The city’s bespoke workshops report two-year waiting lists and a workforce whose average age is 63. A new school, funded by the trade itself, is trying to find the next generation before the current one retires.
The dense, water-shedding wool cloth has been made in Alpine mills for 500 years. This autumn it is on the backs of 25-year-olds in Berlin, Copenhagen and Seoul, and the mills cannot keep up.
After a decade in which the Swiss industry chased ever higher prices, a wave of independent brands selling mechanical watches for the cost of a phone has found a generation that wants something that ticks.
