A new video campaign which features American Oscar-winning actress Anjelica Huston spruiking the virtues of wearing wool is attracting criticisms and questions in Australia.
The five videos, which are available on Youtube, were developed and released by The Woolmark Company, the international marketing subsidiary of the grower-owned Australian Wool Innovation.
Huston and her personal assistant, "Frances", gently spar with each other during the five short episodes during which "the Queen of wool care" answers inquiries from people who have a range of "emergencies" with their favourite woollen clothes.
The problems include how to remove coffee and red wine stains from woollen suits and jumpers to getting rid of pilling on a dress.
Along the way Huston, whose boyfriends have included screen legends Jack Nicholson and Ryan O'Neal, dishes out some racy life advice.
Her overall message is that wool is easy to wash, easy to dry and easy to care for.
One of the video starts with Huston holding a picture of a "champion" Merino ram but unfortunately it resembles one from the early 1900s with a thick covering of wrinkles.
That has sparked angry criticism from leading NSW England Merino stud breeder, Martin Oppenheimer, Petali, Walcha, who asked why AWI was promoting "Jurassic" Merino rams to the world.
On the other hand former AWI board member and NSW wool producer and businessman, Chick Olsson, congratulated The Woolmark Company on a "brilliant" campaign.
WoolProducers Australia CEO, Jo Hall, said the peak body encouraged effective promotion of wool and the benefits that "our wonderful product has".
"WoolProducers is aware of the campaign featuring Anjelica Huston extolling the virtues of wool on the Woolmark website but we are unaware of how this campaign will be rolled out to consumers and what cut through it may have," she said.
"Having watched some of the short videos in this current series, I'm not exactly sure who the target audience is.
"It would be interesting to see some clear monitoring and evaluation across AWI marketing programs to get an understanding of the actual return on investments for promotion and marketing activities which they undertake on behalf of their compulsory levy payers,'' Ms Hall said.
In the videos Huston, whose long list of film credits include an Oscar for best supporting actress in Prizzi's Honour in 1985, declares wool is the "most stable love of my life".
"It's natural, cosy, comfortable and very easy to care for," she says.
She also famously played Morticia Addams in the Addams Family.