LVMH further industry abuse for workers represents yest another new low for the luxury global fashion industry.
Loro Piana’s $9,000 Sweaters Rely on Unpaid Farmers in Peru. Thirty years of providing the world’s finest wool to the fashion house Loro Piana has done almost nothing for the Indigenous people of the Peruvian Andes.
Once a year, Andrea Barrientos, a 75-year-old subsistence farmer in the Peruvian Andes, works free of charge for the world’s richest person.
She does that by joining dozens of people from her village in herding wild vicuñas for miles on a remote plain 13,000 feet above sea level and shearing them for their soft, golden-brown wool. Vicuñas, big-eyed camelids that roam the southern Andes, produce the finest and most expensive wool there is. In New York, Milan or London, the fashion house Loro Piana sells a vicuña sweater for about $9,000. Barrientos’ Indigenous community of Lucanas, whose only customer is Loro Piana, receives about $280 for an equivalent amount of fibre. That doesn’t leave enough to pay Barrientos, whose village expects her to work as a volunteer.
MR CHRISTIAN has contacted the current CEO of Loro Piana DAMIEN BERTRAND directly to ask for an immediate and public investigation into the concerns raised by the reporting by BOF and Bloomberg and requested for the immediate cessation of exploitation for these workers as part of their supply chain and raw material sourcing for the brand.
Whilst so much focus is on the corruption and unethical practices by the budget fast fashion giants such a SHIEN and TEMU, we seem to gloss over the exploitation of supply chains at the top of the industry as we assume by default that due to there obvious yearly pre tax profits they are in fact operating ethically.
Loro Piana owned by LMVH one of the worlds wealthiest global fashion portfolios should not be allowed to to continue with this modern day slavery and should be legally challenged and made fully accountable for this practice with the full weight of legislation and enforcement action. This to ensure the rights and livelihoods of the indigenous people on which many of these brands depend on to make their products.