Style

a good yarn

How fashion house Loro Piana helped the world rediscover the luxury of vicuña wool from Peru, by Melanie Vere Nicoll

Locals gathering the vicuñas in the Peruvian highlands

It turns out that polo ponies are far from Loro Piana’s only four-legged interest. While patron Alfio Marchini may rhapsodise about his team’s string, the Italian luxury brand’s owner Pier Luigi Loro Piana feels equally strongly about the vicuña that live high in the Peruvian Andes. So strongly in fact that he and his brother Sergio have established a 2,000 hectare nature reserve named after their father, Franco Loro Piana, for the protection and preservation of the endangered animal. In a recent statement to a documentary producer, Pier Luigi described the depth of his feelings saying that ‘if you see the eyes of a vicuña it is very difficult not to fall in love because it is such a sweet animal and lives in this unreal, peaceful landscape.’

The highland vicuña, found at the most extreme altitudes of the Peruvian Andes, is a slender llama-like creature who has been on a roller-coaster ride towards extinction since the fall of the Incan Empire.

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Prized for its soft downy fleece which in turn produces the most luxurious wool in the entire world, the vicuña were revered by the Incans and at one time numbered nearly two million in population. Its fur was considered so precious that only members of the Incan royal family were allowed to wear the soft warm robes and ponchos produced by the weavers. These aristocratic robes were renowned for being so fine they could be balled-up and fit into the palm of a hand. The vicuña were regarded as sacred by the Incans who believed that by caring for the animal population they could win the favour of the all-important sun gods who would in turn endow the earth with light, warmth and fertility.

To harvest the precious fur, the Incans took part in a ritual ceremony called the Chaccu which could involve up to 30,000 men spread out over miles of the Peruvian highlands. They would gradually surround the herd and then drive them into an enclosed area where they would be sheared. Older males would be killed while females and younger males would be released back into the Andean pampas.

The vicuña population thrived from the 14th to the 16th century, protected and greatly valued as they were by the Incans. However, with the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores led by Francisco Pizarro in 1532 the fortunes of the vicuña took a serious turn for the worse. The animals’ soft downy under-fleece – known as the silk of the new world – became highly sought after in the old world and could not be exported fast enough to satisfy European demand.

Prized for its soft fleece which produces the most luxurious wool in the world, the vicuña were revered by Incans Loro Piana had a desire to bring the ‘silk of the New World’ back into the marketplace

Slaughtered in increasing numbers and unprotected by the Incans who’s culture had been decimated, the breed teetered on the brink of extinction until 1824 when Simon Bolivar was named governor of Peru and introduced a ban on the killing of vicuña.

In 1908 the plight of the vicuña worsened when the belief spread throughout the fashion world that by wearing different layers of lightweight wool one could enhance one’s health by allowing the skin to breathe more freely. Layers of the finest vicuña wool were used as insulation by explorers to the North Pole and were worn by ladies on safari in Africa. However, this was only one factor in the increased demand. By the Fifties the highly recognisable vicuña coat with it’s soft golden colour and smooth flawless lines had become all the rage among fashion cognoscenti worldwide. So desirable were these vicuña coats that one was known to cost the then US Chief of Staff to Eisenhower his job as he accepted one in exchange for political favours and then failed to admit it.

As the demand for vicuña fleece continued unabated, the slaughter continued. Tragically, it was quicker and easier to kill rather than shear the live animal and poaching of the increasingly rare vicuña continued. By the early Seventies the Peruvian government recognised that unless action was taken to find a way to motivate the local population to protect and breed the vicuña, they would become extinct. The sad reality was that having numbered in the millions during the days of the Incan Empire, the population had dwindled to a mere 5,000, placing them at the top of the endangered species list.

In the early Eighties, inspired by their passion for the finest raw materials and a desire to bring the ‘silk of the New World’ back into the marketplace, the Loro Piana brothers made their first contact with the Government of Peru and the indigenous highland population responsible for the breeding of the vicuña. Having formed a viable partnership, by 1994 the government saw its way clear to allow the reintroduction of the legally sheared fibre from live animals back into the world market. The high value attributed to the fleece has become a primary economic resource for the people which contributes to an added incentive to protect and increase the herd. Today the species live happily on the Cordilleras and continue to be an important and valuable source of income for the highland people.

Early summer is shearing season high in the Pampas. The Chaccu ceremony which reflects the influence of both the Incans and

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1 The Loro Piana polo team 2 Finished product: the Loro Piana vicuña label 3 A lone herd of vicuña in the Peruvian Andes 4 Alfio Marchini 5 Owner Pier Luigi Loro Piana greeting the Negro Mayo community president 6 A tight line of locals encircle the wild vicuña herd 7 Local dancers at the Chaccu ceremony

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the Conquistadores, still takes place today and happens roughly every two years. A rope – often over a mile in length – is carried by hundreds of farmers who encircle the wild vicuña and herd them into an enclosure to be sheared and then released much the same as in the days of the Incan Empire.

The capture, which takes all morning, involves approximately 200 vicuña who each produce a mere 250 grams of the fibre. To put the rarity and value of this fleece into perspective, the shearings of six vicuña are needed to make one sweater and 36 are needed to produce one coat. The vicuña fleece, once harvested, is seldom dyed as it already possesses its unique golden colour, easily recognisable in numerous photographs of polo players accepting trophies post-match, the coat draped with effortless elegance over their shoulders. In a truly triumphant conservation story and in less than 30 years the population of the vicuña species has grown from a handful to well over 150,000 animals – pulling the vicuña from the edge of extinction back to the thriving market.

For the moment the future of the vicuña seems secure. At the same time it isn’t hard to imagine which team in polo would emerge victorious, if alongside Best Playing Pony a trophy were introduced for Best Dressed Pony. If you happen to find yourself in the Loro Piana pony lines, the horse blankets might surely merit a second glance.