Behind The Brand: Loro Piana

Since 1924 the Loro Piana family has owned and operated their world-renowned textile business, and prior to launching the present firm, the family had been wool merchants since the early 1800s. To say that the Loro Pianas are experts in luxurious fabrics would be an understatement: as the world's largest producer of both baby cashmere yarns and fabrics, Loro Piana has come to set the benchmark for the finest cloths, thanks to its tireless investment in raw materials and production, and continued technical innovation. Headquartered in Quarona, in the Valsesia district of north Italy, the firm has been producing its own collections of clothes and accessories since the 1980s, in addition to selling its cloths to leading couturiers and tailors, as well as to architects and interior designers.

While Mr Sergio Loro Piana oversees the luxury goods division of the firm, his brother, Mr Pier Luigi Loro Piana, travels the world in search of the finest and rarest raw materials. From Mongolia, where cashmere fibre is sourced from traditionally herded Hircus goats, to the mountainous regions of Peru where the company's famed vicuña wool originates, Loro Piana controls every stage of production for the utmost quality, from the collection of the natural fibres, right down to the delivery of the finished products to retailers (Loro Piana prefers not to entrust third party couriers, because of the rigorous standards the firm maintains, which dictate the exact conditions in which the clothes must travel).

The laboratory which Loro Piana maintains in Outer Mongolia is just one example of the company's astounding attention to detail. Here, the gathered cashmere fibre is carefully checked by workers with tweezers who pick out impurities, before each approved batch is sent to one of the label's six factories in Italy. "The fibres are magnified up to 34,000 times in order to ensure purity and proper standards of thickness, fineness and length; some 450 readings are taken for every batch and only if a batch passes inspection will it go on for further checks," Mr Pier Luigi Loro Piana explains, before adding, "luxury is quality with no compromise. It's not the price, but the innate value of something."