A name stitched from two families
Carl Albrecht founded a weaving mill under his own name in Grüningen, Switzerland, in 1918, with 48 looms. His son Karl took it over in 1927, by which point the mill had grown to 84 looms. In 1941 an entrepreneur named Robert Morgen joined the business, and the two surnames were combined into Albrecht & Morgen, later shortened to the name on the label today: Alumo. The company didn't narrow its focus to fine cotton shirting exclusively until the 1950s, when it began distributing under the line "the fine Swiss fabric." I like that this history is dated and public on the mill's own site rather than smoothed into a vague "since 1918" tagline the way some houses do it. Read the handover years yourself before you repeat them to a client.
Nought point three percent
Alumo sources its cotton, Supima from the United States and Sea Island from the Caribbean, and states plainly that only 0.3% of global cotton production meets what it calls the Alumo standard. That is not a rounding error dressed up as marketing copy. It is the reason a two-ply Alumo poplin costs more than a generic cotton off a trading list, and it is why I do not discount Alumo cloth to match a merchant's own-label shirting when a buyer asks for a better number. The math behind that figure is the mill's to defend, not mine, which is exactly why it sits on their own site for anyone to check rather than buried in a line sheet.
By the mill's own count, more than 800 tailors worldwide cut Alumo fabric, drawn from two exclusive collections a year across more than 50 product groups. That is a real distribution network, not a boutique-only operation, and it is worth knowing before you promise a client a pattern nobody else in his city can get; someone in another city is very likely working from the same book.
What the yarn count actually buys a client
Alumo's own range runs from a substantial Ne 80/2 up to an extra-fine Ne 240/2, sold under names rather than raw numbers: Superior at Ne 100/2, Supraluxe at Ne 120/2, the superfine Soyella at Ne 170/2, and Soyella Duecento at Ne 200/2, spun from extra-long-staple cotton. The range also runs to Twill Soprano at Ne 120/2 for a harder-wearing weave, Salvatore Triplo at an ultrafine Ne 160/3, and Cashmerello, a cotton woven with 15% cashmere for cooler weather. Each name maps to a specific yarn, not a marketing tier, so ask for the count, not just the name, when a client wants to know what he is paying for. A Ne 200/2 Soyella Duecento shirt is the most luxurious thing in the range to the touch, and it is also the first one to wear through at a collar fold if it lands on a client buying his first made-to-measure shirt and sending it wherever is cheapest to be pressed. I hold that count back for a client's third or fourth order, once he already owns something to compare it against and knows how the fabric wants to be cared for. The same logic applies across the other shirting mills on our list: Thomas Mason's two-fold range and Söktaş's Noblesse book both reward the same question, count and weave first, country of origin second.
The honest version of "Swiss made"
Here is where I have to be precise rather than romantic. Alumo's own history page records that production started at a partner weaving mill in Egypt in 2021, the same year Alumo became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Swiss finishing company Cilander. In 2023 Alumo moved its headquarters to Cilander's base in Herisau, in the Appenzell region that has woven cotton since the 18th century. Design, dyeing formulation and final inspection run out of Switzerland, and the fabric ships from there too. I would not promise a client that every metre is woven on a loom inside Switzerland, because Alumo's own published history does not make that claim either. If a buyer needs that specific promise in writing, ask the mill directly rather than assume it from the word "Swiss" on a swatch card.
Ordering Alumo through Centi Sartoria
We buy Alumo cloth as a customer, not as an authorised dealer, a licensee or a representative of the mill, and we won't describe ourselves as one. What we cut from it is made to measure to a client's own figure in our Shanghai atelier; read how made-to-measure differs from fully hand-worked tailoring if a client is asking you to explain the distinction. Before you commit to a full run in any count, check what we tell buyers to look for on a first sample; it applies to Swiss shirting as much as it does to suiting. One practical note: never trust the first search result for "alumo.com" and pass it to a client. That domain redirects to an unrelated Canadian company; the mill's real address is alumo.ch, the one on this page. The same trap catches buyers checking Caccioppoli on our list: its obvious domain belongs to someone else too, an unrelated site with no connection to the Naples merchant. The same test for verifying mill cloth applies to a shirting name as much as a suiting one. Alumo sits alongside the rest of our supplier list as special order only, nothing held in Shanghai, so contact us with the count and quantity in mind and we will quote the mill's lead time on top of our own.