MILAN — The Loro Piana Record Bale event, rewarding the best merino wool on the earth, returned here Thursday evening IRL after two years for its twenty third edition.

Loro Piana chief executive officer Damien Bertrand, who joined the corporate from Christian Dior Couture last 12 months, said through the dinner event held at Milan’s Poldi Pezzoli museum that the wool is “not only a present of nature, it’s the exertions of great people, crazy like us at Loro Piana,” he quipped, “and their passion and true belief in innovation and in power to alter things and improve them day after day.”

Bertrand had just returned from a visit to Recent Zealand and Australia with vice chairman Pier Luigi Loro Piana, whom he credited for creating this long-standing collaboration with the wool breeders in those regions.

The trip helped him understand the distinctiveness of the connection between Loro Piana and the breeders, “going on the source,” and choosing “the very best of the very best” to ensure traceability of fibers, always raising the usual from 12 months to 12 months. “Occurring site and seeing all this together with your very own eyes gives intending to our philosophy. Loro Piana is the master of fibers. This makes absolute sense,” he said.

Record Bale “was born after an obsession to create the best wool on the earth,” said Bertrand, explaining that traditional positive wool starts at 17 microns. The Record Bale, when it was invented in 1998, reached 13.8 microns “and that was already a miracle. A miracle to provide such positive wool, but additionally a miracle to find a way to weave it. It’s so positive that it should be strong and excellent to be woven.” The fiber today is finer by 25 percent from that first Record Bale, reaching 10.6 microns. To place this into context, a human hair measures 80 microns.

Through the Record Bale competition, Loro Piana has created the Gift of Kings, with all ultrafine wool measuring 12 microns. The name is inspired by the Spanish royal family’s practice of gifting pairs of merino sheep to other monarchs to honor these relationships. Within the second half of the 18th century, the animals were taken to Recent Zealand and Australia, where the habitat proved ideal.

Bertrand underscored that “it will not be only the connection but additionally the vertically integrated manufacturing and traceability that actually distinguishes our exclusive fibers because Loro Piana is a real chain of hands from fibers to final garments. Years of unparalleled research and innovation, devotion and pioneering spirit have enabled the corporate to attain this unique preciousness.”

Pier Luigi Loro Piana said the initiative “will not be to enter the Guinness [book of] world record, but to be useful,” and recounted how he first traveled to Australia in 1978, where the breeders are researchers, as they’re in Recent Zealand.

The award this 12 months was assigned to the Australian farm Pyrenees Park of Pamela and Robert Sandlant, for the sixth consecutive 12 months, and to the Recent Zealand farm Visuela Farm of Barrie and Yvonne Payne, each reaping a bale whose width is of 10.6 and 11.1 microns, respectively.  

The structure of the fiber, just like that of a microscopic spring, allows the creation of materials which might be crease-resistant and fluid, that follow the movements of the body because of the intrinsic elasticity of the fabric, explained Bertrand.  

The wool, as well as, behaves as a second skin, ensuring transpiration and the power to adapt to changes within the wearer’s body temperature in comparison with variations within the external one.

With exclusive patterns, the fabrics are marked with a special label that documents the traceability, ranging from the 12 months of the shearing.

Not more than 40 made-to-measure suits may be created from the around 15 meters of the Record Bale, whose buyers have precedence over future production and 12 months after 12 months collect your complete range.  

This 12 months’s event was hosted along with Martina Mondadori, cofounder of Cabana Magazine, and Ashley Hicks, who designed and created a series of artworks within the room where the dinner was held. On the tables, small fluffs of wool were offered to guests, who could experience the softness of the material first hand.