Producing up to eight million meters of fabric annually, using four million kilograms of wool, and designing around 5,000 new fabrics each year, Vitale Barberis Canonico is a powerhouse in the world of fine textiles. Founded in 1663, it stands as one of the world's oldest textile mills. Yet, a closer look at this company’s operations—supplying fabrics not only to Anatoly & Sons but also to the world’s most prestigious bespoke workshops and major fashion houses such as Brioni, Kiton, Gucci, Zegna, Loro Piana, and Canali—reveals that its mastery, rather than sheer output, is what truly dazzles.
A member of Les Hénokiens—an international association of businesses with at least two centuries of family ownership—this vertically integrated company is a family firm in the purest sense of the phrase. Not only does it farm its own wool, but it also combs, dyes, spins, designs, weaves, and finishes the stunning fabrics that are its stock in trade. “The people who are working with me—their father worked with my father, their grandfather worked with my grandfather,” Francesco Barberis Canonico—who joined the business back in 1998 and is now the company’s creative director—once told this writer.
“They feel like the company is theirs. When they go out, they're so proud to work for us. Half of our employees are from a village whose population is just 1,000. They do it with a lot of passion – whether it's a mender or a weaver or a spinner or any other job – and I think the results speak for themselves.”
Indeed, they do. The tweeds, worsteds, flannels, blends, and techno-fabrics that emerge from Vitale Barberis Canonico’s state-of-the-art Biella production center—renowned for its ethical environmental practices and stringent safety standards, and the recipient of countless awards—are a tailor’s dream. “Even the lighter-weight VBC fabrics respond well to tailoring,” as Michael Brown, who spent eight years at Savile Row's Chittleborough & Morgan before establishing his own bespoke tailoring shop, puts it. “They always have that robustness you often find in traditional English fabrics, yet the designs and textures are far from boring. I’d describe their cloths as the perfect balance of tasteful, interesting designs and practicality.”
Anatoly & Sons’ Navy Mariner Mac Coat stands as a testament to Brown’s observations. Crafted from 100% wool flannel woven by Vitale Barberis Canonico, it features a porous membrane that shields the wearer from even the most hostile elements. Likewise, our double-breasted Grey Flannel Peacoat—cut from the same exceptional fabric—combines weather-resistant properties with a quilted viscose lining, reinforcing the idea that elegance and functionality need not be mutually exclusive.
Meanwhile, beyond the diligence and shared ethos fostered by the filial culture described above, another key factor behind Vitale Barberis Canonico’s success is its deep reverence for its own heritage. VIP visitors to the Biella headquarters may be invited into the archive library—a serene space, completed just over a decade ago, where, often with a glass of bubbly in hand, guests can wander softly lit aisles lined with shelves holding more than 2,000 volumes of historic fabrics from Italy, France, Britain, Germany, and America, dating back to 1860.
These beautiful volumes of fabric swatches, collected over centuries, provide today’s style creatives with inspiration. “Fabric designers and garment designers are related,” says Francesco. “A lot of the latter’s inspiration comes from swatches of fabric from our collections, pinned onto a mood board. So we inspire them to think, ‘What can I make of this? Could it be double-breasted? Could it be single-breasted? Could it be outerwear? Could it be formal? Could it be casual?’”
Francesco is a true connoisseur of the exceptional raw material that evolution has provided mankind in the form of wool. His—and his senior colleagues’—near-obsessive focus on the fabrics the mill works with is yet another factor behind its ever-growing reputation. “At Vitale Barberis Canonico, we look for fleece that fulfills measurable parameters such as fineness, length, and resistance and that is up to our very high stylistic expectations,” says Francesco.
“We’ve never created a fabric based on cost,” he continues. “If it says ‘Vitale Barberis Canonico’ on the label it's made with the best raw materials and constructed as well as it can possibly be done.” Indeed, such is the company’s devotion to wool quality that, ten years ago, it established the Vitale Barberis Canonico Wool Excellence Club to strengthen relationships with growers, demonstrate a commitment to paying more for higher-quality fleece, and recognize farmers who uphold its philosophy with the annual Wool Excellence Award.
And wool is not its only medium for fabric excellence. Vitale Barberis Canonico’s H.O.P.E. range (an acronym for “How to Optimize People and Environment”) features garments made from Spanish Moretta wool, blended with either organic cotton and hemp or alpaca and Red Eri silk—the latter being a fiber of Indian origin that isn’t harvested until the moth has left the chrysalis, making it the silk of choice for Buddhist monks.
None of this is possible, of course, without ensuring that state of the art technology is in place. “We introduce new machinery every year,” Francesco says, referring to his company’s game-changing looms, combing machines and finishing equipment, as well as contraptions such as an electronic eye which can pick out microscopic discrepancies in yarn diameter, eliminate the faulty area, then splice the loose ends together using pneumatic technology. “We work with the producers of machinery and design our own,” he enthuses. “We have looms now which weave at 1,000 picks per minute, and it’s incredible to see this fabric spooling out of it—20 years ago it was unthinkable. And yet it is exactly the same quality.”
Francesco is also a devoted environmentalist—paying deference to the exceptional raw material that has sustained the family business—an ethos reflected in the company’s rigorous environmental standards. It uses 38 liters of water for every meter of fabric produced and ensures sustainability through a water processing plant that refines 120,000 liters daily. The treated water is so pure that koi and goldfish thrive in the man-made lake where some of it is released. The company also sources all its energy from certified renewable sources and promotes textile by-products with a focus on a circular economy.
“This focus on sustainability is not a trend—it’s here to stay, and it will make younger people more and more selective of what they buy in the future,” Francesco says. “They’re prepared to spend; they don't mind investing, as long as the quality can be certified and they can know the provenance—it needs to be traceable. People used to buy fast fashion, throwaway goods—now they spend less often and spend better.”
As certified fabric geeks ourselves, we say, “Amen to that!”
