The New England landscape is dotted with disused textile mills that have been converted into museums, retail space, or apartments. But only in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, will you find a shuttered textile mill being used as…a new textile mill.

Founded in 1853, the Warren Mills produced the finest wool and cashmere fabrics in the U.S. for over a century. In 1988, Italian luxury brand Loro Piana took over the building and upgraded the facilities, but when Louis Vuitton bought out Loro Piana in 2013, they shut down the mill. Jacob Long, a Chicagoan then working as an investment banker in Italy, heard about the closure and felt moved to save the last vertical woolen mill (i.e., a mill that carries out all parts of the manufacturing process) in New England. He and his family returned to the United States, bought the mill, and reopened it as American Woolen in 2014 with the intention of running a regional business like those found in Italy.

“In Italy,” Long says, “there are groups of connected businesses located near each other to create industries with very particular traditions. This is how the United States was in the 18th and 19th centuries, too, but then we let consumerism take over craftsmanship, and turned everything into a commodity. My goal is to create a Tuscan-like cluster in Connecticut.”

To read the complete story or to see all photos, visit the MILIEU Newsstand to purchase this issue in print or visit Zinio.com to purchase this issue in digital format.

WRITTEN BY SUSAN KLEINMAN

This story appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of MILIEU.