Drago: Technology & Tradition At The Iconic Biella Fabric Mill

We arrive at the celebrated Drago mill and we’re ushered through to the scientific laboratory by our lovely local hosts, Enzo and Enrico, to commence our private tour of the facility responsible for crafting some of the most luxurious, expensive and celebrated fabrics in the world.

Though both Enzo and Enrico live and breathe Biella, born and raised in the region, they’re both pretty typical of the big textiles mills in that they spend the majority of their time on the road, visiting brands and tailors all over the world to showcase their fabrics.

They speak with humility about the size and importance of their mill in the Biella landscape, but the quality of their cloths and the prestige of their clientele is apparent immediately; among the InStitchu fabrics from Drago are little tags earmarking this flannel or that lightweight cloth for iconic luxury names like Boglioli and Brunello Cucinelli. And despite what Enzo and Enrico say, the scale of the operation is incredible: room after room of complex equipment worth tens of millions of dollars, turning raw material like Merino and linen into hundreds and thousands of metres of final cloth in an array of patterns, weaves and weights.

It seems incredible that an Australian tailoring brand can travel all the way to Biella, in the northern pocket of rural Italy, and the only thing the locals want to talk about is Australian Merino wool. It’s this base fibre, sourced almost exclusively from Australian Merino farmers, that inspires the local artisans and makes this whole industry possible.

Enrico, our host from Drago, says the focus here is all on the base ingredient and the process, not the brands that use the cloth; that’s for the sales team.

“Without a beautiful raw ingredient,” says Enrico, “The rest doesn’t matter. And when you find the right Australian wool, you buy lots of it.“

The technology in each massive room is incredible, and seemingly so delicate and complex. The steps to transform a base ingredient like Australian Merino wool to a cloth suitable for tailoring is nuanced and the result of generations of technical innovation and learning in the region.

And yet the technology is secondary to the artisan skill of those managing the machinery.

“It’s like blending a wine,” says Enrico. “You need to blend the different Australian Merino wools from different farms and years, to combine their unique properties. Softness and feel, of course, but also enough structure and muscle.”

Enrico says the bond between Biella and Australia is strong, and old: “We might only take 3% or so of the total Australian Merino wool, but Biella takes the very best. The highest quality Australian wool comes here and to other mills. It is our lifeblood.”

Strolling through the final fabric warehouse is a bit like being in the tailoring version of Wonka’s factory; each corner of the factory is piled high with the most decadent and beautiful fabrics known to man, representing tens of thousands of labour hours and generations of artisan experience. Every colour, every blend, every pattern.

“We ship more than 250 cut length fabrics around the world each day,” says Enrico, “to customers like InStitchu and the Italian luxury tailoring houses. Here there is something for every occasion, every style and weather and need.”

Despite the immense scale of the operation, not a single fabric gets packaged up without at least three human quality checks. To become a quality checker, years of factory work and experience are required.

Running through hundreds and thousands of square metres of fabric each day, the quality team fix any problems by hand, check the visual properties of the cloth and run complex technical checks, ensuring it is up to scratch.

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