When is a suit not a suit? When it is one of only 50 made from the finest wool in the world. In the case of the Loro Piana Record Bale suits, this claim is not a piece of marketing hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Every year, the Italian luxury goods firm hosts a kind of America’s Cup for wool growers, inviting the Australian sheep farmers and their New Zealand counterparts to submit their finest 100kg crop. The winners of each country then go head-to-head.

In this instance, finest means just that. A human hair measures about 30-40 microns in cross section (a micron is 1,000th of a milometer), while normal wool is around 24, cashmere 15, and vicuna 13 microns. The merino wool of last year’s winning bale (from Australia and unveiled in Moscow this summer) clocked in at an average of 11.6 microns, a new world record, and therefore the finest wool ever harvested.