the sheep at the bottom of the hill we spend all our time on is pretty amazing,’ says Tom.
It’s that connection between sheep, designers, and riders that makes Mons Royale so special. It’s not every day you see sheep and riders wearing the same Merino wool, roaming the same hills, in the same performance fibre made for mountains.
