Loro Piana Wool Climbing Pants Are as Crazy as They Are Excellent
Loro Piana Super 130's wool Gramicci climbing pants. On paper, those words do not belong together.
Loro Piana, arguably the world’s fanciest fabricmaker, creates Italian merino wools using the finest of ultra-fine fleeces that the world’s best tailors then use to create some of the world’s most expensive bespoke suits. Gramicci, meanwhile, is the pants-obsessed brainchild of a Californian climber who was at the forefront of the sport’s “dirtbag" subculture. These aren’t brands that’d ever normally interact. And just to make things even more random, a Japanese military-infused menswear label is the connective tissue.
Following the success of their most recent Loro Piana climbing shorts, nonnative and Gramicci are back with a new round of rugged pants cut from Loro Piana cloth. And this time, that cloth is a little thicker than before, weighing in at 260 GSM, which the brands say helps create a more well-defined silhouette with a “a richer, more substantial appearance.”
But this isn’t a Loro Piana collaboration. Since the company operates as a fabric mill, anyone from Savile Row tailors to the streetwear titan Stüssy can (and regularly do) purchase rolls of Loro Piana’s famously sumptuous suiting fabric for their own clothing designs, and nonnative has done just that.
Although Loro Piana has a largely overlooked and surprisingly high-tech hiking category capable of producing some properly hardy climbing gear, nonnative opted for one of its shiny suiting materials with an almost silk-like lustre. Naturally, it looks delightfully out of place on Gramicci’s “easy” pants and shorts that drop on June 20, clashing against the functional doodads like draw-cord hems, articulated knee darts, and key loops. But that tension is the point.
Gramicci pants are easygoing, near-indestructible, and above all, affordable. Making them from Loro Piana cloth is the best kind of juxtaposition, where it shouldn’t make sense and yet it just looks so good.
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