The History of Loro Piana Cashmere
Cashmere — the downy undercoat of the Capra hircus goat — has been harvested on the high plateaux of Inner Mongolia, western China, and the Himalayas for millennia. But no company has done more to define cashmere as the supreme luxury fibre than Loro Piana, whose six-generation involvement with cashmere sourcing, grading, and processing has established standards that the rest of the industry merely aspires to match.
Loro Piana sources the finest cashmere from the Alashan region of Inner Mongolia, where extreme temperature variations — minus forty degrees in winter, plus forty in summer — produce goats with the softest, longest undercoat fibres. The company's buyers, stationed in the region year-round, select raw cashmere measuring 15.5 microns or finer, a specification that eliminates approximately ninety percent of global cashmere production.
The grading process at Loro Piana's facility in Roccapietra, near Trivero, sorts raw fibre by micron count, length, and colour with a precision that few competitors can justify economically. Baby cashmere — collected from Hircus goats younger than twelve months — measures just 13 to 13.5 microns and is so scarce that the annual global yield is estimated at only eighty tonnes, much of which Loro Piana secures through exclusive contracts.
Loro Piana's vertical integration extends from raw fibre to finished garment. The company operates its own dehairing plants, spinning mills, weaving facilities, and garment workshops in the Biellese district of Piedmont, maintaining control over every stage of production. This integration allows Loro Piana to guarantee provenance and quality in a way that brands dependent on third-party suppliers cannot (https://www.loropiana.com).
The Loro Piana Record Bale, awarded annually to the producer of the finest cashmere bale at auction, has become the industry's most prestigious quality benchmark. Winning bales routinely measure below 14.5 microns with fibre lengths exceeding 40 millimetres — specifications that produce cashmere of extraordinary softness and durability when properly processed.
A Loro Piana cashmere sweater, priced from one thousand to several thousand dollars depending on fibre grade and construction, represents the culmination of this sourcing and manufacturing chain. The resulting garment is lighter, softer, and more durable than cashmere from less selective sources, and it pills less because longer, finer fibres create a more stable yarn.
Loro Piana's cashmere history demonstrates that luxury in textiles is fundamentally about selection rather than transformation. The most advanced mill in the world cannot make mediocre raw material exceptional. Loro Piana's advantage is not superior machinery but superior access to the world's finest raw fibres and the willingness to reject everything that falls below its specifications.
