Exorbitant suits - dressed in the finest fashion

It was a throwaway joke, an off-the-cuff remark, that happened to be true.

Looking at Brioni's breathtakingly priced bespoke tailored suit, which can cost up to HK$780,000, a guest mumbled at its Hong Kong unveiling: 'What's in it? Spun gold?'

Indeed, spun gold it is. And also silver. And wool. But ah, what wool.

The fabric for Brioni's exclusive Vanquish II suit, made by Dormeuil, consists of the softest, finest fibres in the world, brought back from three of the globe's farthest corners: vicuna, from a llama-like animal living in the high Alpine areas of the Andes; pashmina, from the pashmina goat, bred by nomadic herdsmen 'on the rooftop of the world', the Chantang plateau in the Ladakh region of northern India; and qiviuk, or qiviut, the underwool of the muskox, which looks like a hairy bison and lives way up in the North American Arctic.

The composition of the material makes it the dearest of its kind in the world: 30 per cent vicuna wool, 10 per cent qiviuk (considerably stronger and eight times warmer by weight than most sheep's wool), and the rest pashmina. The pinstripes in the fabric are made from white gold or silver thread. Since the line was launched three years ago, not many more than a hundred Vanquish II suits have ever been made.