MURA - Handwoven, Zero-Waste Jackets from the Alpine River Valley

🧶MURA – From Sheep to Sleeve, a Revival in Wool

In the borderland region of Prekmurje, where the Julian Alps taper into rolling plains and the Mura River winds past patchwork fields, a quiet cultural extinction is underway. For centuries, the people of this region wove their lives—literally—into wool. Every home once held a loom. Spindles danced in the hands of grandmothers beside hearths. Shepherds guided hardy sheep across misty hills. Patterns were passed down like recipes, etched in memory, not on paper.

But today, only fragments remain.

You’ll still find a handful of elders who can spin, dye, and weave from memory. A few looms hum in forgotten corners. But most are silent. And with them, a way of life risks disappearing altogether.

MURA is our attempt to intervene—not with nostalgia, but with purpose.

We are a design experiment and preservation project that bridges endangered Slovenian textile traditions with contemporary zero-waste fashion. Our goal is not to imitate the past, but to reimagine its relevance. Every jacket we produce carries this dual commitment: heritage and innovation.

What We Make

Each MURA jacket begins not in a factory, but on the hillside—with raw, undyed wool sourced from local shepherds within a 100-kilometer radius. The wool is:

• Spun and handwoven by a growing network of weavers and apprentices
• Solar-powered in its processing
• Tailored locally to reduce transport and carbon footprint
• Built to last through modular, repairable design

Our aesthetic fuses Slovenian folklore—motifs from embroidered vests, rhythmic geometry of local rugs—with the clean lines and functionality of Bauhaus minimalism. The result is timeless outerwear, structured but soft, that honors the land and the hands that shaped it.

Why It Matters

This isn’t just about clothing. It’s about cultural survival. It's about building circular economies in regions overlooked by globalization. It's about letting rural craftsmanship speak again in a digital age.

And to do it right, we need your support to scale ethically.

What This Campaign Enables

With your help, this campaign will:

1. Scale Production to 100 Jackets
   – Enable consistent wool sourcing and fair wages for artisans
   – Improve our solar-powered weaving studio and workshop infrastructure
   – Expand our zero-waste modular pattern system
2. Train 3 Local Apprentices in Weaving
   – Revive handweaving as a viable career for younger generations
   – Pair apprentices with elder weavers in structured learning modules
   – Document techniques that are currently only passed down orally
3. Build a Traceability Model on Cardano
   – Create an open-source blockchain-based ledger that traces each jacket from “sheep to sleeve”
   – Log the source of wool, the artisan who spun and wove it, the tailoring location, and time spent
   – Offer full transparency for future buyers and researchers
4. Archive Oral Histories & Weaving Patterns
   – Interview elder weavers before their knowledge is lost
   – Record voice, song, and gesture—how patterns are taught, not just how they look
   – Digitize and open-source these traditions for others to build on

Why Blockchain?

We chose Cardano not just for its low energy footprint but for its philosophy: a system designed for sustainable development and social impact. Traceability is not about marketing—it's about accountability and storytelling. With blockchain, we can preserve the narrative behind each garment in a way that resists greenwashing and honors the true origin of every material.

Join the Revival

This is more than a fashion campaign. It’s a living archive, a rural micro-economy, a digital experiment, and a revival of old knowledge for a new world.

By supporting MURA, you’re helping stitch a broken chain—one jacket, one apprentice, one story at a time.

Let’s bring the looms back to life.