Inside Loro Piana’s reopened London store: ‘home from home’

Materiality is at the heart of Loro Piana: since its founding in 1924, it has traded in the so-called ‘noble fibres’ – from the Mongolian cashmere for which it is best-known to Peruvian vicuña and merino wool from New Zealand and Australia (such is the lightness of the latter, Loro Piana hosts an annual Bale award, which is given to the finest bale of merino wool in the world – its 2024 winner was an eight of the fineness of a human hair).

The house’s newly reopened store on London’s New Bond Street is equally tactile, beginning with its street-level façade, which is rendered in crisp travertine marble and granite. Inside, the focus is on warmth and touch: Loro Piana says they want to evoke a ‘home away from home’ in the inviting collage of materials – from rich oak panels to silk-covered walls and accents of woven straw and brass, while upholstery comes in the house’s signature understated shades of beige, deep blue and burgundy. Ridged Carabottino wood display cases add further layers of textural interest, while other furnishings include cocooning armchairs, glass cabinets and silk carpeting adorned with abstract motifs (lighting, say the house, is ‘soft’).

Stretching across a single expansive floor (the renovated space takes over the former Rimowa store next door), visitors to the store will enter through a main accessories room, where open vitrine-like cabinets are based on those which would have historically been found in early Loro Piana stores. Adjoining rooms feature menswear and accessories, while a room for VICs is designed for privacy, evoking the cocoon-like intimacy of a walk-in wardrobe (adding to the mood of exclusivity, a series of one-off products will be on display only in this VIC room).

To coincide with the store’s reopening, Loro Piana will stage two installations: the first in the Bond Street space, titled ‘Master of Fibres’, and the second at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, ’Fragments of an Exhibition’. Drafting British curator and exhibition-maker Judith Clark once again, they act as a sequel of sorts to ‘If You Know, You Know: Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence’, which was held at Shanghai’s Museum of Art Pudong earlier this year.

‘When I was looking in the archive, there was always a sort of double message; there was one that was not only of lightness, because of course the fabric is light, but light-heartedness and so lightness felt key,’ Clark told Wallpaper* at the exhibition’s opening, which was conceived to celebrate Loro Piana’s centenary year. ‘Then there was something about the striving for the lightness and the quest that came with it. Everything came with a superlative, but not in a grandiose way, [rather] in a literary and poetic way. It felt like a kind of allegorical tale and that stuck with me.’

As such, the installation at the Royal Academy of Arts features ‘fragments’ of the Shanghai exhibition, with a series of objects representing the various thematic ‘rooms’ of ‘If You Know, You Know’ – from a number of looks chosen to represent Loro Piana’s superlative savoir-faire, to a transporting film that traverses the plains of Inner Mongolia, Loro Piana’s Italian factory, and Clark’s own London studio. To provide the soundtrack, a bamboo flute scored by Chinese composer Guo Wenjing, which reflects the journey of cashmere, from meandering goats to the ‘rhythmic’ thud of knitting machines. A to-scale model of Loro Piana’s factory in Quarona, Piedmont – the spiritual home of the house – sits in the centre of the Weston room space.

Meanwhile in the store, cashmere takes centre stage: at its entranceway, a display of raw cashmere invites guests’ touch, while a variety of historical objects – sourced by Clark on a trip to the house’s Archivio Storico in Varallo, Piedmont – include a rare sample book from 1926, two years after Loro Piana was founded. ‘The historic display puts the current collections in a new light,’ says Clark, who has forged a line from present day to the house’s beginnings. ‘[We have] traced the savoir faire that is brought to every garment back to the earliest sample book.’