Businessweek

US Lawmaker Demands LVMH’s Loro Piana Answer for ‘Exploitation’ in Peru

  • Fashion house sells vicuña sweaters for thousands of dollars
  • Indigenous workers have little to show for harvesting the wool

Andean people travel to herd and shear vicuñas in the highlands of Ayacucho, Peru.

Photographer: Angela Ponce for Bloomberg Businessweek

Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

A US lawmaker wants Loro Piana to answer for what he sees as the “exploitation” of Indigenous workers providing raw materials for the Italian fashion house’s trademark luxury sweaters.

The company, a subsidiary of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, has been making garments out of wool from vicuñas — big-eyed, golden-brown animals native to the Andes — for three decades, selling them for thousands of dollars each.