The Cloth That Knows Your Shoulders Before You Do

I have spent the last decade with my hands in cloth, and I can tell you that a Loro Piana suit fabric is something you feel before you understand. There is a softness to it that does not announce itself — the cloth simply drapes, follows the arm, and forgets to crease. If you have never had anything made to your own measurements, this is the place to start: a made-to-measure suit in Lisbon, cut from cloth that the house in northern Italy has spent a century perfecting. Let me explain what that cloth is, where it comes from, and how it becomes a jacket and trousers that hang on your body as if they grew there.

What Loro Piana history tells us about Italian cloth making

The Loro Piana family traded wool as far back as the early 1800s. In 1924, Pietro Loro Piana founded the company that still bears the family name, in the small town of Quarona in northern Italy. The business was cloth — buying the finest wool and cashmere fibre, having it spun and woven, and selling the finished fabric to tailors and clothing houses.

In the 1940s, Franco Loro Piana took the reins and built the firm's reputation as a supplier of the finest wool and cashmere cloth available. Under Franco, the house became the name tailors reached for when a client could afford the very best.

The 1970s brought the next generation: brothers Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana. They did something their predecessors had not — they moved beyond selling cloth and into finished luxury goods. They opened the house's own shops around the world. The cloth was still the heart of the business, and now you could buy it already made into garments, in a Loro Piana boutique, with a Loro Piana label.

In 2013, LVMH — the French luxury group that owns Louis Vuitton, Dior and dozens of other houses — bought 80% of Loro Piana for a reported €2 billion. In January 2026, LVMH raised its stake to 94%; the remaining shares stay with the Loro Piana family. Since June 2025, the chief executive has been Frédéric Arnault, of the family that controls LVMH. The house remains Italian in its production — ten sites, all in Italy — and makes about four million metres of cloth a year. In Quarona they weave, finish and check the cloth; in Roccapietra they spin the yarn; a new knitwear centre opened in Ghemme in September 2026.

Why Loro Piana suit fabric stands apart from the rest

What sets Loro Piana apart is an obsession with the raw fibre — the hair of the animal before it becomes yarn, before the yarn becomes cloth. The house has spent decades travelling to the places where the finest fibres grow and turning them into fabric.

Take vicuña. The vicuña is a small wild camelid that lives in the high Andes of Peru. Its fibre averages 12.5 microns. A micron is the thickness of a single fibre; a human hair is several times thicker. In 1994, Loro Piana, leading a consortium, signed an agreement with the Peruvian government and the Andean communities to protect the vicuña and ensure sustainable harvesting. In 2008, the house created its own reserve — 2,000 hectares of land in Peru dedicated to the animal's preservation. The result is a cloth so soft and light it barely registers on the skin.

Then there is baby cashmere — gathered from young goats under a year old, in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia. Each kid yields about 30 grams of usable fibre, at 13.5 microns. The feel is warmer and softer than ordinary cashmere, with a faint, almost powdery surface.

The house also hunts the finest merino wool in the world. Since 1997, Loro Piana has given an annual award — the Record Bale — to the producer of the finest bale of wool submitted that year. In February 2024, a new world record was announced: 10.2 microns. The wool from the winning bales becomes a cloth the house calls The Gift of Kings, made from Australian and New Zealand merino. Its label states the year of shearing, the origin and the fibre's micron count — so you know exactly what you are wearing.

What Loro Piana fabrics for suits actually feel like

Not everything Loro Piana makes is vicuña or baby cashmere. The bulk of the house's suit cloth is merino wool, and it is among the best in the world.

The best-known is called Tasmanian — a year-round merino wool cloth, light enough for spring, dense enough for winter. Pier Luigi Loro Piana once said it was probably the world's first branded cloth: men who had a suit made in Tasmanian left its label on the outside of the jacket cuff, where everyone could see it. That tradition has faded, and the cloth has not. If you want one suit that carries you through every season, Tasmanian is the one I reach for first.

Men used to keep the label on the outside of the jacket cuff.Pier Luigi Loro Piana, via Permanent Style

Zelander is another: cloth woven from New Zealand merino, springy and slow to crease. It has a liveliness to it — you fold a sleeve, let go, and the cloth straightens itself. For a travelling man, this is the cloth that arrives looking as if it was pressed an hour ago.

Wish is a finer merino, graded Super 170's. I will explain what that number means in a moment; the feel is simple to describe. It is the smoothest wool I have put my hands on, with a surface like cool water.

There is also lotus flower cloth — woven by hand on old wooden looms in Myanmar, at a rate of about 40 metres a month. It is rare, it is expensive, and it has a texture unlike any other cloth I know: dry, light, slightly crisp, as if the fabric were breathing.

What sits inside the Loro Piana fabric collection

I will not list every cloth in the Loro Piana fabric collection — clients do not need the names, and the house changes the range from season to season. What I can tell you is what the collection covers.

There are year-round suitings — merino wools that work from autumn to spring. There are summer cloths — lighter wools, linens, blends. There are cashmeres — pure cashmere, cashmere blended with wool, suited to coats and winter jackets. And there are the rare fibres — vicuña, baby cashmere, lotus flower — for the client who wants something that exists in very small quantities.

The house also applies a finish it calls Storm System — a water-repellent treatment it has used since 1994. It is invisible to the eye and barely noticeable to the hand: the cloth looks and feels like ordinary wool, and rain slides off it. If you live in a city where the weather changes three times a day, as Lisbon does, this is worth knowing about.

In 2023, the television series Succession turned a Loro Piana cashmere cap — worn by the character Kendall Roy, priced at $525 — into an emblem of what journalists called "quiet luxury": expensive things that do not shout their expense. The idea behind it — the best fibre, woven simply — is what the house has been doing since 1924.

How to read a Loro Piana fabrics catalogue without fear

If you have never been to a tailor or an atelier, the cloth books can be intimidating. They are large, heavy and full of swatches with numbers attached. The most common number is the Super grade — Super 100's, Super 120's, Super 150's, Super 170's.

Here is all you need to know. The Super number measures the fineness of the wool fibre. The higher the number, the finer and softer the fibre, and the more delicate the cloth. A Super 150's suit is smooth and light. A Super 170's suit — like the Wish cloth I mentioned — is finer still, almost silky, and it will need more careful handling. A lower number means a sturdier cloth that will take more wear and forgive more.

There is no "best" Super number. There is the cloth that suits your life. If you wear a suit every day, on trains and in cars and at desks, a lower Super number will serve you better. If you are buying a suit for evenings and occasions, a higher number will feel wonderful and you will not mind the care it asks for.

When you sit down with the cloth books at the atelier, I or one of our team will walk you through them. You do not need to know anything in advance. Touch the cloth. Hold it up to the light. Drape it over your hand. The right cloth tells you what it is.

What a Loro Piana suit price really depends on

A Loro Piana suit bought in one of the house's own boutiques is a finished garment, usually made to a standard size, in a cloth the house has chosen. It is a beautiful thing. It is also a different thing from what we make.

At ATELIER 23, we do not sell Loro Piana suits. We make suits to your measurements, from Loro Piana cloth. The cloth comes from the same Italian cloth maker — we order it from the house's current collections. The suit is cut and sewn in our own workshop in Portugal, in the Serra da Estrela mountains, to measurements we take from your body at the first meeting.

The price of a made-to-measure suit depends on the cloth you choose. A suit in a year-round merino wool will cost less than a suit in vicuña; the cloth makes the difference. I give the price at the first meeting, once you have seen the cloths and chosen the one you want. There is no reason to quote a figure before that — it would be a guess.

Loro Piana suits men can wear all year round

If this is your first made-to-measure suit, I would suggest starting with a year-round merino wool. The Tasmanian cloth I mentioned earlier is the archetype: a wool that works in October and in April, in a Lisbon winter and a London summer. It is the cloth I would recommend to a man who wants one suit that does everything.

From there, the options open. A summer cloth — lighter wool or a linen blend — for July and August, when Lisbon is warm and the evenings are long. A winter cloth — heavier wool, perhaps with cashmere — for December and January. And, if you are ready for it, a suit in vicuña or baby cashmere, for the occasions when the cloth itself is the point.

The process is the same for all of them. You come to the atelier. We look at the cloth books together. You choose a cloth. We take your measurements, each one explained as we go. The suit is made in our workshop in Portugal, and it takes four to six weeks. When it is ready, you come back for a fitting, and we adjust anything that needs it. There is nothing to be anxious about.

How a made-to-measure suit in Lisbon comes together

We founded ATELIER 23 in 2017. We have ateliers in Lisbon and Moscow. Every suit we make is cut to the client's measurements and sewn in our own workshop in Portugal, in the Serra da Estrela. We work with Loro Piana cloths, and the atelier holds practically all of the house's current collections — from year-round suitings to cashmere and summer cloths. You do not need to know the names of any of them. That is our job.

If you have read this far, I suspect you are curious. So here is what I would say: come and see the cloth books. We will lay them out, turn the pages, and you will put your hands on baby cashmere, merino wool and everything in between. I will introduce you to the tailor. If you wish, we will take your measurements. The whole meeting lasts about an hour. You commit to nothing. You walk away knowing what the cloth feels like and what the process would be.

We are at Avenida da Liberdade 110, office 209, in Lisbon. Come when you like. The coffee is good.

Before you order