It’s Friday night in Shanghai and Loro Piana, the world’s most esteemed wool and cashmere brand, has invited an eclectic assortment of editors, film stars and goat herders from around the world to attend the brand’s first film premiere. It’s a curious mix – an assemblage of Chinese superstars wearing cashmere gowns alongside Mongolian farmers dressed in traditional garb – but, when the lights go down and a 33-piece orchestra raises their instruments to begin scoring the screening, even the most quizzical appear momentarily quelled. After all, you’d have to be fairly hardy not to melt at the Luc Jacquet short that followed: a remarkably charming exploration of the origin of the brand’s finest cashmere and the lives of those who farm it, complete with endless scenes of lovely animals doing lovely things, the frothy tendrils of their precious coats catching on wooden pens and floating in the breeze.

At one point, a tiny baby goat is born and then dressed in a makeshift checked jacket to protect it from the weather; later, two Mongolian toddlers stagger towards it clutching bottles of milk to feed it with. There are goats who nimbly ascend icy mountains (the harsher the climes, the softer the cashmere). A year in the life of a goat and a goat herder is turned into a picture-perfect 20-minute documentary – and it’s captivating. But why?

“I think as a brand we’re lucky enough to have fantastic stories and fantastic heritage to tell to our customers. I think we also have the privilege of very interesting customers,” explains the brand CEO Fabio d'Angelantonio. “Loro Piana is a brand that attracts customers who are quality seekers. They look for beauty, they look for quality. They’re interested in understanding why this jacket is better than another jacket, and understanding the process behind it.” What better way, then, to showcase the quality of the products the brand manufactures than to invite an Academy Award-winning documentary maker to spend as much time as he pleases embedded among Mongolian herdsmen, observing and capturing the earliest stages in the lifecycle of a cashmere jumper? How better to prove the value of its final manifestation than through an exploration of its origin?

After all, the very essence of Loro Piana is found in the raw materials for its products: the brand’s designs aren’t flashy, its logo never prominent – the fabrics are simply the best. Over recent years, the label has dedicated much of its efforts to ensuring that sentiment can be sustained, working alongside the University of Camerino and the Agricultural University of Jilin to develop practices to help farmers to improve the quality of fibres harvested from their flock. While there are plenty of cut-price cashmere and fast-fashion brands who are happy to take huge quantities of lesser variants of goat hair, the better the fibres, the more money Loro Piana can pay for them – and thus less farming need actually ever take place.

“All this makes an entire cycle sustainable for the region and the nature,” explains d'Angelantonio. “Because you can have communities that are economically sustained without putting the land at risk.” Essentially: if your flock is good enough to supply Loro Piana, you can get paid more for less farming, which puts less pressure on the farmers and the land alike. It makes a convincing case for the idea that less is more.

That idea is, in fact, what inspired Jacquet to embark on this project. After winning an Oscar for The March Of The Penguins in 2006, “For me, it was very obvious that I had to do something… So, I did a lot of movies around the relationship with nature. I set up an NGO, but I was, at the same time, absolutely convinced that nothing would be possible without economical connection with the big brands and the big companies.” Then, he met Loro Piana for the first time and “for them, being sustainable was pure economic realism: it was a way to secure the fibres, to secure the relationship with the breeders. I really like that, because for me it was an example that shows that you can make money, you can have a successful economic model, and you can be sustainable.”

The idea that sustainability can be seen as a financially savvy future, is perhaps the best way of looking at how a capitalist world can navigate away from the climate crisis; rather than assuming that nobody is going to buy anything again, or trying to coerce people against investing in fashion, encouraging transparent supply chains and environmentally friendly profitability seems like the only way forward. “It’s not sustainable because it’s fashionable today to be involved in this,” says d'Angelantonio. “I think this company has sustainability in its DNA, by definition, because our business starts from nature, and it would be crazy not to be respectful towards nature when managing such a business.” He certainly makes a good case for it. And, if you need any further convincing that a Loro Piana scarf comes from absolutely charming beginnings, then watch the film. Or, if you’d just like to see some frolicking goats. Both are on offer here.

Published Date:2019-10-24