Loro Piana, the house once said to be beyond reproach, has just fallen from the hand-woven pedestal on which luxury so loves to perch. In Lombardy, it’s not rare wools that are spun, but illusions. Behind the nobility of the materials lie phantom, undeclared workers, serving a cascading subcontracting system, as opaque as the Marand’s moonless night coat.

The Italian courts have ruled: judicial administration for twelve months. The message is clear: ethics are not trifling, especially when jackets resold for €3,000 are produced for a paltry €100 in sweatshops.

But the affair would be almost trivial if it didn’t affect one of the most cherished jewels of the LVMH group, this empire resembling a contemporary Versailles, ruled with a gloved hand by the “Cashmere Wolf,” known as the lord of the Arnaults. Behind this monarchical figure, all control, image, and global ambition, stretches a kingdom sewn with gold, but sometimes tinged with silence and compromise.

For Loro Piana doesn’t only dress the wealthy in search of discretion. It also dresses Vladimir Putin, the modern-day tsar, whose sartorial tastes, down coats and tailored jackets, have found refuge in the house’s hushed salons. Putin’s best supplier is therefore neither an oligarch nor a Moscow tailor, but a very Italian subsidiary of a very French group. Spot the mistake.

The 5,000 audits brandished by LVMH? A smokescreen. A tapestry of excuses in a castle of privilege. This is no longer luxury; it’s storytelling with white gloves. It’s time for luxury, that overused word, to stop cloaking itself in heroic tales while trampling on the realities of working-class life. Loro Piana, yesterday a paragon of good taste, is today the symptom of a sick system where excellence comes at the price of invisibility.

So, only one question remains: how many more houses will have to fall before the lord of the Arnaults ceases to reign by the elegance of appearances? Cashmere is soft, certainly. But it no longer covers anything.

FM