Behind the scenes at the Loro Piana factory
When we were talking about Loro Piana on a recent post, a reader inquired about the manufacture and what I knew about it. I thought it would be interesting, therefore, to publish in full this chapter from The Finest Menswear in the World, my book from 2016.
In the process of researching it, talented photographer Andy Barnham and I toured several factories in Italy, and Loro Piana was one of the most memorable. I hope you enjoy this piece, on the company and the factories. More details on the book here.
Loro Piana knitwear, Sillavengo
Many things set Loro Piana apart from its peers, including scale, quality and innovation. But the most important – certainly for knitwear – is vertical integration.
Loro Piana sources all its own raw materials, so the rarest and most luxurious fabrics always find their way into the Loro Piana collection first - only later trickling down into the mainstream.
The company became the exclusive purveyor of vicuña for a decade. Baby cashmere and cloth from the lotus flower were a result of restless exploration by Pier-Luigi Loro Piana. The first discovery, however, was by Pier-Luigi’s father, Franco Loro Piana, in the 1950s.
The family had been wool traders for generations, going back to the early 19th century. In 1924, Franco’s uncle Pietro Loro Piana set up the first family company to sell woollen cloth (the cloth division of the company still bears his name). It wasn’t, however, until international travel became easier that Franco began travelling and bringing back both mechanical innovations and new wools.
The stand-out success was Tasmanian: a 2x1 cloth made from merino wool that Franco bought in Australia. ‘2x1’ refers to the weaving pattern, with two threads in the warp to only one in the weft (cloth had previously all been 2x2). Only the extra-long fibres Franco sourced could work with this much lighter weave.
It made Tasmanian the first four-season cloth, worn almost all year round in Italy. And markedly different from the heavy English woollens that dominated much of the market.
"It was a phenomenal success, selling millions of metres soon after launch," says Pier-Luigi. "Tasmanian was probably the world’s first branded cloth. Men used to keep the labels on the outside of the jacket cuff, to show off what it was made of."
In the 1980s, Loro Piana was the first company to bring cashmere back from Mongolia, establishing relationships with the local producers which enabled the company to control the quality more effectively.
Today, it is still the only brand that works in Mongolia on this individual level, with its own local trading company. Outside the company’s tent there is a sign that says ‘We buy cashmere 24 hours’. Herdsmen trust it over other traders because of its long-standing relationships (and electronic scales).
The other first came in Peru, where for many years it had been illegal to sell vicuña. The camelid the wool comes from had been hunted to near extinction – a long decline that began with the import of rifles by the Spanish. By 1950, there were only 6,000 animals left.
Both Franco and Pier-Luigi [below, being interviewed for this chapter] had known about the legendary material, which was so soft only the king of the Incas was allowed to wear it (woven with gold, and discarded at the end of each day), but had been unable to import it.
Then in the 1980s, Loro Piana began working with the Peruvian government to help the numbers recover, bringing in fences, breeding expertise and advice on how to harvest the wool without killing the animal – which had been normal practice until then.
As a result, the company won an exclusive contract to buy and sell vicuña for 10 years, from 1994 to 2004. Even today, Loro Piana buys the majority of the annual production.
The next innovation was baby cashmere, following a long campaign by Pier-Luigi in Mongolia.
He found that the underhair of hircus goats in their first year was a good degree finer than adult cashmere – around 13 microns as opposed to 15. Normally the nomadic herdsmen would put all cashmere into the same delivery – it was enough of an effort just to separate the soft underhair from the coarser body hair of the goat.
But gradually they were persuaded to sell baby cashmere separately, for a higher price. Again, for a long time Loro Piana was the only company selling the material, and still has the bulk of world supply.
The latest discovery was cloth woven from the filaments of the lotus flower. And it is this story that demonstrates the primacy of exploration at Loro Piana. Pier-Luigi travelled to Myanmar, where it is produced, many times before he was able to source any of the material.
After five years, he established a small group of women who could weave 40 metres a month on the old wooden looms used locally. Two years later, the company offered its first product – a run of 150 jackets.
It's strange to think it now, but Loro Piana only started selling clothes - rather than raw materials - in 1994. Since then revenue has increased rapidly, culminating in the sale of an 80% stake to LVMH for 2 billion euros in 2013. It has grown from two stores in Milan and Venice in 1998 to over 100 today. It is a giant.
You get a sense of that size, as well as the inevitable results of consistent experimentation, in the stock room. Based in Loro Piana’s Quarona headquarters, which house the weaving, finishing and quality control, the room is astonishing in its scale.
It is filled with 5,000 small grey crates, each of which contains a dozen or so cones of yarn, classified by their purpose and date of creation. The shelves, 30 or 40 crates high, recede into a blurry vanishing point from the viewing gallery half way up one wall.
The only other occupant of the room is a scuttling robot that whizzes up and down, out and back, fetching crates requested by the designers (above). It is an industrial sorting office for 250,000 kilos of cashmere.
Down the road in Sillavengo this wool is turned into knitwear. Cones of cashmere are trucked down the road to the small, one-storey building where around a dozen knitting machines produce the individual panels that make up Loro Piana sweaters.
Like most quality knitwear, Loro Piana’s is fully fashioned, meaning that the back, front and sleeves are knitted to size and then knitted together. More unusual is their range of knitting machines, from the large and rapid to the small and delicate.
It is the latter type - hand operated, sometimes referred to as 'flat bed' - that enables more experimental pieces, while the range of machinery makes it easier to produce made-to-measure knitwear relatively inexpensively (usually around a 20% surcharge).
It is not too much trouble to insert a unique order, with a different body shape, arm length and perhaps depth of the ‘V’ neck. The operator just has to generate a new code – either on a digital pad or a cardboard punch card, depending on the age of the machine (different types are preferred for different knits or details).
"With everything we do, we are aiming to fit into our customers’ lifestyle, their needs and desires. Bespoke and personalised items are definitely a growth area," says Pier-Luigi.
Pier-Luigi admits that design was a big concern when the new readymade line was launched in 1994.
The company’s history was in cloth, not fashion, and it was entering a crowded market for luxury Italian clothing. Anyone who visits the Pitti Uomo trade shows will be aware of quite how many Italian brands there are offering the same grey cashmere and brown suede aesthetic.
But in a few short years, Loro Piana became the paradigm of that Italian off-duty look. Its ‘Roadster’ pullover was one of the most popular, the zip-up neck and full body designed for those lucky men driving their open-top sports cars around Italy’s mountain roads. And jackets like the ‘Horsey’ and 'Icer', the former designed for the Italian Olympic show-jumping team, were staples long before the company's sneakers became so popular.
All of them demonstrated the company's mastery of materials - in particular the Storm System waterproof treatment, which has been patented and is widely licensed. But it was knitwear, with its soft tones and suede accents, which started everything.
"Baby cashmere, vicuña, the finest wools are the cornerstone of what we do – and so it is natural that everything in the readymade collection begins with thinking about knitwear," says Pier-Luigi.
Details on the book here. All photography, Andy Barnham.
Simon, the adoption of the lotus fibre fabric is a surprise. I have a scarf in that fabric from Inle where they grow and process the plants. It’s quite a coarse feeling cloth produced, much more so than woollen tweeds etc. It was from a small craft workshop so presumably Loro Piana have sourced a larger producer who can refine the product to a greater extent. D you know what they intend the cloth for?
Hi Kev,
As mentioned, this is from my book from 2016. Loro Piana have had that cloth available for a good few years now. It is made into jackets (also mentioned in the piece.)
In general, though, raw materials often feel coarse until they are treated in ways including washing and combing yarns, and various finishes on the final product. It’s always surprising how coarse cashmere feels before it is finished, for example. I’d imagine Inle are not doing the same extent of working or finishing as Loro Piana.
S
I’ve just purchased a Ralph Lauren purple label half zip and it looks identical with its textured weave to one that I’ve seen from loro piana and the composition (90% wool 10% cashmere) is the same , do Loro piana sometimes make purple label?
No, as far as I know they don’t. It sounds like just a similar design to me.
A good friend spent a considerable amount of time and money to renovate an old Healey 100/6. He was rather miffed everyone only wanted to discuss his Roadster Jacket. Im sure he bought the car to match his jacket.
Great article! I love to read about the details of cloth manufacture.
One question: Is the final photo related to lotus fibres, and if so, what part of the lotus plant might it be, perhaps the bud? I am no botanist, so I would be grateful for an explanation.
Thanks.
No, those are dried teasels. It’s the head of a spiky plant which is packed together on racks and used by traditional manufacturers to brush the material and give it a fluffy finish
You’ll find more on that if you have a read of my factory visit to Begg scarves in Scotland
Dr Peter, the small workshop I saw they were using the lotus stems which have several sets of holes running vertically through. The stems are sliced lengthways and then rolled to separate thin fibres in the stem. These are teased out and spun into thread after soaking.
Indeed I remember visiting a small producer of lotus silk on the Inle Lake in Myanmar and they very proudly showed me a copy of a newspaper showing a Loro Piana blazer in lotus silk selling for 5000 $. It’s a fascinating and exclusive fabric however, from what I was told, production is decreasing due to climate change.
Oh wow, I had no idea LP has a presence here in Ulaanbaatar. Now I look it up on the map I see that it’s about a mile from my home, hidden somewhere behind the cluster of apartment blocks I see out my office window. I hope they’re still managing to get product out of the country, as they’ve been closed to most traffic since early last year.
Always nice to hear from our Mongolian correspondent Keith!
Yes I think they were the first luxury brand to source themselves, and they still have a decent presence
Keith
Very interesting to hear, thanks. Would love some recommendations for Ulaanbaatar, might be going in the summer. Do you think that travelers will be able to visit by then?
I wouldn’t bank on it, Anon. The borders have been closed to passenger travel since early 2020. Seems very unlikely that we’ll be opening up to tourists before we make some serious headway on vaccinations, and we’ve yet to receive a single dose. I’d put it on the back burner until next summer when, hopefully, we’ll be back to some degree of normal.
Thanks Keith. Someone close to me due to do the Mongol Derby horse race but sounds as if that might be unlikely (I wonder if they would take a visitor who had been vaccinated).
Either way, any tips for fabric shopping / traditional garments in Ulaanbaatar?
Oh, that’s awesome. I first came here in 2009 on the Mongol Rally (the driving event organised by the Adventurists, the company that also runs the Derby), and I met my wife through the Derby while she was working on the event as a translator and I was running the finish line bar of the Rally 🙂 I’ve no idea if the event will be able to go ahead this year, but I’d expect it might be easier to get into the country as part of an organised event rather than as a general tourist.
I’m not the best person to ask about shopping here. The only things I ever buy are finished cashmere garments from Gobi Cashmere in the centre of UB, and the only time I wear traditional Mongolian clothing is when my wife drags me to a daft, corny photo shoot and shames me into wearing a deel for 10 minutes 🙂
Thanks Keith!
Do you like the roadster pullover and jackets Simon?I must say they look nice but the jackets and slightly longer coats look pricey at circa £3500.
I think you’re looking at a similar percentage uplift with any of the products – so think in those terms rather than which are the most expensive in absolute terms
Personally I like the roadster, but I prefer to not have zips these days, so usually avoid that style
Simon
Why do you avoid this style? If there is a separate article on this topic, can you link?
There’s no article, but I commented on it in our recent Awards article:
“It might be quite a personal thing, but I think they squash a shirt collar if you wear one underneath, and the zip isn’t that elegant – a buttoned, collared knit looks better. Most people I know who wear them do so largely out of convenience – as you can in theory wear them with a T-shirt, a shirt, and zip them up against the cold. But even though there are great colours and materials, I’d usually rather have a crewneck or proper collar”
Thank you. I am one of those people who likes to wear half or quarter zippers, Andersen-Andersen in particular. I think this model is quite versatile. You can use an OCBD shirt, for example, and just straighten it out by tucking your thumb and forefinger under the collar, when the sweater is open) It’s also good to wear over a T-shirt and zip up when it’s cold, as you rightly pointed out. I also think it’s good with a peacoat, A2 or M65.
Yes it’s certainly versatile, I just don’t think it looks great with a shirt – a crew or V neck would always look better. The two collars don’t really go well together, for me.
Yes, I understand, but a shirt with a jacket is already a double turn-down collar. And if we are talking about a sweater with a shirt and a coat, then this is already a triple collar), then you can wear them only with Baracuta with a stand-up collar? But for me, the triple is not so bad) (Belgian is the best)) Cheers
A jacket or coat is an extra collar, yes, but they are made to work together and do so rather better – for example, a jacket collar is set lower on the body at the front, to compliment a shirt collar, rather than surrounding it.
I don’t particularly like a collared sweater over a shirt and tie either for that reason.
And of course the thing with a half-zip collar is that it is sticking straight upwards on either side of the shirt collar. Those two aren’t really harmonious at all, to my eye.
I think the half-zip has several things against it compared to another collar around a shirt and tie: being tighter, being thicker, sticking up, and having a zip along the edges.
Insightful article. Do you know if their fabrics are woven in the same place and approximately how much of the company is dedicated to materials such as fabric vs their rtw line?
Most are woven in Quarona, but they do have other subsidiaries for specialist work, and of course own Solbiati for linen.
I don’t know what the split is I’m afraid, no. The cloth and yarn business has always been very big, but then the finished goods has grown a lot
Hello Simon,
Does Loro Piana factory accept visitor to their factory? If yes, is there anywhere that I can register? Thank you.
Not from the public, no they don’t I’m afraid. Very few places do
Fascinating. Can anyone tell me why their relatively simple looking “Hooded bomber jacket made from Wind fabric” (https://nl.loropiana.com/en/p/fw22/man/hooded-bomber-jacket-FAL3619?colorCode=W000) costs EUR 9,200? That comes across as a deliberate attempt to make it exclusive to (new) billionaires
I’ve probably missed something reading on my phone, what’s manufactured in Mongolia and what’s manufactured in Italy please?
Nothing’s manufactured in Mongolia, that’s where the cashmere is sourced from. As with everyone – except Loro Piana are pretty much the only one to do the sourcing themselves