Longtime friends Hamish Acland and Angus Rowley can’t remember how they first met. Maybe it was sometime twenty-plus years ago on a chairlift at Treble Cone in New Zealand, one of them recalls. It’s one of those situations where no one is really sure how or when it happened, but everyone’s better for it. Over the years, the two have formed an inseparable bond over skiing, but there’s something that brings them even closer—sheep, thousands and thousands of sheep.
Acland, a former competitive skier and founder of New Zealand-based apparel company Mons Royale, and “Gus” Rowley, a merino sheep farmer and lifelong skier based just outside of Wanaka, are leaning on each other to create stylish, functional wool products that are certified-sustainable to the highest degree. Operating under strict supervision from ZQ Merino—the outdoor industry’s highest accredited wool program—Gus’ ranch ensures the best possible standards of animal welfare and environmental responsibility, translating to only the best materials being sourced for Mons Royale’s baselayer and lifestyle apparel.
But Gus’ story doesn’t stop with his top-notch farm and countless happy sheep; he represents a new age of farmers. With tattooed arms, a love of punk-rock and a full quiver of Armada skis, Gus is a catalyst in the movement toward connecting product to place. “Farmers get portrayed in the media as people that are ‘old school’ and ‘conservative’ and they don’t have a connection to the modern world,” explains Acland. “What people need more [of]… are insights to where things come from and connection to that. What’s cool is that we’ve got Gus who can talk about wool to a skier in a ‘skier’s language’ and make it really relatable.”
With a friendly smile, tanned skin, messy blonde hair tucked underneath a trucker cap and a soft-spoken demeanor, Gus makes merino sheep farming sound like a beautiful, yet rugged experience. “We’re farming in the Southern Alps. We’re in… high-country terrain with lakes—and we’re close to the ski [areas],” he says. “It’s a pleasure to be farming an animal in an environment like this because they’re nearly getting to live like a wild animal; they can totally express themselves as if they’re living free.”
For lack of better phrasing, the mantra about “happy cows produce better milk” holds true in this ZQ-approved, sheep scenario, too. Gus’ sheep roam so liberally, yet are watched over so carefully, that it’s as if the farmers and their herding dogs are just an invisible hand, gently guiding the precious animals toward the next pasture.
It’s all part of the “chess game” of farming and tending to the animals, describes Gus, and that also means adhering to the “Five Freedoms” of the ZQ Merino charter. Ensuring his sheep are “free” from thirst, discomfort, distress, disease and that they’re free to live naturally, Gus is able to help his sheep produce longer-lasting and softer merino fibers—traits that eventually turn into a better product for Mons Royale and the countless skiers across the globe wearing its apparel.
“It’s just kind of crazy that you know something that’s grown up on a farm—wool—ends up on a pro athletes’ back when [he or she] is doing crazy stuff,” says Acland. “When Gus watches a ski movie, he can pick out the guys and girls that are rocking Mons. Typically, farmers don’t have that connection.”
The two-way road of sourcing ethical Merino fibers and creating stylish, functional apparel fuses Gus and Mons Royale at the hip—without one there isn’t the other—and, almost serendipitously, skiing and farming have a similar, intertwined relationship.
“When you’re a skier, it gives you a global outlook,” explains Gus promptly, as if he’d thought about this connection before. “Even when you go skiing locally, you’re skiing with people from all over the world. As a skier, you’re a traveler as well; you’re always wanting to go to Japan, Europe or wherever. A lot of farmers become insular, you’re just working on your farm and you become involved in your own little universe. By being a skier, too, it broadens my outlook and makes me aware of how my farming fits into the world.”
“In the same way, it takes someone with a really global view, someone living in a place like New York City, and it really grounds it back to the smaller community,” adds Acland.
In plain terms, Gus stands for farming in a new direction, one that connects the people buying the product to the individuals and brands who make it. A diehard skier, he also proves that there’s always a way to find time for the things we love in life—it’s just that sometimes you gotta feed the sheep before you take your turns. Working side-by-side, Mons Royale, Acland and the “Wool Guru,” Gus Rowley, are redefining what it means to source natural materials and tell the story of their origins.
