Loro Piana has been making plaids since the mid-1980s. Alongside scarves, they were among the Maison's first finished products, and for four decades they have served as a testing ground: a place where new fibers, constructions, and techniques are explored before finding their way into wider collections. This Milan Design Week, the Maison gave the plaid the space it has always deserved.
Studies, Chapter I: On the Plaid launched at Loro Piana's Milan headquarters in the Cortile della Seta on Via della Moscova, launching a new long-form exhibition framework that will dedicate future chapters to other specific objects and functions within the Maison's universe. The first chapter presents twenty-four plaids as individual studies. Suspended from wooden display structures built in three distinct tones of oak. Treated as an artwork, telling a different story about what a single object can become in the hands of the world's finest textile house.
Loro Piana Transforms 24 Plaids Into 24 Studies
The Exhibition unfolds as a winding path through five sections, moving from landscape to abstraction. It opens with Loro Piana Sceneries, evoking the landscapes of Valsesia, the Piedmontese valley where the Maison was founded in 1924. The Spring in Valsesia throw is made of double cashmere with a 25-color check print, with each color printed individually. It took 30 hours of hand embroidery to complete.
Codes of the House follows, celebrating the Maison's most iconic visual motifs. The Belt motif, originally conceived as a lining for ready-to-wear garments, required 780 hours of hand crochet embroidery. Botanic Repertoire traces Loro Piana's connection with the thistle flower, present in the Maison's coat of arms since 1951. The Alla corte dei cardi throw required 1,050 hours of hand embroidery.
Cardo Paisley reinterprets the famous paisley motif, introduced into the Maison's textile collections in the late 1960s. The Sherazade plaid required 1,850 hours of multi-layered hand embroidery across three levels of appliqués in cashmere, silk threads, beads, and glass. The journey closes with Textured Abstractions, where design emerges through texture, volume, and matter rather than figurative motifs, revealing the full expressive potential of fiber.
Throughout, raw materials are shown alongside finished pieces. Vicuña, baby cashmere, cashmere, The Gift of Kings wool, Loro Piana Royal Lightness, linen, Cashfur, Wish wool, and Pecora Nera wool. Every plaid is produced on a made-to-order basis.
