Loro Piana dates its founding to 1924 in Quarona, a Valsesia town with a long wool trade behind it. Over the following decades the house moved from wool merchant to vertically integrated producer, buying fibre at source rather than through brokers, and that position is what the brand still sells on.
Its signature material is baby cashmere, combed from the undercoat of Hircus goats and finer than the cashmere used in most luxury knitwear. LVMH acquired a majority stake in 2013. The detail that matters for a buyer is narrower than any of this: Loro Piana names baby cashmere explicitly on the interior label rather than folding it into plain cashmere.
Most resale listings repeat whatever the seller can read at a glance, and the word that gets typed is "cashmere". That flattens Loro Piana's own hierarchy. Baby cashmere pieces turn up priced against ordinary cashmere sweaters from mid-tier Italian houses, because nothing in the title separates them and the buyer searching for the better material never sees the listing.
Storm System outerwear misses for a different reason. It is a technical treatment sold to a customer who was not shopping for technical outerwear, so the garment photographs as a plain coat, gets described as a plain coat, and clears at the price of one.
Wish, the superfine merino worsted used for tailoring, is the third gap. The fabric name means nothing to someone clearing a wardrobe, and worsted trousers move slowly at resale whoever wove the cloth. That combination keeps asking prices low on pieces where the cloth is the whole point.