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Loro Piana Turns 100: A Spellbinding Century of Softness Unveiled in Shanghai

Loro Piana Turns 100: A Spellbinding Century of Softness Unveiled in Shanghai March 23, 2025Exhibition, Shanghai0 Comments

Loro Piana at 100: A Century of Sublime Softness Takes Center Stage in Shanghai

There are few maisons that master the art of silence quite like Loro Piana. For 100 years, it has whispered where others shout, caressed where others constrict, and defined luxury not through ostentation – but through the pursuit of absolute, breathtaking excellence.

And now, to mark its centenary, Loro Piana opens the doors to its soul. In Shanghai’s shimmering Museum of Art Pudong, the legendary Italian house unveils its first-ever exhibition, “If You Know, You Know. Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence”—a radiant, reverent celebration of craftsmanship, memory, and the sensual power of fabric.

This isn’t an exhibition. It’s an atmosphere. A sanctuary. A love letter written in wool, whispered in cashmere, and suspended in air.

Curated by the brilliant Judith Clark, the experience unfolds across 1,000 square meters of hushed elegance—15 rooms of poetic storytelling rendered in material. Visitors don’t simply walk through. They glide. The floors mimic Italian stone streets. The walls are lined in Cashfur. Light falls like a warm sigh.

You feel it before you understand it. The way you do with all great beauty.

And oh, the beauty.

A chaise shaped like a cloud, impossibly soft, conjures Loro Piana’s playful weather campaigns from the 1990s. A Hopsack wool suit, so meticulously tailored it could have been sketched directly from the brand’s DNA, floats inside a room like a memory given form. Nearby, a mannequin wrapped in a weatherproof coat stands mid-pond, balanced on a toy-like boat-shaped sole – a whimsical nod to Loro Piana’s cult-classic footwear.

Every object is both tactile and timeless. You want to touch. You want to pause. You want to stay.

At the exhibition’s heart is the Maison’s most sacred love affair: with its fibers. Five rare materials – Vicuña, Baby Cashmere, Pecora Nera®, Merino, and linen – are celebrated in delicate dioramas, miniature landscapes that trace their global origins. The Andes, Japan, New Zealand, France. The earth is a partner in this story, not just a source.

In one room, a single cashmere fiber is magnified 35,000 times. On enormous screens, it appears like a celestial map. a galaxy of softness. One realizes: this is what Loro Piana does. It takes something invisible and makes it unforgettable.

And then, like all good stories, there’s the moment that stops you in your tracks.

A gown suspended mid-air, embroidered over 1,850 hours with glittering Lunéville beads, tracing the contours of the Italian Alps. Beneath it, a chaise by Cini Boeri. Around it, a soundscape composed by China’s finest musicians. The room glows like a snow globe. It doesn’t feel like fashion. It feels like memory, frozen in silk.

Even the humble thistle, once used to soften fabric, is reimagined here as sculpture, embroidery, and motif – proof that nothing is too quiet to be honored. Not in the world of Loro Piana.

Because here, silence is not emptiness. It is elegance.

For 100 years, the Maison has woven a legacy of restraint, refinement, and rarest-of-the-rare excellence. And in this extraordinary exhibition, it proves that true luxury doesn’t demand attention. It earns devotion.

If you know, you know.
And if you didn’t – now you do.

“If You Know, You Know. Loro Piana’s Quest for Excellence”
March 22 – May 5, 2025
Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai

www.loropiana.com

Tags: and linen, Art Magazine, ART SHANGHAI, Baby Cashmere, Cashmere, Cini Boeri, Judith Clark, Loro Piana, Merino, Museum of Art Pudong, Pecora Nera®, Shanghai, SHANGHAI EXHIBITION 2025, Vicuña, What We Adore Magazine