Each year, Loro Piana celebrates the exceptional craftsmanship behind one of fashion’s most precious fibres with its Cashmere of the Year Award. Now marking its 11th edition, the Italian house returns to New York to honour the herders whose work makes that craftsmanship possible. Held at the Brant Foundation on 10 November, the ceremony recognised three couples from Inner Mongolia for the cashmere they produced in 2025.
Loro Piana’s relationship with cashmere goes far beyond the finished garment. It’s rooted in decades of expertise, craftsmanship and an ongoing commitment to the people and communities behind the fibre. One chapter in that history began in Inner Mongolia in 2009, when the house began working with local breeders on a selection programme for Alashan goats. The aim was to improve the fineness of the fibre while preserving the breed. In 2015, Loro Piana established the award, giving the herders’ work a place of its own in the house’s calendar.
At this year’s ceremony, first prize went to Siqingbilige and Hasiqiqige, whose winning bale weighed 135.8 kilos before cleaning and measured 12.89 microns in fibre diameter. Jiyatu and Gegentuya took second place, followed by Lifuqiang and Qiqi in third. Less than a quarter of a micron separated the three winning entries. Each couple received a financial reward for every kilo of fibre produced, alongside a silver comb inspired by the traditional cashmere-gathering process. The comb brings the award back to a familiar gesture for the herders: gathering the soft undercoat from their goats.
Beyond the awards, the exhibition Master of Cashmere offered a closer look at Loro Piana’s long-standing relationship with the fibre, tracing its origins and the process behind its transformation into a finished garment. The exhibition also highlighted the Loro Piana Method in Inner Mongolia and Resilient Threads in Mongolia, two initiatives that bring together questions of fibre quality, animal welfare and the future of herding communities. Launched in 2025, Resilient Threads works with cashmere cooperatives and nomadic communities in Mongolia’s Sükhbaatar region, with the aim of protecting the biodiversity of the grasslands on which they depend. Its focus on the grasslands takes the story back to the landscape that sustains the herds.
More than a celebration of an extraordinary material, the award shines a light on the people and knowledge that keep the world of cashmere moving forward. The silver comb is a reminder of where that work begins, long before the fibre reaches a mill or takes the shape of a garment.
