The sheep grazing the newly laid pasture in London’s Savile Row

 The sheep grazing the newly laid pasture in London’s Savile Row, home to gentlemanly tailoring, looked, well, sheepish.

But how could this flock — or the egg-yolk yellow sheep outside Selfridges, their wool color-branded with the store — know that they were there by royal appointment?

Prince Charles, whose once-ridiculed ecological ideas now look visionary, is behind a campaign to educate people about the joys and benefits of wool. Hence the event in London this month when shepherds were dressed up for the occasion in handmade-to-measure suits from the illustrious tailors Anderson & Sheppard and Gieves & Hawkes.

Like the campaigning “real food” supporters who want consumers to be able to trace the hens that laid their eggs, the cloth for those elegant suits came from wool from Exmoor Horn sheep, in the west of England, and was produced by the appropriately named Fox Brothers, historic wool manufacturers in Somerset.

This initiative from the Prince of Wales, to act as patron to a coalition of British industry groups, is not such woolly thinking. The world has changed since the Australian Wool Corp., 40 years ago, adopted the British slogan: “There is no substitute for wool.”

Today, an entire generation, grown up with padded nylon jackets and high-tech fabric sportswear, no longer has a closet filled with woolly sweaters and traditional winter coats. Ironically, the word “fleece,” used to describe ultralight, snugly zippered tops, often has nothing to do with sheep, but is made from 100 percent polyester — though fleeces made from recycled coffee grounds and soda bottles are also on offer.

“Wool Week,” with events involving 80 brands and 400 stores across Britain, was aimed at raising the profile of wool as part of a continuing five-year effort with a dedicated Web site: campaignforwool.org.

The fact that demand for wool is in decline was the spur to Prince Charles and caught the attention of wool suppliers in Australia and New Zealand.