ML - Michigan Avenue

2014 - Issue 8 - December/January

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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photography by andy barnham (factory) 52  michiganavemag.com "Machinery can do nothing without people who can Manage it." —pier luigi loro piana Managers and office staff of Loro Piana predecessor Fratelli Lora and Company woolen mill in Valsesia, Italy, in the late 1800s. Style Fashion Conscience Loro Piana's "sheep-to-shop" production process allows for tight quality control. GLOBAL GOODS, ANCIENT GOODS Traveling with a small circle of two to three trusted research- ers, Pier Luigi frequently leads international trips to uncover new materials. "It's important that some- body who wants to judge new products has a deep knowledge of the raw material," he explains. Much of the fabric used in the brand's most cov- eted pieces comes from the vicuña, a South American relative of the llama. Due to poaching, at one point only 5,000 vicuña remained. In the 1980s, Loro Piana began working with local gov- ernments to safeguard the animal, and in 2008 it established the nature reserve Dr. Franco Loro Piana Reserva (named after the founder's nephew). Today, the vicuña head count is approximately 180,000. Loro Piana is currently the top producer of vicuña, considered the finest fiber that can be legally culled from an adult animal. Only 12.5 to 13 microns thick, the resulting wool is incompara- ble in softness and quality. But it is an ancient natural fiber once utilized for handcrafted monks' garments and sacred to the Buddha that is Pier Luigi's latest preoccupation— and with good reason. "An old friend of mine, Choichiro Motoyama, gave me a piece of fabric made in Myanmar. He said, 'This is from the lotus f lower.' I touched it, and it was different from any- thing else; it looks like raw silk, has the shine of a linen, but it's soft." Immediately smitten, Pier Luigi decided to fast-track production, and in 2010 he contracted with the local community to produce the lotus-f lower fiber. "This fabric is the greenest textile fabric of the world," he notes. "There is no electricity involved, no engine that works on the machinery, nothing." The stems of the aquatic plant produce an extremely fine raw material akin to linen and raw silk. But it has to be hand-worked on wooden looms; from the moment the f lowers are destemmed, the filaments must be extracted within 24 hours or the material is no longer usable. It takes 6,500 stems to obtain a little over four yards of the breathable, light-as-air yarn needed for a single cut length of a blazer. The production supports an ancient art and economy in jeopardy. "We will not lose this tradi- tion, which was ready to die," Pier Luigi says. Given this hands-on approach, a limited number of blazers are produced each year. Packaged in a beautiful, handcrafted lacquer box, the Lotus Flower jacket—available only in its natural ecru color—is custom priced, and limited-cut lengths are available for made-to-order blazers. A NEW LEVEL OF LUXURY To some, the merger of Loro Piana with LVMH, which also owns presti- gious brands such as Veuve Clicquot, TAG Heuer, Dom Pérignon, Céline, Loewe, and Givenchy, was a surprising move. For Pier Luigi, however, it made perfect sense. "The group has the know-how, the system, management, and the potential to con- tinue and develop the strateg y Loro Piana already put in place," he says. "That's why we selected LVMH for the future of the company." LVMH is also a committed advocate of environmental pro- tection and a member of the United Nations Global Compact, which requires its signatories to apply and promote 10 principles in the fields of human rights, labor, and the environment. "Quality is the prime character of everything we do," Pier Luigi says. "We've built a conscious- ness that high quality is related to natural fibers." By "quality," he refers to unparalleled texture, color, refinement—and the avoidance of a detri- mental impact on the environment. "If you put a wool jacket under the dirt, it will die. The nylon jacket never dies." 39 E. Oak St., 312-664-6644; loropiana.com MA A rendering of Loro Piana's Chicago location on East Oak Street.

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