Shorn - Wine Coolers

Category: Interior

This project aims to celebrate the beauty and versatility of British wool and traditional handcrafts through a functional Wine Bottle Cooler. The idea behind these pieces came from a final-year university project exploring home textiles that follow zero waste principles. From this research, I came across the amazing natural qualities of British wool, particularly its ability to insulate. Wool's fibre structure traps air, helping regulate temperature and provide natural insulation to keep things warm or cool. That’s what led me to develop these wine coolers: tactile, woollen bottle cosies that can keep wine cool out of the fridge for up to 2 hours, perfect for picnics, dinners, or outdoor events. The coolers are part of a wider ambition to encourage people to reframe how we think about wool, through my brand, Shorn. Often dismissed as itchy or outdated, I want to show how wool can be both beautiful, contemporary and practical, something that belongs in the modern home and lifestyle, not just heritage collections. Each cooler is naturally dyed using majority plant-based dyes, including onion skins, madder root, indigo and turmeric. The dyeing and making process are slow and always a little unpredictable, which means no two pieces are ever exactly alike. I love how this brings soft tonal variation to each wine cooler, a celebration of nature’s colours, not mass-manufactured uniformity. The coolers are designed to be zero waste, being completely biodegradable at end-of-life in a matter of weeks. I also work to zero waste practices across my making practices, even the smallest offcuts from production are saved and reused. Some become filling for other products, others are spun back into yarn and used in my Scraps range. Sustainability is key to every decision with Shorn, from material sourcing to making, to considering the afterlife of each item. Choosing to use British Wool certified fibres as well to ensure all materials are traceable right back to the farm. What makes these wine coolers original is their innovative application of wool's natural thermoregulating properties to create an alternative to the synthetic plastic-based products available at the moment. The making processes of the coolers also make them unique, everything is done by hand from carding and spinning the wool to dyeing, spinning and stitching the fibres. It’s a slow, hands-on process that naturally brings out variation in the materials, making each one completely individual. Though thanks to my depth of knowledge of these materials and processes, I would change techniques to make the design scalable as necessary while still keeping the core design of the coolers.