Warning to vicuña enthusiasts (who are few, but highly coveted consumers by clothing manufacturers, because they are willing to spend dizzying sums to get dressed): vicuña, a fleece of South American origins, very light and soft, a kind of super-quality cashmere, the white version is coming, never made so far. It was Pier Luigi Loro Piana, at the helm of the homonymous group with his brother Sergio, who announced the novelty today in Rome. That seems like a detail, a frivolity, but in the small-big world of luxury, the only one to drive in this phase of crisis, so important for a broken economy like the Italian one, is an important novelty.
Also because the Loro Piana have made a personal battle out of the vicuña. And now it seems that they are about to win it. “A few years ago it was a bet – underlines Pier Luigi -. Now we are over”. It was already their father Franco who made the first garments with the hair of this rare Andean camelid, which, however, seemed destined to certain extinction. In the sixteenth century in the highlands of the Andes, especially in Peru, there were over three million specimens.
Then, with the arrival of the conquistadors, senseless hunting and a slow decline of the breed began: the vicuñas were reduced to 5 in the 1994s. Since then, the first attempts by the Peruvian state to save the situation have begun. But it was above all the interest of the Loro Pianas that led to the rediscovery of the animal and its fur. In 2008, at the head of a local consortium, the Italian group concluded an agreement with some Andean communities for the breeding of the animal. Then, in XNUMX, the Loro Pianas obtained the creation of their own reserve on site, in the Lucanas area.
Result: from the presence in Peru of 98 vicuñas in 1995, the number has now risen to over 180. Meanwhile the garments (everything from jackets to capes: Loro Piana now produce 99 of them), while remaining confined to a particular segment, that of the super-rich (prices are 5-6 times higher than for Loro Piana garments in cashmere, which are already the most precious and expensive in the world in that sector), have turned into status-symbols. “Vicuña represents a maximum of 1,5% of our turnover – underlines Pier Luigi Loro Piana – but for a company like ours, manufacturing the finest and most precious fabric in the world is a must”.
A matter of image… To underline: Loro Piana's global revenues for 2012 reached 630 million euros, up 13,1% on an annual basis. At present, the annual production of vicuña fluctuates between 6 and 8 kilos a year “and we ensure most of it. If we had more, we could still commercialize it, because the demand for garments made with vicuña is constantly higher than the supply and by far”. For this reason, the group has just acquired 60% of an Argentinean company (Sanin) which uses an area of 85 hectares in the north of the country for breeding vicuña there too. And it is a variant with respect to the Peruvian breed, with the possibility of supplying a white fleece, until now unavailable.
All the activity of the Loro Piana around the vicuña was also characterized from the beginning by a strong social element. “In Argentina – concludes Pier Luigi – at least 20% of the production is left free to the local populations for their craft activities”. In Peru, the revival of animal breeding was at the origin of the economic revival of some inland areas of Peru, otherwise very poor. Where vicuñas are breeding more and more.
