Juliet Guo’s journey to making luxury goods doesn’t read like your typical designer origin story. Take her upbringing in Ordos, a region of China’s Inner Mongolia province, where her family owned pastureland. Though it’s thousands of miles away from the fashion capitals of Paris and Milan, it has long been revered among textile insiders, thanks to the high-quality that its goats, climate, and herders produce. As a child, she remembers seeing goats grazing the ranches, many bearing tags that said “Loro Piana.”

“I had no idea what Loro Piana was,” recalls Guo, who at that stage hadn’t traveled far outside of her hometown. After studying philosophy and economics in university, she got work at a local textile factory. She also taught herself English, after taking a five-hour bus journey to pu

See Full Page