In a world full of opulent and extravagant fabrics, from silks to cashmere, there is one fabric that stands on top of all the rest (and you may have never even heard of it). Vicuña wool dates back to the Ancient Inca civilization as they were known to worship the smaller, cinnamon-hued ancestors of the Alpaca. The Inca civilization were able to shear the fiber, an ancient ritual known as the “Chaccu,” and produce it into a fleece so fine and luxurious it was considered the cloth of gold. This fiber was so sacred to them that the only people allowed to wear it were Inca royalty and killing a Vicuña was punishable by death.

After the discovery of the fabric a Vicuña could produce, Spanish conquistadors took to hunting the animal for its wool. This continued for centuries with poachers reducing their numbers from 3 million to a mere 5,000 by the the mid-1900s. Vicuña has also seen itself tied up in a National US scandal in the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff was forced to resign after accepting a Vicuña coat from a textile mogul who was under investigation at the time. With the ever-rising interest in Vicuña fabric over the years, Peru’s government finally put their foot down to protect this sacred species who was, at the time, an endangered species. They made the hunting of Vicuña illegal and barred all trade of its wool.

In order to bolster the numbers of Vicuña back up to a safe level, Peru established a number of nature reservations. While this did fortunately increase the numbers of Vicuña in the region, the fabric drifted from the eye of the luxury market and was lost on a younger generation of consumers. If it were not for Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, the fiber may have been lost in time. The Co-CEO’s of Loro Piana, an Italian Fabric Mill dating back to 1924, saw the value and importance of the Vicuña fabric and took it upon themselves to bring it back into the limelight. Loro Piana is now the largest supplier of Vicuña to the fashion market with no indication of that ever changing.

“We worked a lot to reintroduce Vicuña to the commercial world. We worked pretty hard in the ‘80s and early ‘90s to make that happen. Since [the embargo], we sourced a lot of Vicuña that was officially sheared, and researched ways that we could develop a variety of items in new product categories to develop the possibility of a market for it here” (Pierre Luigi Loro Piana).

To completely grasp why Vicuña garments costs what they do (some fetching price tags upwards of $50,000), it is important to understand the amount of usable Vicuña that is able to be transformed into yarns for garments. The annual yield of usable Vicuña is only about 12 tonnes, which is less than half the amount for cashmere (25 tonnes). The difference in price for wool, cashmere and Vicuña are vast with wool only being $6 per kilo, cashmere $8 per kilo, and Vicuña being a whopping $600 per kilo. Vicuña is known by experts in the textile and fashion industry as the finest, rarest, and most luxurious fiber in the world and the price points reflect this.

Up until 2014, Loro Piana sold its Vicuña to other brands but has since stopped, which has caused these brands such as Ermenegildo Zegna, Brioni, and Berluti to source it independently. Loro Piana’s near monopoly on the Vicuña market has forced these brands to search high-and low across Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile in order to get their hands on the material.

The Vicuña market is extremely niche and the price points are enough to make your eyes water. In order to keep this market alive and well, Pierre Luigi Loro Piana has noted that “we need a young generation to take care of the Vicuña. But they need to have the same standard of living as those young people in town otherwise they’ll just leave the Andes.”

Below we have showcased some of the exquisite garments Loro Piana has crafted using Vicuña. If you (and your credit card) are brave enough to take the plunge, head over to Loro Piana’s site to browse the full Vicuña collection.