Pier Luigi Loro Piana on Sailing, Competition, Music
The Loro Piana scion was competing with his brand new My Song 5 super yacht in the Tre Golfi Sailing Week.
Mid-May in Capri, pouring rain and barely any wind only partially scuppered the start of the four-day Tre Golfi Sailing Week 2023 off the coast of Sorrento, Italy.
But the unfortunate weather only highlighted Pier Luigi Loro Piana's temperament. A resolute and pragmatic businessman whose family founded luxury brand Loro Piana in 1924, he is deputy chairman of the company after LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton bought it in 2013.
He is also an avid sailor.
Loro Piana, the brand, was the official sponsor of the IMA Maxi European Championship, organized by the International Maxi Association together with one of the country's oldest yacht clubs, Naples' Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia. The sailing event ran from May 12 to 21 and comprised a 150-mile-long regatta and four days of inshore regattas.
Loro Piana, the man and helmsman, was competing in the race with My Song 5, his 24.7-meter racer sailboat that debuted in 2022 and followed four previous yachts named after legendary pianist Keith Jarrett's record.
“Listening to his music, particularly to this record ‘[My Song'] reminded me of sailing time, I imagined a sailboat and everything that happens at sea.…If you listen to it, it's a magical piece of music,” Loro Piana says.
My Song 5 is a sleek midnight blue super yacht, crafted from carbon-based materials and able to accommodate 16 to 24 team members, equipped with a canting keel and daggerboard system. “A fairly updated technology,” Loro Piana says, noting he never wanted to embrace the “flying boats,” technically known as hydrofoil sailboats.
“I wanted it to be like a grand tourer [GT] car, I don't want a Formula 1 that requires dedicated racetracks, I wanted like a sporty car to compete in GT mode. That's fun to me,” he says, sharing his appreciation for a yacht that's manageable and not overly technological.
He uses lots of metaphors to describe both his passion for and approach to yachting. The former began at age 18 when one of his parents' friends invited him on a cruising weekend. Soon thereafter he bought his first centerboard, a 4.90-meter Strale yacht that would anticipate the My Song series.
“It was basically my way to enjoy nature, sailing is the best. Also, you become part of the boat system, it's like skiing — you establish a different relationship and a balance compared to walking, running. You're on the boat and you move following different rules, whether you like it or not,” he says.
Sailing and life in the outdoors have become a blueprint of the Loro Piana brand's fashion proposition. As the story goes, the signature White Sole loafers and the Windmate Bomber, a reversible jacket crafted from microfiber and cashmere and treated with the registered, waterproof and wind-resistant Storm System finish, were both born at sea and tested during regattas.
“There are a few common aspects between business life and sea life,” Loro Piana opines. “When you compete it's all about teamwork.…It's a matter of team building, working together. You're just one of the gears of the engine, which is made up of other people.…The most similar thing is understanding what other people have to do and your role, respect other people's jobs and behave accordingly.”
Since owning his first My Song, Loro Piana has embraced sailing competitions. Over the years the brand has given its name to and been linked with famous sailing competitions in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, including the Loro Piana Super Yacht Regatta in Porto Cervo, Italy between 2009 and 2021, as well as the Caribbean Superyacht Regatta; Rendez Vous, held in
Virgin Gorda, one of the British Virgin Islands, and Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, in France.
“Competition came into the equation because only when you're racing, the whole team is geared toward the same goal. The mission is to sail as fast as possible and that's the objective which you are on the boat together for,” he says. “It's very natural when sailing, even when you're not competing if you're just cruising and bump into another sailboat, your instant desire is to overtake it. It's about bettering oneself.
“I'm not very competitive, I'm not interested in competition per se. I'm not interested in winning, it's more about sailing and enjoying what's around you, and then if you win you're all the more happy,” he adds.
Christened in June 2022 as the first ClubSwan 80 racer yacht from the Finnish shipyard Nautor Swan and built by strategic partner Persico Marine, My Song 5 was built and designed to be competitive. It replaced its predecessor, My Song 4, the Baltic 130 sailing super yacht that Loro Piana lost at sea in May 2019 after it fell from a cargo ship off the coast of Menorca, Spain.
“That boat was fast, beautiful, I liked it a lot, it was supposed to be my last boat,” he says with sorrow in his voice. “We did amazing regattas; we crossed the Atlantic.…It was [also] very comfortable being a 40-meter yacht, as it allowed for a very comfortable cruising life, too. Unfortunately, the accident severely damaged the boat. It was beyond repair.”
The year 2022 was cathartic, though.
Loro Piana did things differently and split his two sides of sea life. As he was prepping My Song 5, he also bought a motorboat, his first, a social- and family life-leaning 51-meter explorer, called Masquenada and geared at cruising around the world.
The result of the refit of an existing boat, carried out in eight months by the Lusben shipyard in Livorno, Italy that is part of the Azimut-Benetti Group, the motorboat can accommodate 11 people and can cruise as fast as 11 knots.
“It would have taken me at least three years to have a new boat built, I bought time and split my passion in two.…I have nephews and a boat like this is much more comfortable and I don't have to rearrange it from the cruise configuration for racing,” he says.
In his multileg world-exploring trip, Masquenada has already taken to the sea in the Bahamas and Cuba, at the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia and in Tonga, Fiji and Lau Islands.
Its name is also music-inspired, particularly by Dizzy Gillespie's interpretation of Sérgio Mendes' “Mas Que Nada” song. “It reminds you of the carnival of Rio de Janeiro, of dancing, of something joyful and since I was left without any boat, Masquenada was ‘better than nothing' [English for Mas Que Nada]. It was about taking ourselves not too seriously.”
Loro Piana's passions are intrinsically woven into the company, especially when it comes to textile research and development. Cue linen used as a substitute of fiberglass and carbon for the interiors of My Song, lightweight cashmere blankets to keep the crew warm and their uniform — including a waterproof fiery red jacket — standing out on the gray-skied first day of the inshore regattas in Capri.
The Tre Golfi Sailing Week 2023 saw My Song nab the seventh spot in the Loro Piana Challenge Trophy and the top position in the Overall Real Time category, as the sun over Capri was shyly breaking through the clouds.