Fashion's NEW ORIGIN Story

CURIOUS how your CLOTHES were MADE? There's now an APP-and new CUTTING-EDGE BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY for that, which could TRANSFORM the concept of LUXURY.

- ALISON S. COHN

DO YOU KNOW WHERE your sweater came from? If it's one of Loro Piana's cloud-soft merino-wool knits and you wave your iPhone over the label, a digital certificate will pop up on your screen that gives detailed information about the bucolic Australian or New Zealand sheep station where the ultrafine fibers were shorn and the factories in Italy's Piedmont industrial region where they were washed, scoured, carded, drawn, spun, woven, and dyed. You'll also learn that Loro Piana's proprietary merino wool, called the Gift of Kings, is the finest in the world-at 12 microns, it's less than one fifth the diameter of a human hair-and comes from just a handful of breeders who focus on pasture management and grazing practices that preserve biodiversity. While that may sound like a futuristic experience straight out of Minority Report, it relies on advanced technology you likely already use in your daily life: The data is encoded in a blockchain and shared with your mobile device via a QR code.