thats why the ad look so cheap :-) made by illegal chinese workers in italy for 80 euro a piece
14th July 2025
Loro Piana under judicial administration: "It did not prevent gangmastering among suppliers who exploited Chinese workers."
The €3,000 cashmere jackets paid €80 manufacturing cost.
by Luigi Ferrarella
Milan, after the Armani, Dior, and Valentino cases, the judge imposed a one-year preventive measure for the (not under investigation) Loro Piana company, now chaired by the son of magnate Arnault:
"A mechanism implemented structurally to reduce costs and maximize profits."
The Milan Court has placed a high-fashion company headed by Antoine, son of French magnate Bernard Arnault, under judicial administration for one year. This company is Loro Piana SpA, the Vercelli-based cashmere brand, 80% of which was acquired in 2013 for €2 billion by the Parisian multinational LVMH-Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, owned by the Arnault family (the fourth richest in the world).
The judges of the Preventive Measures Section accuse Loro Piana SpA not of having directly exploited, nor even of having been fully aware of the exploitation, but of having
"culpably facilitated," through "
a general lack of organizational models and a flawed internal audit system, the severe labor exploitation" of Chinese workers downstream in "its own production chain" between contractors and subcontractors, in factories closed by the Carabinieri of the Labor Inspectorate and managed, in one case, by a Chinese man arrested in flagrante delicto on May 13, 2025.
This "culpable facilitation" despite identical judicial administration measures adopted in recent months against other luxury fashion brands such as Armani, Dior, Valentino, and Alviero Martini, all of which are Article 34 of Legislative Decree 159/2011. These measures, as is now the case, do not involve the criminal seizure of the company under investigation, but rather the placement of a professional appointed by the Court alongside the directors under investigation so that resolve internal critical issues. This sequence of events is in stark contrast to the recent signing of a "memorandum of understanding, with the participation of the most representative national trade unions and employers' associations, aimed at ensuring compliance with the law in the high fashion production chain."
The Chain of Subcontracts
Loro Piana S.p.A.—still 20% owned by the Piana family and headed by Pier Luigi Piana, with 2,300 employees and a turnover of €1.3 billion—according to the documents filed at the request of prosecutor Paolo Storari,
entrusted part of the jacket production directly to Evergreen Fashion Group S.r.l., which, however, had a convenient headquarters in Milan behind Sant'Ambrogio but no production department, subcontracted the production to Sor-Man S.n.c. of Nova Milanese.
This company, in turn, lacking adequate production capacity, outsourced the garments to the Chinese factories Clover Moda S.r.l. (in Baranzate) and Dai Meiying (in Senago). However,
they employed mostly illegal Asian workers, mostly illegally, in unhealthy and dangerous working environments, housed in unauthorized dormitories, subjected even at night and on holidays (as demonstrated by the recording of energy consumption peaks) to shifts far exceeding those contractually stipulated and paid far below the minimum wage, operating machinery without safety devices, without health surveillance, and without minimal training.
Emails on formal inspections
In the factories, the Carabinieri found not only products and labels but also production sheets for Loro Piana garments. And at Sor-Man,
they recovered an email dated November 18, 2024, between the owner Ermanno Brioschi and a professional from the external company (Nexia Audirevi) that had conducted the audit on behalf of Loro Piana. Furthermore, Sor-Man's wife and co-owner, Maria Teresa Provenzi, explaining that
"volumes were high, around 6,000-7,000 jackets a year for Loro Piana, and to maintain the customer I
outsourced to Chinese nationals, namely Clover Moda srl and Dai Meiying," added to the Prosecutor's Office that "I had reported to Evergreen" (
Loro Piana's primary contractor, with which Sor-Man has had a turnover of €1.5 million in the last year and a half) "that
my production was actually carried out by the two Chinese companies." She also testified that "Loro Piana spa came to my company several times to conduct audits, which I am providing to you." The Prosecutor's Office emphasizes that "the audit report carried out by Loro Piana at Evergreen in May 2024 through the external company Nexia (the same company that also performed the audit for Loro Piana at Sor-Man in November 2024) does not include any considerations or checks regarding production capacity." Now, Evergreen's own accountant, Roberto Pivoli, "has confirmed in his testimony that Evergreen does not have production personnel or suitable machinery."
"Reducing costs, maximizing profits"
The panel, composed of President Paola Pendino, Delegate Judge Giulia Cucciniello, and her colleague Maria Profeta, concludes that the scheme, aimed at
"reducing costs and maximizing profits (with rapid productivity increases) through the evasion of criminal and labor laws, was perpetrated over time in a structural manner and negligently fueled by Loro Piana SpA, which failed to verify the actual entrepreneurial capacity of the contractors and subcontractors to whom it entrusted production, and over the years failed to carry out effective inspections or audits to verify the actual operation of the production chain and actual working conditions," but only carried out checks that "appear more formal than substantive." Just as terminating the contract with Evergreen on May 21st comes shortly after the Carabinieri had arrested Hu "Stefano" Xizhai, the Chinese owner of Clover, to whom Evergreen had turned, eight days earlier. This "does not mean that Loro Piana was fully aware of the conditions in which workers were subjected to in the Chinese factories, but the company certainly failed to develop an adequate organizational structure to prevent the emergence and consolidation of commercial relationships (through the chain of subcontractors) with entities operating under conditions of worker exploitation."
Cashmere Jackets from €80 to €3,000
The prosecutor's view is that Loro Piana's inadequacy in failing to identify the downstream exploitation resulted in significant benefits: the prosecutor, the judges explain, "explained, for example,
the average unit costs for the production of certain models of cashmere jackets at the various companies in the production chain, in the order of €100, and the cost at which these garments are marketed in Loro Piana stores, between €1,000 and €3,000, with a markup of €1,000 to €2,000." And the documents also contain the version given to the Carabinieri by the co-owner of Evergreen:
"With Loro Piana, the agreed-upon price was €118-€128 per jacket. I paid the Chinese companies 80 euros per piece if they didn't cut it, 86 with it, then depending on the other processes the price could fluctuate by 5 or 10 euros".
