Lanaioli was founded as a luxury brand in the fashion industry with a vision focused on high Quality standards for its products.
The choice of yarn made entirely in Italy and the manufacture of our products by skilled artisans are distinctive elements of our Brand, which offers uncompromising Quality to our Customers.
In luxury fashion, it is not only about quality. Since the beginning of our business, we have distinguished ourselves through our attention to environmentally sustainable choices. We have worked on two fronts to help address the urgent need for a growing economy that respects the planet and its natural resources.
REGENERATED RAW MATERIALS
The first choice we made with our hearts was to use regenerated raw materials from the outset.
Since the launch of our brand, we have envisioned a line of products made with the finest yarn available on the market: pure Regenerated Cashmere.
This yarn has unquestionably high-quality characteristics and provides maximum comfort while remaining very lightweight. Cashmere is also isotermic, allowing it to maintain body temperature in both cold and hot conditions. Moreover, cashmere is gentle on the skin and has breathable properties, making it suitable for wearing directly against the skin.
Cashmere, however, is produced in places very far from the companies that manufacture high-quality knitwear in Italy and elsewhere. It is obtained by combing the fleece of the Hircus goat, which originates in the region of the same name, Kashmir, between India and Pakistan. Each adult goat produces a very limited amount per year, usually only around 200 gr. Because it is so rare, cashmere inevitably has such a high price.
The distance of the Hircus goat farming areas, which have expanded to various parts of the world, including small experimental farms in Italy, makes this product costly. This is due to the expenses associated with the long journeys required to transport the wool yarn to textile production sites. These long-distance shipments inevitably increase the CO2 emissions needed to create garments with this exceptional fiber..
For this reason, we chose Regenerated Cashmere, also known as recycled cashmere, which is not a by-product of this precious yarn but, in fact, gives new life to garments that had already been made from Pure Cashmere.
There are companies dedicated to recovering garments that are rejected and discarded by consumers because they are damaged, torn, or heavily worn, collecting them and sorting them by color and the type of material from which they are made.
Through sorting carried out exclusively by hand, impurities and garments that are not 100% cashmere are removed. The garments then undergo a shredding phase, which reduces the discarded items to small pieces that are given new life through a carding process, just as would be done with cashmere recovered from Hircus goat fleece.
Finally, the fiber obtained from this process is twisted to reinforce it until it is transformed into entirely new yarns, creating a pure Regenerated Cashmere yarn ready to be used for new, high-quality textile production.
This process enables significant savings in water, electricity, and transportation fuel, as well as reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the air, making Cashmere yarn production decidedly sustainable and environmentally friendly.
SHORT-SUPPLY-CHAIN RAW MATERIALS
The issue of the long-distance transportation we described in relation to sourcing Cashmere is actually also a problem for other types of yarn.
Consider Merino Wool, a fiber obtained by shearing the homonymous breed of sheep. Merino wool has high-quality characteristics, perhaps only slightly inferior to Cashmere. Merino wool differs from other types of wool because of its significantly higher level of fineness.
Wool sheep farms in Italy are at risk of extinction. This is because, in recent decades, Italian farmers have been encouraged to produce milk, used to make high-quality cheeses, and meat, activities that are far more profitable. The wool obtained from the annual shearing of the sheep has become a problem. It has no economic value and must be disposed of as waste, incurring disposal costs.
Today, the largest farms and the most advanced wool industries are located in Australia. Consider that a particular type of lightweight wool is called "Tasmania", after the similarly named Australian island state.
Lanaioli has begun collaborating with a number of parties, including farmers, entrepreneurs, and organizations, to create, in the short term, a network of businesses capable of independently producing reasonable quantities of high-quality Merino wool while rediscovering native breeds at risk of extinction.
The goal is to pay local farmers fairly for the wool they deliver. This will help them improve the quality of the animals they raise and process the wool in dedicated Italian facilities. The resulting yarn must be sufficiently fine to compete with yarn from other regions and can be used for our products.
We have made a conscious choice that is full of challenges. But from the very first day, we embraced this idea of a Made in Italy short wool supply-chain project. This project aims to improve the environment, reduce costs, and minimize the damage caused by the long-distance transportation of raw materials within Europe.
Today, our Merino wool comes from Sopravissana sheep owned by Controra, the farm of one of Lanaioli's partners: discover our short supply chain.
