From English aristos to Argentine gauchos via Australian drovers, Loro Piana’s handsome menswear and womenswear collections for the season were designed to evoke life in the saddle. Patterned intarsia knit sweaters vaguely recalled jockey colors, and there were riding boots aplenty in the brand’s Milan showroom for a static installation whose garments ranged far and wide across the touchstones of horseback style.

Riding capes, gaucho pants, quilted jackets and gilets, and traditional Italian rural workwear jackets were among the garments elevated through Loro Piana’s highest-echelon approach into newly luxurious manifestations. In womenswear, loose tailoring, jodhpurs, checked skirts, and bouclé jackets were all pedigree pieces successfully fused with Loro’s lineage. A collaboration with luxury French rubber bootmaker Le Chameau added an extra layer of authenticity. Further accessories included new fabrications of the label’s Loom bag, including a zibeline-inspired textured nubuck and cashmere tweed.

This collection’s presentation coincided with Loro Piana’s unveiling of a new weapon in luxury’s ongoing micron wars, that very genteel inter-house conflict dedicated to creating and marketing the lightest and softest materials possible. Following Zegna’s deployment last month of its new Vellus Aureum lambswool (between 12 and 13 microns), Loro today hit back with the new Royal Lightness, which it asserted is “both a yarn, a mix of silk and merino wool, and a fabric, a blend of silk and cashmere.” Made available for us to touch, it did indeed feel gossamer soft and vapor light, and in yarn form comes in at 13.5 microns. Loro remains the front-runner in the ongoing race that is the “old money” luxury space.