Arms of Andes make great hoodies in royal alpaca wool. They come in a range of sizes, colours, weights and zip options, and are all incredibly warm for their weight. Stock permitting – check their EU site as well as their US site, their Etsy store and Amazon.
These hoodies go very nicely with jogging bottoms from the same shop, to form a nice set of thermal clothes suitable for indoors or outdoors – as outerwear or underneath other clothing.
Colours include undyed white, and plant-dyed blue or grey as well as bug-blood red and a range of synthetic options.
Zip options include having no zip (ideal for those who want a simple option, with no risk of zip breaking, and no cold zip touching your skin, and no concern about plastic in the zip seam) as well as half-length zip (if the zip breaks it’s still easily wearable) and full-length zip (like a normal coat).
Size-wise – if you’re used to wearing XL shirts from other clothes stores, you may want to play it safe with 3XL tees, sweaters and hoodies from Arms of Andes since they are all made very tight, not like their trousers. Hoodies are often worn over other layers so you’ll need to factor that in too, especially if it’s a zip-up hoodie – you’ll want to keep that cold zip off your skin.
Hood or no hood?
Arms of Andes also make non-hooded versions of their full zip and half zip heavy hooded tops. You may prefer a non hooded top, but we recommend hoodies, since the hood is easily put up or down depending how cold your head gets, it’s not going to fall off like a separate hat would, and it doesn’t need packing away when you’re finished with it.
Having said that, Arms of Andes also make some outstanding undyed finely-woven royal alpaca snoods – highly recommended for their warmth per size & weight, their build quality, and their versatility in the many ways they can be worn, while beanie hats are very limited to one way of wearing them, and are far more likely to fall off your head.
Why Royal Alpaca?
Since alpaca is the warmest mass-produced wool in the world, and royal alpaca is the finest grade of alpaca, these royal alpaca hoodies are a great way to warm up comfortably, without the need for wearing anything synthetic.
They’re not cheap, but their build quality makes them a great investment.
They pack down very small, offering great thermal value for their pack size & weight – enough to give goose down thermals a run for their money. The lightweight versions might not be enough on their own in the depths of winter but the heavier options may be, and it’s easy to double up or add as many layers as you like because they’re not bulky on the body like down clothing is, and of course, they’re not wrapped in plastic.