Cover Loro Piana’s Fall/Winter 2023 looks on display at Milan Fashion Week (Photo: Loro Piana)
Loro Piana’s Fall/Winter 2023 looks on display at Milan Fashion Week (Photo: Loro Piana)
1 / 1
The Italian label’s elegant, minimal styles and reputation for making some of the world’s finest textiles put it firmly in the industry’s spotlight
If there’s one brand that epitomises the essence of quiet luxury, the trend that has been much written and discussed of late, Loro Piana is it. The apparel label’s aesthetic, which embraces understated, effortless-looking chic, is projected through a minimalist style that subtly reflects superb quality.
The Italian brand has long been synonymous with luxury textiles, supplying the top names in bespoke suit-making and high-end fashion with the finest materials. Its legacy in fabric production still endures, but has now introduced its own ready-to-wear collections in the form of modern, luxurious staples for those who appreciate its classic yet stylish aesthetic, the superb quality of its fabrics and fine workmanship.
The company has a long history, founded in 1924 by Pietro Loro Piana—though the Loro Piana family was already trading wool since the early 1800s, which explains its expertise in textile-making. Pietro’s nephew, Franco took over in 1941, building its reputation as a supplier of premium wool and cashmere textiles for a growing haute couture industry. In the 1970s, Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana took up the reins, diversifying into luxury goods and developing an international retail arm.
Although it now enjoys an expansive business portfolio, the brand’s main forte remains producing luxury fabrics, particularly premium wool and cashmere. Loro Piana is famed for going to great lengths to source the finest and rarest raw materials from the furthest corners of the world, no matter how remote. These exceptional fibres include cashmere from baby goats in northern China and Mongolia, vicuña from the Andes, and extra-fine Merino wool from Australia and New Zealand.
In fact, it is the world’s leading processor of vicuña wool, hailed as the finest, rarest, and thus most expensive wool in the market. A single vicuña fibre measures about 12 microns, or 12 thousandths of a millimetre—producing wool that is unrivalled in softness. The fibres can only be gathered once every two years—on top of that, its scarcity is compounded by the limited yield (only up to 150 grammes can be acquired from an adult vicuña with each shearing).
As the biggest supplier of this material, Loro Piana is equally committed to protecting its source. Vicuña were once an endangered species, which led to the prohibition of its shearing. In 1984, the label began working under the approval of the Peruvian government, creating an exclusive partnership to protect the vicuña, while at the same time enabling its fibre to be used legally and responsibly for fabrics.
It’s not just rare materials that Loro Piana is concerned with—the brand is also committed to sustainability, which it promotes via innovative production techniques. An example being the Storm System, an eco-friendly coating it uses to produce water-resistant and dirt-resistant fabrics, and a natural, biodegradable material made from threads processed from lotus fibre.
The best showcase for fabrics of such superior quality is in minimal and timeless design, which the brand does to a T. Marvel at the collection’s pared-down, elegantly stylish aesthetic for both women and men. The result of this combination is a look that’s currently trending, but in fact, one that has always been a classic style, appreciated by connoisseurs of quality who know how subtlety can be much more impactful than overt displays of luxury.
