MILAN — Loro Piana’s ongoing quest for increasingly finer merino wool fibers every year has produced two new remarkably thin bales in 2025, awarded on Wednesday as part of the 27th annual Record Bale Award.
Established in 1997, the award is bestowed on the two farms, one in Australia and one in New Zealand, that have successfully produced the finest bale of merino wool in the previous year.
“The Loro Piana Record Bale Award epitomizes the maison’s dedication to sourcing the world’s finest merino wool, celebrating the extraordinary breeders who achieve unparalleled fineness,” said Frédéric Arnault, chief executive officer of Loro Piana.
Pamela, Robert and Bradley Sandlant of the Australian Pyrenees Park farm scooped up the award with a merino wool fiber of 10.4 microns. The same farm won last year’s award with a 10.5-micron fiber, and currently defends the World Record Bale, a 10.2-micron fiber obtained in 2023, which surpassed the previous record of 10.3 microns set in 2013.
A micron is the unit of measurement of the fineness of a fiber equivalent to one-thousandth of a millimeter. For context, a human hair measures 70 microns.
The New Zealand recognition went to a newcomer of the Loro Piana Record Bale Award. The Earnscleugh farm, managed by Alistair and Duncan Campbell, produced 91 kilograms of merino wool achieving a micron count of 11.2, above last year’s 10.8-micron winning bale.
“Thanks to the unique climate and exceptional lands of Australia and New Zealand, these regions have become synonymous with merino wool of unparalleled quality and fineness. The scientific approach of Australian and New Zealand breeders have been crucial to creating ever-finer fibers over the past 40 years,” said Pier Luigi Loro Piana, the company’s deputy chairman.
Inside the 2025 Loro Piana Record Bale Award ceremony in Tokyo.
Courtesy of Loro Piana
The award ceremony was held Wednesday night at the Hyokeikan Building, a historic site within the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park.
The event — which was staged in Tokyo also in 2008 — drew the likes of architect Jun Aoki; Makoto Fujiwara, director of the Tokyo National Museum; Mizuka Ueno, guest principal dancer of the Tokyo Ballet, as well as gallerist Robert Campbell.
The first award was bestowed on New Zealand’s wool breeder Donald Burnett from the farm Mount Cook Station. It weighed 100 kg and measured 13.7 microns, which means the fiber’s fineness has improved by more than 30 percent.
The World Record Bale is preciously stored in a glass container at the Loro Piana Quarona factory in Italy’s Piedmont region, until the record is beaten and the previous award-winning bale is spun into the ultrafine The Gift of Kings wool, then plied into a lineup of garments bearing the same moniker.
The name is inspired by the Spanish royal family’s practice of gifting pairs of merino sheep to other monarchs to honor its relationships. In the second half of the 18th century, the animals were taken to New Zealand and Australia, where the habitat proved ideal.
The precious Record Bale garments are differentiated with a special label that documents their traceability, from the year the animal was shorn, to its origin, to the fiber’s micron.
Loro Piana Record Bale Award-winning textiles.
Courtesy of Loro Piana
The award ceremonies have been held around the world, from New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles to Rome, Milan and, most recently, in London.
AloJapan.com