Burel Factory

Burel Factory is a Portuguese sustainable wool label, founded in Manteigas in 2010 by Isabel Costa and João Tomás. While building their mountain hotel, Casa das Penhas Douradas, the pair went looking for burel, the coarse felted wool cloth of the Serra da Estrela, and found the Lanifícios Império mill facing insolvency. They restored and bought the factory to save its workers and their knowledge, keeping its 19th-century machines and adding colour to a fabric that had only come in natural wool shades. The brand makes coats, jackets, blazers, sweaters, skirts, trousers, dresses and T-shirts, along with burel fabric, blankets, cushions, acoustic wall panels, bags and shoes. Pieces include the Canadiana Xadrez, the Sobretudo Cocoon, the Blazer Príncipe de Gales, the Camisola Tradicional and the Capa Pastor. Everything is made at the restored mill in Manteigas, where veteran loom masters train younger weavers. It uses wool from Bordaleira and Churra sheep grazing in the Serra da Estrela, plus Portuguese Merino from the Alentejo, and follows a strict zero-waste policy. Burel Factory has stores in Lisbon's Chiado and in Porto, and in 2021 it also bought a historic wool processing factory in Covilhã.