Oregon wool exhibit spotlights Team USA Olympic uniforms

When Ralph Lauren recently unveiled its Team USA’s winter Olympic uniforms for Milano Cortina 2026, sheep ranchers near the high desert town of Shaniko in north central Oregon cheered.

Once again, the Shaniko Wool Company was chosen to provide high-quality wool for uniforms to be worn by all U.S. athletes competing in the world’s most prestigious multi-sport event.

This time, Ralph Lauren, the Official Outfitter of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams, has designed and created the largest number of individual items in the uniforms using Shaniko wool.

During the Winter Olympics opening parade ceremony Feb. 6 in Northern Italy, viewers will see U.S. athletes sporting fashionable winter-white twill Toggle Coats and trousers as well as knit turtleneck sweaters, earflap hats and mittens made with 100% Shaniko Wool.

The uniform for the closing parade ceremony Feb. 22 uses wool in red, white and blue turtleneck sweaters, mittens and beanies.

“The uniforms are stunning,” said Jeanne Carver of the Shaniko Wool Company. “It’s a proud day for American wool.”

The items with the official logo patch of the U.S. Olympic Team were exclusively designed and produced by Ralph Lauren for Team USA in 2026, and are available for purchase at Ralphlauren.com and teamusashop.com.

Visitors to the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum in The Dalles can see Olympic parade uniforms and learn that Shaniko, now called a living ghost town, was once the “Wool Capital of the World.”

The permanent exhibit “A Sense of Place” also tells the story of Jeanne Carver and her late husband, Dan, owners of the 155-year-old Imperial Stock Ranch, and the origins of the Shaniko Wool Company.

The Carvers’ Imperial Stock Ranch about 40 miles northeast of Madras in Wasco County supplied wool for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Starting with the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the Shaniko Wool Company, a co-op of family ranchers across the West founded by Jeanne Carver, has provided wool to the Ralph Lauren company.

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games’ opening ceremony introduced Team USA’s single-breasted navy blazers with red-and-white tipping made with wool provided by Shaniko sheep ranchers.

“Exhibit visitors and a sold-out lecture series tell us that people are very interested and responsive to this amazing story,” said Lesley Wright of the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum.

A full-length documentary yet to be released, “If the Land Wins” by Story Gorge explains the Carvers’ approach of regenerative ranching to produce world-class wool and benefit the land.

“Textiles have been the fabric of America since our beginning,” Jeanne Carver said. “Working as close to home as possible, like Ralph Lauren’s Made in USA program, honors that history and preserves the connections to place.”

She said those connections inspire stewardship and foster a deeper sense of community and purpose, and this “makes all of us better and stronger.”

Carver added that working with Ralph Lauren’s Team USA uniform program “shines a light on the largely forgotten traditions of raising sheep and harvesting fiber.”

Oregon wool history

Jeanne Carver remembers when the Ralph Lauren company first contacted her. It was in 2012, during the controversy created by Team USA’s London Games uniforms being made in China.

“I couldn’t believe” when they called, she said. “And I figured that actually doing business with them would probably never happen. I believe I said, ‘Things like this don’t happen to people like us,’” referring to the ranchers who make up the Shaniko Wool Company.

When the Ralph Lauren company placed an order, “it was beyond anything I could have dreamed about,” Carver said. “And it’s still just as exciting today as it was then.”

Oregon sheep ranchers and wool producers have experienced economic ups and downs.

In the early 1900s, Shaniko farmers and ranchers shipped millions of pounds of wool and carloads of grain and livestock to market on the Columbia Southern Railroad, according to Oregon Historical Society historians.

By the early 1910s, however, the railroad had lost most of its business to the Oregon Trunk Railway, and Shaniko became a ghost town.

Jeanne Carver’s family has been raising sheep, cattle, grains and hay on the Imperial Stock Ranch in nearby Maupin since 1871.

In 1999, when she and other U.S. sheep producers were priced out by imported wool, she found a new way to market: convert the raw, unprocessed wool into refined wool yarns.

Fifteen years later, Oregon wool helped dress 2014 Olympic athletes. “It was Ralph Lauren’s first Made in America Team USA uniform effort,” said Carver. “And they told our story, naming us for the first time.”

The Ralph Lauren company has been the official outfitter for Team USA for 10 consecutive Olympic Games, and all apparel worn by U.S. athletes during official Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies since 2012 is made in the United States.

Carver said the Ralph Lauren company is known for timelessness, quality and craftsmanship. “Our lives, and the work of Shaniko Wool Company, parallel these same qualities — the timeless skills of raising food and fiber, delivering the finest quality wool, and ensuring our collective future by improving the health of our lands.”

She said the company’s requirements for the highest standards in wool production were always a part of the Shaniko Wool Company.

First, the wool needed to be certified as meeting the Responsible Wool Standard granted to producers that prioritize animal welfare, land health and worker health and safety.

When the third-party audited global sheep and wool standard officially launched in 2016, Carver’s Imperial Stock Ranch became the first ranch to be certified.

The wool also had to have a very soft feel, or “hand,” as well as be durable with long and strong fibers. Because the uniforms use white fabric as well as dyed navy fabric, the wool had to be white, not yellow.

“We had exactly what they needed,” said Carver. “The ranchers of Shaniko Wool Company have been working on genetic improvements in their sheep for a very long time. As a group, we are raising some of the finest Merino wool produced in North America.”

If you go: Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum, 5000 Discovery Drive in The Dalles is open daily except for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. General admission is $12, with discounts for children, seniors, groups and museum members. For more information, call 541-296-8600 or visit gorgediscovery.org.