When Olympic athletes competing for Team USA sail down the Seine River for the opening ceremony in Paris later this month, they will be sporting wool from an Oregon company.
Maupin-based Imperial Ranch Farms has helped provide wool to Ralph Lauren for the last three Winter Olympics and Paralympics ceremony outfits. Ranch leader Jeanne Carver says the experience of supplying clothing material for the Olympics has been life-changing, and helped her launch Shaniko Wool Company in 2018, a farm group that markets and sells sustainable wool.
Sheep at Imperial Ranch Farms in Maupin, Oregon. Ranch leader Jeanne Carver is also founder of Shaniko Wool Company, which is providing wool to Ralph Lauren for the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Paris.
Jeanne Carver/Shaniko Wool Company
But expanding their Olympic connection to include outfits for the summer games and Paralympics is especially exciting for Carver. She competed as a volleyball player and track athlete – both sports in the Summer Olympics – while attending Oregon State University in the 1970s.
“Imagine, as a two-sport athlete in college, my sports!” Carver said. “I am watching with such interest, all of the gymnastics trials, and the swimming, and the track and field – because every one of the athletes in these summer sports will wear wool for the first time in their team uniforms for the Olympics. It’s exciting in so many ways for me.”
Ralph Lauren first reached out to Carver in August 2012 after the company had taken heat for producing U.S. Olympic Team ceremony outfits overseas. Carver didn’t know the company was seeking wool for the Olympic outfits, just that they were interested in sourcing material from the U.S. for an upcoming venture.
“Six months later, about Christmas of ‘12, we got the greatest yarn order of our life up until then,” Carver said. “And it was for a special project, which we didn’t know what they were doing.”
Eventually Carver learned it was for the Olympics, and that Ralph Lauren was planning a marketing campaign that would highlight Imperial Ranch’s involvement in the outfits. Carver would go on to provide wool not just for the 2014 Winter Olympics, but for 2018 and 2022 as well.
Swimmer and Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky models Ralph Lauren's blazer for the 2024 Olympics' opening ceremony. Oregon-based Shaniko Wool Company provided wool for the blazer.
Courtesy of Ralph Lauren
After the 2014 games, brands from around the world started reaching out and ordering Oregon-produced wool. Some companies, like outdoor clothing giant Patagonia, were interested both in the ranch’s high-quality wool and in their sustainability practices – practices Carver said are just common sense land management.
“We’ve always put the health of natural resources as the focus,” she said. “It’s really logical. The health of the resource means the healthier your harvest and the healthier your bottom line, which ensures your future.”
Carver, a lifelong Oregonian born in Canyonville, has dedicated decades to creating and marketing sustainably produced wool from her family’s ranch. In 2017 Imperial Stock Ranch became the first entity to achieve certification under a third-party audited global standard called the Responsible Wool Standard.
The following year, Carver founded Shaniko Wool Company to help scale the supply of Responsible Wool Standard-certified wool. The company is a farm group that now has 10 member farms representing more than two million acres of land in the western U.S.
Carver also started working with researchers at her alma mater OSU to help measure the environmental impact of the ranch and make sure operations are a net positive for the environment.
A sheep at Imperial Ranch Farms in Maupin, Oregon. Ranch leader Jeanne Carver is also founder of Shaniko Wool Company, which is providing wool to Ralph Lauren for the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in Paris.
Jeanne Carver/Shaniko Wool Company
She said all of that will be represented during the Olympic opening ceremony when Team USA athletes will don the blue blazer from Ralph Lauren, partially woven with Shaniko Wool Company wool.
“Jade Carey from Oregon State University clinched a spot on the gymnastics team,” Carver said, “And inside me – I’m like the only person in the whole world connecting these dots – but this OSU current athlete is going to be wearing wool from my efforts, I’m so excited about that.”
Carver said she’ll be tuning into the Olympic opening ceremony to see all of those efforts embodied in the outfits.
But mostly, Carver will be watching because she’s a rabid sports fan.
“Imagine – Steph Curry, Sabrina Ionescu – all these people will be wearing Shaniko wool,” Carver said. “They won’t realize it because their focus is on the job at hand. But in my heart of hearts, I’m so deeply grateful.”