THE CURATED EDITION.
Reportage / Ghemme
Loro Piana has opened its first new factory in more than three decades, an 8,000 square metre knitwear centre in Ghemme, Piedmont, where production and a school for the next generation of knitters share the same site.
LORO PIANA · KNITWEAR · PIEDMONT
Thread the yarn through every guide until it reaches the carriage. Set the comb between the needle beds. Slide the carriage across, check the tension, lower the needles, slide it back. These are gestures knitwear asks for hundreds of times, for months, before a single stitch comes out right.
Anyone who has never come close to the craft will struggle to grasp the care it takes to produce, by machine and by hand at once, something that looks simple: the correct tension, the measured elasticity, the softness to the touch, the absence of any flaw. Loro Piana knows that territory well. On 18 September the house opened in Ghemme, in the province of Novara, a new centre devoted entirely to knitwear, and its first new manufacturing site in more than thirty years.
The site covers more than 8,000 square metres and brings the whole cycle of fully fashioned knitwear under one roof: research and development, programming, knitting, linking, mending, washing and ironing. Around 190 people work there today, a figure the house expects to reach about 300 within three years. Baby Cashmere, cashmere, vicuña and extra-fine Merino become sweaters, cardigans, scarves and trousers.
Fully fashioned means each part of a garment, front, back and sleeves, is knitted to shape on its own and then joined. Linking produces the almost invisible side seam the house is known for, and the final inspection is done entirely by hand. Among the yarns worked here is Royal Lightness, a blend of 13.5-micron Merino and mulberry silk.
My strategic priority is savoir-faire.
Frédéric Arnault, chief executive of Loro Piana, to The Impression
The building carries its own history. Loro Piana took over the site in 1987, after it had served as a paper mill and then a cotton mill, and converted it for worsted spinning. The redevelopment kept the industrial footprint, the historic water tower and the former caretaker’s house. With rainwater recovery, photovoltaic panels and active energy management, designed to LEED Gold standards, it is the first Loro Piana production facility designed without fossil fuels.
In Ghemme, beauty is not limited to production; knowledge is formed here too. The caretaker’s house now holds the Accademia dei Mestieri, founded by the house in 2015 to safeguard and pass on 59 artisanal and technical crafts across the company. Its knitwear school teaches programming, linking, hand finishing and mending, the skills that decide whether a garment is merely good or flawless.
An area of the site traces the history of the house’s knitwear, and another is given to the Loro Piana Knit Design Award. Established in 2016, the award first asked students from leading knitwear schools to develop new stitches; since 2022 it has asked for complete knitted silhouettes, and the winning looks are kept in Ghemme.
Thread the yarn, lower the needles, release the comb. In Ghemme the gestures remain the same, only now they have a home of their own and a school for those who come after. Perhaps that is the rarest luxury in knitwear: a perfect stitch that someone is still willing to teach.
Details and further reading: Loro Piana knitwear centre, Ghemme, province of Novara, Piedmont. loropiana.com · LVMH announcement. See also Pier Luigi Loro Piana: when sailing becomes a textile brief.
Instagram: @loropiana
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.
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