An Italian Invention
dressed by Loro Piana
text by Nicholas Foulkes
There are parts of the world that have a special relationship with the seasons.
The time of year that Americans call fall belongs to the woodlands of New England.
Winter is personnified by the bright days and long firelit nights of the Alpine resorts.
As well as a song, springtime in Paris is a forever neverland of pavement café tables, blossoming chestnut trees and budding love affairs.
And while, for many countries, summer’s lease hath all too short a date, its freehold is Italian.
For those like me who live in spiritual exile on a damp and newly independent island off the northern coast of Europe, summer in Italy is a religion at whose altar we genuflect. It is a year-round daydream; a reverie of iced espresso; geometrically arranged, pastel bright, striped sun umbrellas on Amalfi beaches; the honey-coloured stones of southern city walls warmed by a thousand summers; the lanceshaped shadows of cypress trees lengthening over the rolling Tuscan hills; the jaggedly majestic sunset silhouette of millennia-old columns that once supported the temple of a long unworshipped god; the languorous evening passeggiata in a cobbled street… these scenes of an Italian summer viewed with this outsider’s eye are a series of sensory snapshots.
Summer is an Italian invention for which only Italians really know how to dress. There is perfection in their informality, excelling as a nation at a sort of dressed up dressing down which, at its best, is an artform extolling an effortlessness so seemingly artless it must be born entirely of instinct.
Such luxurious fabrics worn with an apparent carelessness rooted in an insouciance that takes a lifetime to master; this is the flame that has continually drawn me mothlike to Loro Piana since I discovered a buttercup gilet in the softest cashmere I had ever felt almost 25 years ago - sybaritic indulgence disguised as unadorned simplicity.
For me, Loro Piana offers intoxicating haptic hedonism, in summer as in winter. The peachskin handle of a tissue-thin cashmere-soft suede overshirt; the feel of a cotton and silk crew neck worn against the dawn-deck-chill; the décontracté elegance of the ‘André’, a shirt designed to be worn tieless - rather than looking like a city shirt worn sans tie; and the sheer genius of the Open Walk, the lace-less deck shoe/desert boot that has become a religion for those who value comfort and a go-anywhere elegance… For a woman, rippling seaside stripes on a shirt dress or kaftan in linen or silk are the summer semaphore of clothes made to be beach-worn. The cool grace of wide-legged palazzo pants that accentuate every step, endowing each drowsy movement in summer warmth with the elegance of the ruggenti anni Venti on the Lido; the slap of a sandalsole on stone echoing a sound familiar in Roman days. These summer fabrics are treated with the same care as those of winter – extraordinary secret details, double-faced, secret mixes…
It is hard to think of summer in Italy without the late Sergio Loro Piana coming to mind: the sun-fissured features; the golden sand-coloured suits; the charismatic smile that seemed even more dazzling in contrast to the ubiquitous dark glasses; the white of a linen cuff against the sun-darkened skin of his hand…
Not a man born to hide he understood the subtleties of summer dressing like no other, the pleasure to be taken in clothes of gossamer-weight that kiss the skin and envelop the body in an ethereal zephyr-like embrace.
With a science so subtle that it is almost sorcery, his brother, fabric genius Pier Luigi Loro Piana, conjures the cloths that made this possible. His wizard-like skill can only be truly understood when experienced. Airy and practical, weightless as a snatch of a melody caught on a warm summer breeze, he works classic summer fibres in unexpected ways, which are transformed into well-balanced silhouettes which emphasise the fresh and confident ease that defines Loro Piana’s summer elegance. Not so much a style as a lightness of being that is almost impossible to explain.
The palette of natural colours celebrated in the collections eschews meretricious visibility in favour of an inner intelligence that bespeaks an unparalleled consideration of the requirements a gentleman or woman has of their seasonal wardrobe. In summer, a wardrobe that lends a gestural elegance to every action of the season, whether eating an ice cream or helming a yacht. Everything perfectly and precisely demonstrates a profound and intuitive understanding of the essence of relaxed summer elegance, an Italian style at home wherever there is light and heat.
As Italy invented summer,
so Loro Piana dresses it.
Nicholas Foulkes
Since graduating from Oxford a few decades ago, Nicholas Foulkes has become a recognised authority on and champion of, the rare and refined. An acclaimed author and journalist, his love of the finest things in life, alongside his knowledge of art and history and his witty turn of phrase, have made him a much sought after correspondent for such publications as the Financial Times and Vanity Fair.
Photographs by Oberto Gili, Fernando Bencoechea and Giovanni Gastel.