Vicuña Fabric
Discover vicuña, the sacred Andean fibre once reserved for Inca royalty. Shorn once every three years and offered by advance booking at Lapels Bespoke.
Lapels Bespoke
Vicuña Fabric,
the Sacred Fibre of the Andes
The ancient Incas revered the vicuña as a sacred symbol of the sun god, and its ultra fine fleece was reserved strictly for royalty. Centuries later, vicuña fabric remains astonishingly scarce, gathered slowly and in tiny quantities from animals that have never been tamed.
Born in the High Andes
Vicuñas are completely wild animals that cannot be domesticated or farmed in the traditional way.
They thrive exclusively in the harsh, high altitude ecosystems of the Central Andes, across Peru, Bolivia, northwestern Argentina and northern Chile. Their habitat, known as the puna, sits between 3,200 and 6,000 metres above sea level, where oxygen is thin, vegetation is sparse and the winds are fierce. Intense solar radiation warms the day to around two degrees, before the temperature plummets dramatically to minus ten degrees.
A Coat Built for the Mountain Cold
To survive these sudden freezing drops, the vicuña has evolved its signature dense coat, in which every fibre has a hollow core.
This specialised undercoat traps layers of warm air directly against the body, giving the animal a natural insulation shield against the mountain temperatures.
The Chaku and the Three Year Harvest
Because vicuñas are wild and legally protected under the international conservation laws known as CITES, they cannot be enclosed or shorn at will.
Each animal is shorn approximately once every three years, a legally mandated interval that allows its slow growing fleece to regenerate completely and keeps it insulated against the freezing climate. The harvest follows the communal Chaku, a ritual in which people from the surrounding communities form human chains and slowly guide the herd into an enclosure where the animals can be sheared. The vicuña fibre offered at Lapels Bespoke is sourced from untamed vicuña native to the high Andean plateaus of Peru.
A Fibre Measured in Grams
The scale of vicuña’s scarcity becomes clear when it is set beside other fibres.
A Merino sheep grows up to six kilograms of wool every year, while a single vicuña gives just 120 to 150 grams every three years. Global production of vicuña sits at around 6,000 kilograms a year and occasionally reaches 12,000 kilograms, roughly 12 tonnes. Cashmere, by comparison, is produced at around 25,000 tonnes, and sheep’s wool, which comes from domesticated and carefully controlled production, runs into millions of tonnes.
Reserved by Advance Booking
A very small selection of this fibre is available only by advance booking, placed at least one year ahead and sometimes two.
Every piece is carefully selected and handpicked, then offered only to a select group of clients. Anyone wishing to commission vicuña should place their order at least a year in advance to secure a fibre that was once kept for royalty alone.