By Oliver Charles Harry - Creative Director of Ghini Como, a Como silk scarf brand based in Argegno, Italy
Quick facts: the Como silk industry in 2026
- The Province of Como produces approximately 80% of Europe's silk and 95% of Italy's silk, employing more than 20,000 workers across nearly 1,000 companies.
- The district delivered 12% value growth between 2021 and 2023, with 2-3% annual gains continuing into 2025 and 2026, supported by European luxury groups actively nearshoring production away from Asian supply chains.
- Investment in digital finishing equipment across the Como district is forecast at €45-50 million during 2025-2026, representing the most significant capital upgrade to the district's infrastructure in a generation.
- 38% of Como's technical textile workforce is currently aged 55 or older, with master finishers and loom technicians retiring at approximately 12% annually - a demographic pressure with no straightforward solution.
- The EU Industrial Emissions Directive 2024/1785 requires textile finishing facilities to achieve Best Available Techniques compliance by 2027, with closed-loop water system installation estimated to cost the district €85-120 million in total.
- 85% of Como's major exporters have achieved or are actively pursuing OEKO-TEX Standard 100 or GOTS certification, driven by supplier requirements from LVMH, Kering and Hermès.
The Como silk industry in 2026: what is happening to Italy's most famous textile
The commercial position of Como's silk district in 2026 is, on the surface, incredibly strong.
The district is growing, its clients are the most powerful fashion houses in the world, and the structural shift toward nearshoring (European luxury groups deliberately moving production back toward Italy from Asian supply chains) is bringing new volume to mills that are already operating at capacity.
Beneath that headline picture, however, the industry is navigating a set of structural pressures that will determine its character for the next twenty years: an ageing workforce that is retiring faster than it can be replaced, a capital investment cycle that is transforming the skills the district needs, and a regulatory environment that is demanding expensive infrastructure upgrades across an industry dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises.
Understanding what is happening to Como silk in 2026 requires holding both of these pictures simultaneously - the commercial success and the structural strain - because neither is accurate without the other.
The commercial position: nearshoring and growing demand
Como's silk district value grew by 12% between 2021 and 2023, a trajectory that continued at 2–3% annually through 2025 and into 2026, consistent with McKinsey's projections for the luxury fashion segment.
The primary driver of this sustained growth is not simply demand for silk as a material - it is the active decision by European luxury groups to bring high-value textile production geographically closer to their design studios and retail markets, partly in response to the supply chain disruptions that became visible during 2020–2022, and partly in response to the growing consumer expectation for provenance transparency and traceable production.
For Como, this nearshoring trend is structurally beneficial.
The district's reputation for printing precision, design collaboration, and small-run production flexibility is precisely what luxury brands require when they move production toward Europe - and no other European textile district offers the same concentration of silk-specific expertise.
The result is that Como's mills are securing new long-term supply agreements with European luxury groups at the same time as their existing client relationships with Hermès, Chanel, Prada, and Armani continue to generate consistent volume.
The global silk market as a whole is valued at approximately USD 23 billion in 2026, with Europe posting some of the fastest regional growth at a projected CAGR of 7.19% through 2031.
Within that growth, the luxury segment's emphasis on natural fibres, sustainable production, and provenance verification gives Como a structural advantage over lower-cost producers whose primary competitive tool is price.
The workforce crisis: a generation retiring faster than it can be replaced
The most serious structural challenge facing the Como silk industry in 2026 is demographic.
Approximately 38% of the district's technical textile workforce is currently aged 55 or older, and master finishers and loom technicians are retiring at a rate of around 12% annually.
The apprenticeship pipeline managed through the Como campus of the ITS TAM textile technology programme processes 120 to 150 students per year - a figure that has not kept pace with the volume of retirements, and enrolment in these programmes declined a further 15% between 2020 and 2024.
The practical consequence is that the most difficult roles to fill (the ones requiring accumulated technical knowledge that cannot be transferred from a manual to a training document) are now remaining vacant for extended periods.
Demand for CAD/CAM specialists proficient in the software platforms used for digital textile design currently exceeds supply by approximately three to one.
Senior digital pattern designer roles take an average of 4.5 to 6 months to fill, nearly double the equivalent timeline from a decade ago.
Major printing houses are reporting that digital textile technician roles can remain open for 8 to 12 months, with 40% of searches failing entirely and requiring interim contractors at a 35-45% cost premium.
This is the central paradox of Como's textile economy in 2026: the district is commercially successful enough to attract significant new investment and new client relationships, but is doing so with a workforce that is becoming simultaneously smaller and more specialised, in roles that are harder to fill than the ones that preceded them.
The digital transition: €45-50 million invested, but where are the people?
The investment in digital finishing equipment across the Como district is forecast at €45-50 million during 2025-2026.
This capital commitment reflects the industry's recognition that digital printing and finishing technologies, which offer superior colour precision, design flexibility, and shorter lead times for small runs, are the direction in which luxury textile production is moving, and that a district which fails to upgrade its infrastructure will eventually lose clients to competitors who have.
The investment has not, however, reduced the workforce requirement. It has changed it.
The category of worker required for digital finishing is categorically different from the category required for traditional screen printing: the former needs software proficiency, data interpretation skills, and an understanding of colour management in digital systems; the latter needed physical craft knowledge accumulated over years of working with inks, screens, and fabric.
Capital has moved faster than human capital has been able to follow, and the district is enduring the painful consequences of that gap.
Sustainability and regulatory pressure: the costs of compliance
The EU Industrial Emissions Directive 2024/1785 requires textile finishing facilities to achieve Best Available Techniques compliance by 2027.
For Como's dyeing and finishing operations, compliance primarily means the installation of closed-loop water treatment systems - the same water that gives Como-dyed silk its characteristic depth of colour must now be managed within a closed system that prevents any discharge into the lake and alpine stream network.
The district-wide cost of this infrastructure upgrade is estimated at €85-120 million, an enormous capital requirement for an industry in which 70% of companies are small and medium-sized enterprises with limited access to long-term debt.
85% of Como's major exporters have already achieved or are pursuing OEKO-TEX Standard 100 or GOTS certification, driven by the supplier requirements of LVMH, Kering, and Hermès, all of which have made sustainability certification a condition of supply contracts rather than an optional credential.
The cost of certification and the cost of compliance are separate burdens, and for smaller Como mills, both are arriving simultaneously.
The Italian industrial electricity costs of €0.28-0.32 per kilowatt hour - 40–50% above comparable French rates and 60% above Portuguese textile regions - add a structural cost disadvantage to the energy-intensive dyeing and finishing processes that define the district's output.
This cost gap is partially offset by the premium that Como's quality commands in the market, but it creates ongoing pressure on margins that smaller operators manage with difficulty.
What this means in 2026
Como's silk industry enters 2026 commercially stronger than at any point since the post-war era of Italian luxury, and simultaneously facing the most serious structural challenges in its modern history.
The district is growing because what it produces cannot be replicated elsewhere at the same standard. It is under pressure because producing it depends on people and infrastructure that are both becoming more expensive and harder to sustain.
For anyone buying a Como silk scarf in 2026, and for anyone considering what that purchase represents, the salient fact is this: the artisan knowledge concentrated in this district is finite and increasingly difficult to replace. The scarcity that gives Como silk its value is not manufactured for marketing purposes. It is demographic, regulatory, and entirely real.
I co-founded Ghini Como with my mother in part to celebrate Como's rich silk history, but also to safeguard that legacy for the future. By continuing to work alongside historic silk mills in Como and ensure the zero-mile status of each scarf, we hope to contribute - however modestly - to the continuation of Lake Como's incredible textile heritage.
Oliver Harry is the founder and creative director of Ghini Como, a luxury silk scarf brand that creates entirely zero-mile Como silk scarves. He lives in Argegno on the western shore of Lake Como.
