Showroom

Loro Piana Interiors

Trade account to buy

Fabrics, furniture, rugs, and accessories in cashmere, vicuna, and silk. In the D and D Building.

Loro Piana Interiors is the home textile arm of the Italian fibre house, and it trades from a suite in the D&D Building at 979 Third Avenue, which is open to the public, and buying requires a trade account.

What it carries is the same fibre the clothing business is built on, turned to furnishing. Cashmere, extrafine wool and vicuña, in upholstery cloth, curtaining, rugs, throws and blankets. That is a narrow range deliberately, and the house is unusual in this building for selling fibre rather than pattern. A designer comes here for a hand and a weight, not for a print.

It is the finest fibre in commercial use and the price follows, so it turns up on cushions, throws and occasional upholstery rather than on a sofa, and knowing where it is worth spending is most of the conversation.

The practical limit is the same one that applies to any fine natural fibre indoors. Cashmere upholstery pills and abrades on a piece in daily use, and the honest answer on a family room is usually a wool with cashmere used somewhere it will be touched rather than sat on. The showroom will say so if asked directly.

Ask for the rub count and the cleaning code before the cloth goes on a board, and then decide which pieces in the room can carry it. Specifying a cashmere blend on a chair nobody sits in is a good use of it, and specifying it on the sofa in an apartment with a dog is a decision the client should make knowingly rather than discover.