Design & Culture by Ed

There’s something inherently soothing – almost regal, but in the best possible way – about the fact that Loro Piana has no publicly known creative director. It sets the Italian house apart from the endless game of musical chairs in which designers constantly arrive at and depart from brands. Not that it doesn’t evolve – on the contrary, a breath of fresh air has lifted its ready-to-wear in recent years, and substantial internal recalibration has brought it back into the orbit of clients who once flocked to The Row – but the absence of headlines like “Breaking: X leaves Y after just two years” lends Loro Piana a sense of stability. It feels like a safe space, a sanctuary insulated from creative turbulence and industry storms.

And yet, the brand never lets you feel too comfortable. It’s like a Poliform or Cassina sofa – something you can sit in for a while, but not indefinitely, because you begin to notice a certain luxurious discomfort. There’s an intriguing, almost intimidating quality to the world of Loro Piana, and that tension is precisely what makes it aspirational.

The styling of its lookbooks is undeniably snobbish, though in a well-traveled, flamboyant way (the menswear especially has that sensibility, as if it was custom-made for a queer prince – Manvendra Singh Gohil, the first openly gay prince in the world, comes to mind). It feels less concerned with the “good taste” archetype so restlessly pursued by brands like Toteme, and more with a kind of irreverence toward anything that even faintly reads as “mass.” When everyone else leans into a CBK uniform, Loro Piana charts a cross-continental journey, its latest collection tracing influences from Normandy to Persia. READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE.