The road to the Aubrac mill climbs for forty minutes and then stops being a road. We arrived in the last week of August, when the plateau is still warm and the looms have been running since five.

What the resting is for

Cloth leaves the loom under tension. If it is cut in that state it will move afterwards — in the shoulder first, then along the hem — and no amount of pressing will bring it back. Aubrac rests every metre for six weeks before anyone is allowed near it with chalk.

Six weeks is not a number the house arrived at through testing. It is the number their grandfather used. When we asked whether four would do, the answer was that four probably would, most of the time, and that this was exactly the problem.

The cost of not hurrying

Resting cloth means holding stock that earns nothing. It means a coat ordered in March cannot ship in April. It means the house makes roughly a third of what it could make with the same looms and the same people.

They are aware of this. It is on a whiteboard in the office, written in pencil, and it has not changed in nine years.