Loro Piana Interiors Opens Their Doors in Aspen

Aspen is hardly short on luxury retail experiences, but December 13th marks something special for the famed celebrity ski enclave: the arrival of Loro Piana’s first-ever “Home for the Holidays” interiors and lifestyle pop-up in the U.S. The choice of location is deeply intentional: like many of their customers, the brand has maintained a second home in Aspen for decades, having opened their store there immediately after their flagship on Madison Avenue 22 years ago. Add to this that the revered Italian cashmere house has spent the past 15 years cementing their position as the de facto go-to for ultra-refined interiors, and a one week pop-up in the ultra-exclusive winter escape becomes a kind of test balloon, as they bring what has been a solely business-to-business retail experience directly to their devoted customer base. 

It’s a good time to experiment. Loro Piana–which LVMH acquired for $2.57 billion in 2013, and which encapsulates categories including mens and womenswear, shoes, home, and lifestyle accessories, as well as an enormous textile business—has maintained strong sales in recent years, head of the interiors division Francesco Pergamo says, but there has been a marked uptick in interest in their interior design offerings in particular, undoubtedly due to the fact that the past few years were spent, well, mostly considering (and re-considering) our interiors. 

“There are more projects, and the projects are bigger,” says Pergamo, namechecking the yachting sector especially, as “more people are looking for their private floating houses.” (Shipyards across Europe have reportedly aggressively ramped up production in order to cope with the orders.) “And we have worked a lot in the hospitality business during this time, because many hotels have taken the opportunity to be ready for a new start. And then of course there are the private homes, homes that people have either renovated, or bought as new homes. We have definitely, definitely noticed a big increase in interest in our work.”

If the Aspen pop-up succeeds, it will be the latest in a string of efforts by the brand to create environments that allow their customer to experience the full Loro Piana lifestyle firsthand. In effect, this means letting the products be their own best advertisement, in environments in which they’d ideally be found anyway. In 2019, Loro Piana redecorated a 7,000 square foot villa at Villa d’Este in Lake Como; this fall they unveiled a suite they outfitted at Casa Cipriani in New York. This kind of concept breaks down to one that is central to most luxury propositions: once you have tried it, will you really want to settle for anything less? “We have customers spending a weekend, living their own experience, and then coming to us and saying wow, it was great, I love your curtain, I love your armchair, I love this, I love that, can you help me?” Pergamo says. For an eye-watering price, one can live a very full Loro Piana life, from sailing yacht to ski chalet, and the company is fully equipped to outfit the interiors of everything from a G7 to a generous country estate. “We are a brand for the family, we’re a brand for the weekends, the outdoors,” says Pergamo, “we’re for the lifestyle.” 

The pop-up model is also a chance to explore a new emphasis on purely decorative elements—an area that has traditionally come less easily to a company celebrated for understatement. “We are a brand where things are very subtle, they’re very simple,” says Pergamo, “but we made an effort, we said let’s play a little more, let’s be playful.” That meant printing and embroidering cashmere and wool, as well as building a selection of carpets and rugs inspired in color and texture by herringbone or checks. The Aspen pop-up will have these kinds of things on hand: easy holiday gifts like lush throw blankets and pillows, exclusive eco-minded scented candles whose holders are made from recycled cashmere fibers, and the Bul-bo Soft Lamp, a cashmere-accented remake of the gravity defying design commissioned by the Olivetti Residential Center in 1970. There will also be larger home additions: furniture pieces including Raphael Navot’s sinuous Palm Duet Chaise longue, and a selection from the Ginza collection created for the opening of Loro Piana’s first skyscraper in Tokyo, including a cashmere-covered sofa, armchair, pouf, and daybed, all of which are filled with a gel that temporarily takes the shape of your body when you sit and plumps back up when you leave. (A saggy cushion is not very Loro Piana.) “We don’t like things in the house when they’re a bit untidy,” Pergamo says. “We like the cushions to be perfect, we like the sofa to be nice. Even when you leave the house and you turn here and there as you’re leaving, you like to see things be perfect.” 

Marketing luxury requires a certain seduction, an overcoming of the rational in favor of the sensory. Few understand this concept better than a company built on cashmere fibers. Most important for them is “not just what you see, but what you touch,” Pergamo explains: just as you might enter one of their boutiques and instinctively reach out to fondle a baby cashmere or vicuna coat, he wants you to sit and be enveloped in an armchair covered in sumptuous silk velvet or Cashfur, a proprietary material made from fine cashmere worked on circular knitting looms. Pivotally, this chair would, of course, be precisely the right color. “The world of Loro Piana is really about color, and the mix of color is really what counts,” says Pergamo, citing six different “worlds” of color used by the interiors division, grouped under names like regal, passion, and zen. “There’s always a piping sewn around the cushion in a color that is chosen very specifically in order to create this contrast. There's always the mix of the cushions that we put in contrast with the upholstery of the sofa. There's always little stitching in contrast. Little colors, details. That is Loro Piana interiors: softness, colors, details. Preciousness.” And rather than wait for an interior designer’s invitation or intervention, this week their customer can walk right in and see—and feel—for themselves. 

Loro Piana Home for the Holidays Pop-Up will be open from December 13-21st in the Aspen Times Building, 330 E Main St, Aspen, CO. 

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