Eye: Amber Valletta Wears Agnona's SS 2019 Vicuña Fabric Collection, Lensed By Ezra Petronio
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Eye: Amber Valletta Wears Agnona's SS 2019 Vicuña Fabric Collection, Lensed By Ezra Petronio
Supermodel Amber Valletta showcases key looks from Agnona’s Spring/Summer 2019 collection, lensed by Ezra Petronio.
Designer Simon Holloway dedicated the collection to artist American Joan Jonas, 82, previously honored in an exhibition at London’s Tate Modern. In this film, we see Jonas at work in New York.
Peru’s Vicuña Fabric Is Worth Its Weight In Gold
Key items in Agnona’s spring 2019 collection were made in vicuña, one of two wild South American camelids living in the high alpine areas of the Andes. Vicuña, along with the guanaco, is a relative of the llama. It’s believed to be the wild ancestor of domesticated alpacas, and it remains wild today.
Nearly hunted to extinction in the late 1980’s, the vicuña herds made a slow, steady comeback and are expanding today in the wild. Driven largely by their father’s adoration of the wool product, Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, the co-CEOs of Loro Piana, the Italian mill that was a part of the mid-century ‘Made in Italy’ movement and would eventually grow into one of the world’s largest producers of cashmere — and its biggest supplier of vicuña.
The fibers are collected using the chacu method of the Incas—a half-religious ceremony where the local community forms a human chain around the animals, slowly closing the circumference of their circle for shearing. An adult vicuna produces only about a pound of fiber a year, producing a cloth so fine it was considered to be cloth of gold, writes BofF.
