The Soft Parade
As Loro Piana celebrate their centenary, the rake reflects on a maison that has transformed mankind’s relationship with textiles.
Those visiting Shanghai’s Museum of Art Pudong this spring were treated to a celebration of, and masterclass in, the art of alchemising raw fibres into almost supernaturally tactile, aesthetically sublime garments. Curated by the fashion and museology professor Judith Clark, ‘If You Know, You Know. Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence’ was an immersive experience marking Loro Piana’s centenary and documenting their six-generation family legacy, hosted in a country that, being the cradle of cashmere, is perhaps its spiritual home. And for the sartorial connoisseur, offering one marvel after another, it made a second or even third visit an imperative.
Highlights included The Landscapes, vivid tableaux depicting the regions — the Andes, China, New Zealand — where rare fibres such as cashmere and vicuña are sourced, flanked by wall displays explaining the relevance of habitat details such as altitude and humidity; the Cocooning Room, in which one wall was rendered in cashmere, the other in jacket-lining material (‘Do not touch’ signs here would have rather defeated the object and anyway would have been roundly ignored); behind-the-scenes video treatments of Loro Piana’s atelier in Valsesia; and installations, from crocheted balloon-shaped ballgowns to American sculptor Sheila Hicks’s braided textile wheel to the Cashfur-clad mannequins gazing wistfully at Adriana Meunié’s arresting fibrous wall-hangs.
And yet, despite Clark’s deft curation and the generous space assigned to the exhibition — ‘If You Know, You Know’ was spread across 1,000 square metres over three galleries and 15 rooms — it would have been impossible to tell an exhaustive version of a story that begins a century ago, about 5,500 miles to the west of Shanghai, in northern Piedmont: home, for centuries, to the shepherds who made a living spinning and selling wool, washed in local mountain streams, dyed and oiled using local chestnuts, and spun and woven using machinery constructed from local wood.
Pietro Loro Piana, the son of a textile entrepreneur, was among those to open a mechanised mill in the valley in the early 20th century, and by the 1930s the maison was weaving exceptional, mostly pinstriped wool fabrics that were de rigueur in that era. It was his nephew Franco — a highly educated, technically savvy visionary with sharp fashion smarts — who, buoyed by post-war optimism, concluded that the company’s precious textiles could fulfil the sartorial ambitions of now thriving Parisian ateliers and fashion houses, and transformed Loro Piana into the ultra-luxe fabric makers they are today.
It was a few decades later, in the late 1970s — Loro Piana by now proudly displaying their beech tree, golden eagle and double stars coat of arms — that Franco, his appetite for lighter, finer fabrics piqued by clerical apparel, began musing about what wonders could be produced by applying the latest milling techniques to the 17-micron fleece offered up by sheep reared in Tasmania. Comfortable, versatile and suitable for all-weather use, the ‘Tasmanian’ fabric he developed made the brand ubiquitously renowned.
He died the following year, but to say Loro Piana were left in capable hands would be an understatement. Both of his sons inherited their father’s entrepreneurialism, and the elder, Sergio, had more of his style smarts. But it was the younger man, Pier Luigi, who would take his father’s knack for identifying, sourcing and processing the world’s most desirable fabrics — literally and figuratively speaking — into new territories and on to higher summits.
The previous year, Sergio and Pier Luigi had toured the Andean plateaus, investigating the fabled, gossamer-light fibres of the smallest member of the camelid family, the fleece of which had once been the preserve of ancient Incan emperors. What this preternaturally soft fibre measuring an average of 12.5 microns (and imbued by natural selection with beguiling thermoregulating properties) could add to the maison’s collections was manifest, and vicuña garments would eventually be introduced in 1994 (though only once initiatives to ensure this precious species never became endangered had made the enterprise genuinely sustainable).
It was in the early 1980s that Loro Piana expanded into the crafting of finished accessories and ready-to-wear garments — a fringed cashmere Grande Unita scarf was the debut piece in a canon that down the years has included: the Horsey jacket worn by the Italian equestrian Olympics team in 1992; the Icer, a cashmere ski jacket and the brand’s first brush with technical fabrics, imbued with a Storm System treatment making it water- and wind-resistant and launched in 1996; the nautical Bomber, with elastic cuff and two-way zip closure, launched in 2003; and the Traveller field jacket, a crisp, clean-lined and urbane but highly functional piece with nods to hardy explorer apparel from bygone eras, unveiled in 2007 but still popular today.
But it’s in the area of fabric innovation — one in which Loro Piana have raised the bar higher than any other brand — that the narrative to date packs the most mystique. My personal favourite anecdote on the subject sees Pier Luigi discover, via a friend, a fibre from the stems of an aquatic lotus flower that grows in the waters of Lake Inle in Myanmar. Associated with spiritual awakening in Buddhism, the fibre must be woven on a wooden loom within 24 hours to avoid deterioration. Up to 32,000 lotus stems provide the raw material to make about a metre of a fabric that, nonetheless, remains a staple in Loro Piana’s collections.
Then there’s the story of how Pier Luigi spent 10 years nurturing relationships with breeders in China and Mongolia to put aside small amounts of a scant resource — the under-fleece of Hircus goat kids below the age of 12 months — in order to furnish the sartorial world with the butter-soft tactility of Baby Cashmere. Other choice nuggets of fabric folklore include Pecora Nera, an undyed wool that comes in rich, dark, natural hues thanks to the husbandry smarts of New Zealander bovine breeder Fiona Gardner, and Gift of Kings, a fabric that, at 12 microns, is finer than cashmere and as light as vicuña, and is named in homage to the exceptional Merino fibre gifted by the King of Spain to the Elector of Saxony in the 18th century.
But one could eulogise for days about all the incredible fabrics and garments with which Loro Piana have furnished the world over the past century, and still not tell the whole story. Even if you restricted yourself to the part that deals only with this century, you would also touch on the maison’s erstwhile sponsorship of the Loro Piana superyacht regatta in Porto Cervo (in which Pier Luigi’s 25.4-metre Cookson yacht, My Song, was a competitor), and the 71st edition of the Loro Piana Giraglia Regatta last year. You would elaborate on conservation and sustainability initiatives such as the Franco Loro Piana Private Property, a private nature reserve in Peru, established in 2008 to protect and study vicuñas. And milestones such as: the acquisition of linen specialist Solbiati in 2013; the acquisition of Loro Piana, the same year, by LVMH Group; the establishment of the Loro Piana cashmere of the year awards; the debut of Loro Piana Interiors at Milan Design Week; and the takeover of Harrods Workshop of Wonders, another centenary celebration.
The book Master of Fibres, by one of The Rake’s closest associates, Nick Foulkes, and published by Assouline, is heartily recommended for those wishing to dive deeper into this exhilaratingly rich narrative. As with that Shanghai exhibition, one of the most edifying takeaways from the book is the knowledge that the story it tells is one very much in progress.
