BEHIND THE BRAND

Ask someone to name a "quiet luxury" house and Loro Piana comes up before almost anything else. No visible logo, no loud campaign, prices that rarely get explained out loud. Here's what's actually behind the name.

History

Loro Piana's story starts before 1924, when the family was already trading wool out of Trivero, in the foothills of the Italian Alps. Pietro Loro Piana formalized the company that year, and it stayed a family business for four generations: his grandson Franco took it international after the war, and Franco's sons, Sergio and Pier Luigi, spent the 1970s and '80s developing the premium fabrics the house is known for today and launching a ready-to-wear line alongside the mills.

In 1994, the company began working with vicuña, one of the rarest natural fibers in the world. Three years later it signed an agreement with Peru to source the fiber only from animals sheared alive and released back into the wild, a deal that also helped fund the country's first private vicuña reserve in 2008. In July 2013, LVMH took an 80% stake in Loro Piana for roughly €2 billion, with Sergio and Pier Luigi retaining the remainder; LVMH added another 5% in 2017 and now holds close to the entire company.

What They're Known For

Ask anyone what Loro Piana actually makes, and three things come up. Baby cashmere: fiber taken only from the first, softest coat of young Hircus goats, meaning there's simply less of it and it costs more to source. Vicuña: the wild Andean relative of the alpaca, whose wool can't be farmed conventionally, the animals are shorn once every two to three years, in the wild, under strict quota, which is why a vicuña coat routinely runs into five figures. And Storm System, the house's own weatherproofing treatment, which makes wool and cashmere genuinely water-resistant without laminating a membrane onto the fabric, so the material keeps its natural hand instead of turning stiff and technical. None of this is marketing language invented for a label. It's the actual reason the fabric costs what it costs.

In 1994, the company began working with vicuña, one of the rarest natural fibers in the world. Three years later it signed an agreement with Peru to source the fiber only from animals sheared alive and released back into the wild, a deal that also helped fund the country's first private vicuña reserve in 2008. In July 2013, LVMH took an 80% stake in Loro Piana for roughly €2 billion, with Sergio and Pier Luigi retaining the remainder; LVMH added another 5% in 2017 and now holds close to the entire company.

Current Relevance

For Season 4 of Succession, Loro Piana sent Jeremy Strong a custom jacket to wear as Kendall Roy, a small, deliberate move that lined up with a show already credited as ground zero for "quiet luxury": clothing built to be recognized by people who already know, not by a logo. Around the same time, an anonymous satirist going by Gstaad Guy built an audience of roughly two million on Instagram and TikTok playing an old-money aristocrat whose entire personality runs through Loro Piana. Rather than distance itself from the joke, the brand made him an official ambassador, an unusual move for a house that otherwise avoids influencer marketing entirely. Both moments did the same thing: they turned a name that used to circulate quietly among people who already owned it into one a much wider audience now recognizes on sight.

Who wears it

The list of people photographed in Loro Piana runs from menswear obsessives to Hollywood leads: Daniel Craig had a custom overcoat made for No Time to Die, Pedro Pascal wore the brand's Torino coat to the 2023 Golden Globes, Brad Pitt commissioned a bespoke vicuña suit reportedly worth over $20,000, and Hyun Bin has been the brand's global ambassador since 2021. None of them needed to say the name out loud. That's rather the point.

In 1994, the company began working with vicuña, one of the rarest natural fibers in the world. Three years later it signed an agreement with Peru to source the fiber only from animals sheared alive and released back into the wild, a deal that also helped fund the country's first private vicuña reserve in 2008. In July 2013, LVMH took an 80% stake in Loro Piana for roughly €2 billion, with Sergio and Pier Luigi retaining the remainder; LVMH added another 5% in 2017 and now holds close to the entire company.

The numbers

1924 – the year the company was formally founded, though the family had traded wool since the early 1800s. €2 billion – what LVMH paid for an 80% stake in 2013. ~94% – LVMH's ownership today, after a further 5% stake acquired in 2017. 1994 – when Loro Piana began working with vicuña fiber. 2008 – the year the brand helped finance Peru's first private vicuña nature reserve.

The Sanpetuna Perspective

For a marketplace built around circulation rather than ownership, Loro Piana is close to an ideal category. The fiber content and construction that justify the price new are exactly what makes a well-kept piece hold up decades later. Baby cashmere and vicuña both wear well when stored and cleaned properly, and because both fibers are so labor-intensive to produce in the first place, a pre-owned piece isn't a compromise so much as access to the same craftsmanship at a different point in its life.

When a Loro Piana piece comes into Sanpetuna, it goes through the same process we use for every brand we carry: physical inspection against known genuine construction, label and hardware checks, and, where possible, a documented history from the seller. You can read the full process in How Sanpetuna Verifies Authenticity. If you're shopping the category for the first time, cashmere knitwear and outerwear tend to be the safest entry points; vicuña pieces are rarer to find pre-owned and worth the extra scrutiny before you commit.

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