21/03/2024
This week all eyes were on ultra luxe brand Loro Piana, the Italian purveyors of the cult $600 hat worn by Kendall in HBO’s Succession. In case you missed this pathetic display of everything that is wrong with Fashion - this essay break it down and adds some notes on Andean culture which I think help contextualize this mess. 🦙
Wealth-obsessed “quite luxury” brand Loro Piana prides itself -via a very white saviour complex narrative- as having “saved” the farming of vicuña wool which is indigenous to Peru, 🇵🇪 yet it is just another variant of the tried and true corporate conglomerate that exploits the labor of workers in the Global South. What is missing from the analysis of this scandal is some Andean cultural context: specifically the concept of “Minga.” This Quechua word means “collective work” and is something that has been practiced in the Andean culture for centuries. 🦙This communal practice of cooperation, common to rural Indigenous and communities in the Andes, “often takes the form of rotating labor to work on farms and build collective infrastructures such as roads or irrigation canals.” However, during the reign of the Inca and later during Spanish colonial times, the minga was used as a mechanism of forced labor, something I believe LVMH is capitalizing on, all while green washing their way to massive profits.
The false altruism behind LVMH’s claims of “safeguarding the vicuna” is really highly-stylized green washing. These false claims, aimed at making the people buying an $11,000 sweater feel warm and fuzzy with thoughts of helping poor peasants is pretty gross. The image featured is one from a recent add campaign features an indigenous woman holding sheared vicuña fiber: too bad the woman in the glossy editorial is not making of the profit from the exorbitant price tag yet her image is used to green wash LVMH. This is weaponizing cultural values - specifically the Andean concept of minga- click the link in bio for much more on this topic!