Why Alpaca

The Alpaca Story

Luxury that is gentle on the land and generous to its people.

In a world that cares about sustainability, alpaca fibre offers something rare: exceptionally fine clothing whose making protects the Andean highlands and sustains the communities that have raised these animals for millennia.

Undyed by nature22+ natural colours

Many luxury houses choose alpaca for its quality. Wearing it, though, carries a deeper meaning.

Pillar One

Gentle on the land

Choosing alpaca means walking lightly on the earth.

  • Soft feet that spare the pasture

    Unlike goats and sheep, whose sharp hooves tear at soil and root systems, alpacas have two toes with nails on top and a soft pad beneath. Grasslands stay intact, and the habitat is left undisturbed.

  • No competition with food production

    Alpacas thrive around 3,800 metres above sea level, where water is naturally supplied and the land is unsuitable for farming — making them far kinder to the environment than most fibre-producing livestock.

  • Remarkably efficient

    Alpacas eat far less than comparable animals. Cashmere goats, for instance, need at least twice the dry grass an alpaca requires to yield one kilogram of clean fibre.

Alpacas grazing in the Peruvian Andes
Natural alpaca fibre in its undyed colours

Pillar Two

Energy & natural resources

Choosing alpaca means saving water and energy.

  • Colour without dye

    Alpaca grows in more than 22 natural shades and blends into an almost infinite palette — including combinations that don't occur in nature — so industrial dyeing can be avoided, saving significant water and electricity.

  • A cleaner washing process

    With a low grease content of just 2.8–3.9%, alpaca needs far fewer chemicals and far less energy to treat its wash water than other animal fibres require.

Pillar Three

The Andean people & their culture

Choosing alpaca means honouring a heritage thousands of years old.

  • Domesticated 6,000 years ago

    The word “alpaca” comes from the Aymara Allpacu and the Quechua Pacos. Rock paintings over 8,000 years old record the bond between early Peruvians and these animals, whose domestication began between 4000 and 5000 B.C.

  • Woven into ancient cultures

    Alpaca fibre appeared in textiles around 2500 B.C. and grew ever more important through Peru's ancient cultures, where woven cloth signalled levels of power.

  • Survivors of the conquest

    Of an estimated 10 million alpacas before the Spanish conquest, only one in ten survived. Today around 3.7 million live across the Peruvian highlands — Puno, Arequipa, Cusco, Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurímac — some 80% of the world's population.

  • A livelihood for Andean families

    For more than a million smallholder families in the central Andes, alpacas are a pillar of survival — funding food, healthcare and their children's education, and with it a brighter future.

The Peruvian Andean highlands

Measured in microns

Fine enough for a whisper of a garment, strong enough for a blanket.

Alpaca fibre ranges from roughly 18 to 35+ microns — spanning the lightest, finest cloth to thick, deeply insulating weaves.

18Ultra-fine 26Fine knits 35+Blankets

Softness lives at the surface. The scales along a wool fibre stand 0.65–0.90 microns tall; on alpaca they barely reach 0.25 microns — which is why it feels so much smoother against the skin.

What sets it apart

The character of an alpaca garment.

i

Beauty that lasts

Its range of colour, structure and resilience produces garments of exceptional lustre and drape — while the fibre's strength, density and curvature keep them resistant to wear.

ii

Breathes in humidity

Naturally hygroscopic, alpaca readily draws moisture from the air, easing the clammy feel of a “damp garment” even in very humid climates.

iii

Extraordinarily soft

Its microscopic scales are only a fraction of the height of wool's, giving alpaca a smoothness gentler than other animal fibres or cotton.

iv

At home in extremes

It performs in both cold and heat, and resists flame better than plant or synthetic fibres — never melting onto the skin the way synthetics can.