Loro Piana: inside the brand that reinvented luxury style

Times

24-05-2025

One thing money cannot protect you from is the sartorial mishap. A big budget is no immunisation against the brash and gaudy or the conservative and dull. But while it may be true that you cannot buy style, you can buy Loro Piana. The brand is a passport to impeccable, pared-back taste, and it is where I would recommend any master of the universe to start when building his or her (walk-in) wardrobe. Without flashy branding and blingy detailing, the 100-year-old Italian house has steadily established itself as the uniform of the better-dressed global elite. In a world of competitive ostentation and spot-a-mile-off gimmicks, Loro Piana is distinctive in its discretion, an emblem of taste and super-high quality.
The look? Unassumingly — but unmistakably — moneyed, sure, and a shortcut to chic for those confident and established enough not to bother with chasing clout and status (or at least not obviously so). Simon Longland, the director of fashion buying at Harrods, salutes the brand's 'quiet confidence' and describes it as 'the very essence of true investment dressing'. Kay Barron, the fashion director of Net-a-Porter — where the brand's signature Traveller jacket performs consistently well — notes: 'Loro Piana has maintained its exclusivity, enabling it to engage with modern luxury consumers. Its understated, refined designs make it a go-to choice for those who prefer classic pieces with a contemporary twist.'
When discussing Loro Piana, the ultimate stealth-wealth brand, you really have to contort yourself not to mention 'quiet luxury'. Damien Bertrand — Loro Piana's affable, exacting and cerebral French CEO, who can somehow quote Seneca and Voltaire and not sound pretentious — finds the term reductive ('We are discreet but we are not silent'). 'It's too much of a marketing trend,' he says, adding that the thing about trends is that they pass, and when the tide turns back to noise and logos 'we will stay who we are'.
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When described Loro Piana's signature styles — the perfect knitted polos, the velvety cashmere bomber, the white-soled loafers, to name but a few — don't sound particularly noteworthy. But to see and to feel them is to get it; if you know, you know. (With a knowing nod and a wink to its USP, that was the name of the brand's first exhibition, held in the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai this spring — If You Know, You Know: Loro Piana's Quest for Excellence.) Bertrand enthuses about 'sensoriality' and the power of touch. It is a defiantly analogue brand in a digital world.
In a tough climate for luxury, Loro Piana has been performing well. LVMH, which owns the brand, doesn't break down the sales of its individual houses, but earlier this year stressed the label's 'remarkable performance' in its annual earnings statement, with analysts estimating that sales at Loro Piana were between €2 billion (£1.6 billion) and €3 billion in 2024. (They were about €700 million in 2013, when LVMH acquired an 80 per cent stake for €2 billion.)
What makes it special? 'The sense of detail, the sense of going to the extreme, the obsession with quality, the heritage, and also daring to look at the future, is what we want to do,' Bertrand tells me before the opening of the exhibition. 'It's a mix of having a very clear DNA and being proud of it and being knowledgeable about it, but at the same time using it to go forward.'
Certainly the Loro Piana look — and as important, if not more so, the feel — resonates with the one-percenters. Masters of industry, tech titans, media moguls and ubergallerists are all fans. David Beckham is a repeat client; he wore a navy Loro Piana suit to the premiere of his Netflix documentary, and the tobacco Savile coat in visso wool (£4,840) in the stands of the Parc des Princes to watch the Paris Saint-Germain versus Liverpool Champions League fixture this March. It was among the brands Gwyneth Paltrow turned to for her much discussed and decoded Utah court wardrobe — the cream turtleneck sweater with its just-so slouch is surely one of the most pared-back pieces to ever go viral. She later hosted a dinner for the brand at her home, in collaboration with her wellness empire Goop, attended by Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King. The brand is clearly the unofficial uniform of Montecito's glossy posse — Paltrow's neighbour the Duchess of Sussex is another fan. Meghan namechecked Loro Piana in her Netflix series — wearing a Takao open-knit short-sleeved top with Zara trousers — and even linked to it on her ShopMy page of curated recommendations.
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It was a fictional role, however, that thrust the brand into the mainstream consciousness. As the media scion Kendall Roy in Succession, the details-obsessed actor Jeremy Strong was often bedecked in the brand. Today, life mirrors art and Strong is an ambassador for the house, wearing it not only IRL, but also on the red carpets of the Met Gala, Oscars and Golden Globes (remember that plush teal velvet suit and bucket hat). 'I'm drawn to the quest for excellence. I visited the factory in Valsesia and I love the obsession with process as much as with results,' he said at the exhibition private view of the Shanghai exhibition. 'I feel cocooned. There's something ineffable about it. You feel the craftsmanship, quality and exactitude, the care that goes into it.'
When Succession aired, Kendall's £560 baseball cap got a lot of column inches. But Bertrand balks at the idea that Loro Piana is just a brand for billionaires. Sure, they have a lot of those, but there are more clients who come to invest in something they'll wear for ever. 'It's not just a question of status. People wear it because they feel good, because they are connoisseurs who understand the quality,' he says. 'To me our north star is the quality, the quality, the quality.'
Still, there's no getting around it, Loro Piana is expensive. Properly so. But, as Puck's Lauren Sherman, the author of the fashion insider's newsletter Line Sheet, notes: 'The mill makes some of the best cashmere in the world, and for people with unlimited means, the value is there. It has also been smart about merchandising and pricing in a market where everything feels too expensive.'
It's a fair point. In a world where the £3,000-plus, often distinctly average, handbag is commonplace, Loro Piana's superlative quality justifies its price tags. A polo shirt in the Gift of Kings wool, a 'noble and rare' merino that is extraordinarily light and soft, breathable and crease-proof, will set you back north of £2,000. But, says Bertrand: 'It's for people who are a little bit obsessed — I am a bit obsessed myself — who understand that the 12 micron [diameter] wool is coming from six farms in the world. That's it. We cannot source more than that.'
On the opening night of the exhibition Bertrand presented the 10th edition of the Cashmere of the Year award, celebrating a record fineness of 12.8 microns (in comparison, standard copier paper is 100 microns thick; a typical human hair, 70). So limited is it in quantity, only a small number of custom pieces will be made for top-tier clients.
Another Loro Piana signature is the ultra-precious, ultra-rare vicuña fibres, sourced from the camel-like animal that lives in the wild in the Peruvian Andes at an altitude upwards of 3,000 metres. That caused the wrong type of headache last year when a report in Bloomberg alleged that the process of gathering it relies on unpaid indigenous labour. Loro Piana strongly rejected the allegations, and Bertrand points out that during the brand's 30-plus years in Peru, it has not only invested in communities — health, infrastructure, education and so on — but also helped to save the vicuña from extinction. 'If anything, we will keep investing and keep developing because we felt — and that's why it was hard for the team — we felt from the beginning, it's our duty to do it,' he says. 'It motivates me even more to do more.'
The quest for the best of the best has been central to the house since the beginning ('It defines profoundly the company, I think'). The brand was founded by the wool trader Pietro Loro Piana in Piedmont, Italy, in 1924. Under his nephew, Franco, the company started producing and exporting fabrics; in the 1970s the brothers Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana began producing ready-to-wear; and in 2013, the luxury conglomerate LVMH came calling. In an executive shuffle, Bertrand departs the company for Louis Vuitton next month; Frédéric Arnault, the son of the LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, will take the reins at Loro Piana.
At 29, Arnault is young, but that could prove savvy. Over the past few years a younger, more fashiony and — whisper it —cooler audience has fallen for Loro Piana's charms, spurred on by buzzy collaborations (New Balance, the Japanese artist Hiroshi Fujiwara), the most ridiculously comfortable loungewear, and a growing appreciation for slow fashion. Merging the menswear and womenswear design studios has also proved a smart move. The spring-summer 2025 collection, with its languid tailoring and louche layers — all tunics over puddling trousers, tonal shirts and blazers, easy pants tucked into thick socks, strange little architectural hats (there is always a dash of whimsy; don't mistake discretion for a lack of levity) — speaks to an exacting, style-fluent client.
Innovation is also one of the cornerstones, and the brand is constantly pursuing new fabrics, such as CashDenim — an exclusive fabric created by Italian and Japanese artisans — found on the ultimate jet-set jeans. Like the brand's lotus flower yarn, it has a limited production capacity. Fine by him, Bertrand says: 'We have the luxury of time. And time is luxury.'
The brand has also extended its product range, drawing in increasing numbers of customers in the process. As Longland notes: 'Over the past two to three years we've seen the collection expand meaningfully, while staying rooted in impeccable craftsmanship.' There are the excellent shoes, for instance. Sherman identifies the 'near-ubiquitous' pointy flats — the almond-toe Rebecca pumps, which cost under £1,000 — as 'drawing in fashion enthusiasts in a way the brand never has before' (I love them in the glossy conker leather and nubby silk tapestry). Meanwhile the brilliant bags (a 'flourishing business') such as the perfectly proportioned, almost-anonymous Extra Bag L27 — a boxy, fuss-free design — have resonated with the kind of tastemaker who probably bristles at the words 'It bag'. See also sunglasses, homewares and the Library of Prints silk scarf collection, released to mark the centenary.
'This tension between heritage and novelty, heritage and futuristic vision I think makes Loro Piana unique today in the world of fashion,' Bertrand says. When he joined the brand, his mission was simple: 'Let's cultivate Loro Piana's singularity.' Mission accomplished.
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