Back in 1881, the grandfather of Nino Cerruti founded the textile mill Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti in Biella (Piemonte, Italy) taking advantage of the water in the region to wash and treat the wool. The latter is imported principally from Australia, New-Zealand and South Africa, so as to develop quite amazing flannel, tweeds, cashmere, and butter muslin.

Ever since the beginning, the aim of Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti has been to steadily create and innovate using modern alchemists while aiming for the noblest materials. The factory itself epitomizes how ancient knowledge and modern technologies can be combined to produce timeless top range fabrics. That explains why french label De Fursac is now using the Lanificio F.lli Cerruti fabrics for most of their collection. Today is your lucky day for we get you a rare, extensive and exclusive look inside the Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti factory where De Fursac invited us to help us realize how amazing their fabrics are !

RAW MATERIALS

The Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti sources from the very best Australian wool and the top Mongolian cashmere which are then stored in the best possible conditions of temperature, humidity and dust protection. I’ve seen some of the sheeps in Australia are even wearing coats so as to protect their wool…

COMBING

This step aims to obtain a perfectly homogeneous and soft wool/cashmere. The factory a has one of the most cutting edge monitoring system watching over this rather complex operation. I touched some of combed wool, I guarantee it’s really soft already !

SPINNING

The spinning is used to twist to combed fibers to get the required resistance. This process is managed so well that the yarns are kept really thin and remarkably uniform.

WARPING

This is where 3000 to 11000 threads get ready for the weaving. I can tell you that this is precision work. The smallest error can be dramatic so the 300 points of control are, again, key to the next step.

WEAVING

Weaving gives birth to the final product. Warp threads and weft threads are combined to eventually create the desired pattern, color and texture of the Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti fabric. Where Chinese factories have almost no loss in fabric, the Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti deletes almost 30% of the finished product to remove all risk of default.

FINISHING

Water, steam, pressure, heat and many secret finishing tricks occur here to deploy the whole potential of the fabric ! The weaved fabric litterally goes through hell before being packed up !

As you can see, there’s more to pure mechanism to a 130+ years old factory. The passion gives sense to anyone’s work and I was shocked by the diversity of skills and science of the employees. The visit’s not over for you though. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s reportage about the collaboration between the Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti and De Fursac through a visit of their archives in Italy !

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