Drago was founded in 1973 in Lessona, a small town in the Biella wool district of Piedmont, by Umberto and Laura Drago. Their children Paolo and Daniela took the mill over roughly twenty years later and pushed it toward the ultra-fine end of the market it is now known for. Drago is a mill in the strict sense, which not every name on our supplier list is: it spins, weaves and finishes cloth on its own site rather than buying finished fabric and reselling it under its own name.
One site, start to finish
Spinning, weaving and finishing all happen at Lessona, with a separate styling office at nearby Verrone handling pattern and colour development. That matters to a buyer for a specific reason: one company is responsible for the whole process, not a spinner in one town and a weaver in another with a merchant's name stitched into the selvedge afterward. If a claim about a bolt of this cloth turns out to be wrong, there is exactly one address to call. I check that before I recommend any mill to a partner shop, because a supply chain with two or three unnamed subcontractors in it is a supply chain nobody outside the mill can actually verify. Our note on verifying that mill cloth is real covers what that check looks like in practice.
Super 130s to Super 210s, and where I get off
Drago's own raw materials page lists a fineness range from Super 130s up to Super 210s, drawing on Australian and New Zealand wool with Mongolian cashmere at the top end. The number describes fibre diameter, not durability, and the two move in opposite directions past roughly 150s. A Super 200s or 210s cloth is extraordinary against the skin, and it will not survive a five-day work rotation the way a Super 130s will. I never spec anything above the 160s range for a garment a client describes as his everyday suit. I keep the top of Drago's range for odd jackets and occasion pieces worn a dozen times a year, not fifty.
A smaller mill than the name suggests
Drago produces around 1.7 million metres of cloth a year, by its own account. That is a real figure and a modest one next to the biggest Biella names, some of which run several times that volume. A smaller mill means smaller print runs of each pattern and less finished cloth sitting in warehouses waiting on a random order, which is exactly why we do not hold Drago cloth in Shanghai either. It also means a popular bunch can genuinely sell out mid-season in a way it would not at a mill ten times the size. If a client is set on a specific Drago pattern, I would not sit on the order to think it over.
Piacenza, working the noble fibre end of the same valley since 1733, and Reda, founded in Valle Mosso in 1865, are two of the other Biella names on our list, each with its own specialty rather than competing head to head with Drago's fine worsted range.
What to specify it with
Fine, tightly spun worsted like this holds a crease and takes a hard press well, which suits a two-piece structured suit more than a soft, unlined jacket. Half canvas is the safer default under roughly Super 160s. Above that, treat the cloth the way you would treat any superfine wool: a lighter internal structure, so the canvas is not fighting a fabric that wants to move rather than sit still. Our canvas construction guide walks through how we weigh canvas against cloth weight before a first sample goes out, and what to check on that first sample once it lands is worth reading before you reorder.
Ordering it under your own label
We do not carry Drago cloth in stock. If you want it, we order against the bunch and length you confirm, and Drago's own production and shipping time from Lessona is added on top of our usual 14 to 20 working day build, from the same one-piece minimum as everything else we cut. We are a customer of the mill, not a distributor or a licensee of it, and the fastest way to check any of this yourself is against Drago's own site, not ours. For the rest of the mills and merchants we work with on the same terms, the supplier directory lists what each one is and is not, and you can always get in touch to check availability on a specific pattern before quoting a client.