There was once a golden fleece so fine and so soft, it denoted kings. It’s said to have adorned a ram that rescued two children destined to be sacrificed to the gods and ferried them on its back across the Black Sea to deliver them to safety. There, the ram’s fleece was hung in an olive grove until, one day, it was snatched up by Jason, a king-to-be from a distant land, who slipped away with his Argonauts to the sea.
Since humans have clothed themselves, some fleece has been so fine that people will indeed cross the world twice over to have it. Loro Piana first made Jason’s mystical fleece a reality a decade ago when it introduced The Gift of Kings, an Excellence handcrafted for the discerning client. A decade later, Loro Piana unveils Royal Lightness: both a yarn—combining silk and Merino wool—and a fabric—blending silk and cashmere—each developed in-house by the Maison’s team after two years of extensive research and meticulous craftsmanship.
Royal Lightness Yarn, a blend of precious silk and the finest Merino wool, is gossamer-thin and luminous, and begins in remote farms for a reason: The wool from their Merino sheep can be so delicate that, when looked at under a microscope, it’s thinner than a single droplet of water in a cloud of mist. In fact, the ultra-airy texture of this new textile presents just one problem—it’s almost too fine to knit together. The Maison’s crafts-people use legacy artisanal techniques to finish the garments entirely by hard, ensuring that each turns out perfectly smooth on its inner and outer faces.
The Royal Lightness Fabric owes its delicate feel to the mulberry silk at its core, expertly woven with cashmere. Produced by silkworms fed only with leaves from mulberry trees native to China’s furthest reaches, Mulberry silk has been coveted since ancient times and has a history of distinguishing kings.
Like the Yarn, the Royal Lightness Fabric demands exceptional expertise, culminating in an intricate and time-consuming final stage of fell stitching, also a rare and ancient artisanal technique performed entirely by hand with thread and needle, to ensure a smooth, immaculate finish on the both the inner and outer sides of the garment.
Loro Piana has made a name for itself by betting on provenance rather than conspicuous consumption. Perhaps that’s why its in-house Excellences are their own kind of renowned success. Before the Italian Maison made a name for itself as the outfitter of the in-the-know sartorial crowd, its fabrics were snapped up by midcentury designers looking to imbue their work with European savoir-faire.
These days, those looking to access the finest fabrics on the market look to the House’s own assortment of elevated staples and draped classics—woven with excellence and constructed for longevity. Hopefuls need not cross oceans to hunt these fabrics down, but if there were ever a textile to inspire a quest, Royal Lightness might just be it.
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