Loro Piana Rewards Finest Merino Wool in the World
MILAN — The Loro Piana Record Bale event, rewarding the finest merino wool in the world, returned here Thursday evening IRL after two years for its 23rd edition.
Loro Piana chief executive officer Damien Bertrand, who joined the company from Christian Dior Couture last year, said during the dinner event held at Milan’s Poldi Pezzoli museum that the wool is “not just a gift of nature, it is the hard work of great people, crazy like us at Loro Piana,” he quipped, “and their passion and true belief in innovation and in power to change things and improve them day after day.”
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Bertrand had just returned from a trip to New Zealand and Australia with vice chairman Pier Luigi Loro Piana, whom he credited for creating this long-standing collaboration with the wool breeders in those regions.
The trip helped him understand the uniqueness of the relationship between Loro Piana and the breeders, “going at the source,” and selecting “the best of the best” to guarantee traceability of fibers, constantly raising the standard from year to year. “Going on site and seeing all this with your very own eyes gives meaning to our philosophy. Loro Piana is the master of fibers. This makes absolute sense,” he said.
Record Bale “was born after an obsession to create the finest wool in the world,” said Bertrand, explaining that traditional fine wool starts at 17 microns. The Record Bale, when it was invented in 1998, reached 13.8 microns “and that was already a miracle. A miracle to produce such fine wool, but also a miracle to be able to weave it. It is so fine that it must be strong and perfect to be woven.” The fiber today is finer by 25 percent from that first Record Bale, reaching 10.6 microns. To put this into context, a human hair measures 80 microns.
Through the Record Bale competition, Loro Piana has created the Gift of Kings, with all ultrafine wool measuring 12 microns. The name is inspired by the Spanish royal family’s practice of gifting pairs of merino sheep to other monarchs to honor these relationships. In the second half of the 18th century, the animals were taken to New Zealand and Australia, where the habitat proved ideal.
Bertrand underscored that “it is not only the relationship but also the vertically integrated manufacturing and traceability that truly distinguishes our exclusive fibers because Loro Piana is a true chain of hands from fibers to final garments. Years of unparalleled research and innovation, devotion and pioneering spirit have enabled the company to achieve this unique preciousness.”
Pier Luigi Loro Piana said the initiative “is not to enter the Guinness [book of] world record, but to be useful,” and recounted how he first traveled to Australia in 1978, where the breeders are researchers, as they are in New Zealand.
The award this year was assigned to the Australian farm Pyrenees Park of Pamela and Robert Sandlant, for the sixth consecutive year, and to the New Zealand farm Visuela Farm of Barrie and Yvonne Payne, each reaping a bale whose width is of 10.6 and 11.1 microns, respectively.
The structure of the fiber, similar to that of a microscopic spring, allows the creation of fabrics that are crease-resistant and fluid, that follow the movements of the body thanks to the intrinsic elasticity of the material, explained Bertrand.
The wool, in addition, behaves as a second skin, ensuring transpiration and the ability to adapt to changes in the wearer’s body temperature compared to variations in the external one.
With exclusive patterns, the fabrics are marked with a special label that documents the traceability, starting from the year of the shearing.
No more than 40 made-to-measure suits can be created from the around 15 meters of the Record Bale, whose buyers have precedence over future production and year after year collect the entire range.
This year’s event was hosted together with Martina Mondadori, cofounder of Cabana Magazine, and Ashley Hicks, who designed and created a series of artworks in the room where the dinner was held. On the tables, small fluffs of wool were offered to guests, who could experience the softness of the fabric first hand.
