Luxury’s Dirty Secret: Loro Piana Exposed

In a world where luxury fashion is marketed as the pinnacle of quality, craftsmanship and sustainability, recent revelations surrounding Loro Piana - the high-end Italian cashmere brand owned by LVMH - have exposed a much darker undercurrent in the industry. Once hailed for its environmental responsibility and quiet elegance, Loro Piana now faces court oversight in Milan, due to allegations of severe labor violations in its supply chain.

According to official reports, one of the brand’s workshops was found to be exploiting workers under inhumane conditions. Laborers reportedly worked up to 90 hours a week, earned just €4 an hour and lived in illegal housing within the factory. Coats that cost less than €130 to make were sold for upwards of €5,000, highlighting the harsh imbalance between brand image and worker reality. The court ruled that Loro Piana had failed to properly monitor its supply chain. The result was a system that allowed vulnerable migrant workers, the hands who make the luxury possible, remain mistreated, unnamed and unseen.

This scandal not only undermines Loro Piana’s image but also calls into question the entire luxury fashion world. The industry consistently celebrates designers and creative directors while ignoring the contributions of artisans, machinists, and textile workers. The focus on branding over bodies, and on ideas over execution, erases the real labor that fuels the billion-dollar fashion economy. Unfortunately, luxury’s clean aesthetic depends on keeping its labour messy and invisible. The myth of artisanal fashion is often built on the backs of underpaid, overworked laborers; far removed from the glossy editorial shoots and polished store fronts.

The Loro Piana case is not isolated. It is symptomatic of structural weaknesses within fashion’s global supply chains, particularly in Italy, where informal labor is rampant and oversight is inconsistent. While Loro Piana has now been placed under court-appointed administration for one year to ensure compliance with labor regulations, the broader industry remains complicit in similar practices. This moment serves as a call to re-evaluate what we consider “luxury.” If the price of a pristine, handcrafted garment is worker exploitation, then the product is not truly luxurious - it is ethically bankrupt. True innovation in fashion must include not only sustainability in materials, but visibility and dignity for the workers who make the clothes we wear. The hands that stitch, dye, weave, and press deserve more. A garment made in silence and suffering should never be paraded as a symbol of excellence. Fashion can be beautiful but only when the system behind it is just.