Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli created one of the world’s most admired luxury brands.Supplied
For men of a certain age, especially those who have spent decades building something, thoughts inevitably turn to legacy.
At 72, Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli has little left to prove. He has created one of the world’s most admired luxury brands, restored the medieval Umbrian village of Solomeo to serve as his company’s headquarters and become an unlikely philosopher in modern business.
So when it came time to think about what he would leave behind, Cucinelli chose film. From dramatizations such as Coco Before Chanel (2009) to more intimate documentaries such as Sofia Coppola’s recent film on Marc Jacobs, fashion has a long history on screen. Brunello: The Gracious Visionary contains a bit of both, blending documentary with staged recreations from Cucinelli’s life. The designer turned to Giuseppe Tornatore, the Academy Award-winning director of Cinema Paradiso (1988), to helm the production, which had its star-studded world premiere last December at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. It debuts in Canada in select theatres on July 24.
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In the film, Cucinelli comes across more modest than the title would suggest, much as he does in real life: warm, thoughtful and prone to quoting philosophers as readily as discussing business. At its heart, the film seeks to explain a disappearing way of life.
“I wanted my children and grandchildren to see how we were living back then,” he said over Zoom through an interpreter.
Cucinelli trusted Tornatore completely, refusing to watch a single rough cut after two years of shooting and 14 months of editing. When the director finally asked for notes, Cucinelli said he handed back a blank page, calling the film “the masterpiece of my life.”
Throughout the movie, a current-day Cucinelli walks into earlier scenes from his life.Supplied
Throughout the movie, a current-day Cucinelli walks into earlier scenes from his life. He watches himself as a young boy on a farm in Italy’s Umbria region, where his 13 family members worked the land. “We were poor, but we had enough to eat,” he says in the film. He studies engineering at the university in nearby Perugia, meets his wife Federica and gets married. Along the way, he is inspired by cashmere and, in 1978, turns a $550 loan into a line of colourful women’s cashmere sweaters. At the time, the knitwear was typically found in neutral tones.
These scenes are interspersed with interviews featuring Frederica, Cucinelli’s daughters, Camilla and Carolina (both vice-presidents at the company), employees, and admirers such as Oprah Winfrey, Patrick Dempsey and former GQ editor Will Welch. Somewhat improbably, a local clergyman also appears to help narrate the story.
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The movie traces Cucinelli’s idea of “humanistic capitalism,” the belief that a business should treat people with dignity, pay them well and invest in the communities around it. In one recreated scene, his father returns home from his factory job after being humiliated by his employer – a moment Cucinelli has often cited as the catalyst for building a different kind of company.
It shaped his decision to donate 20 per cent of the company’s profits to charitable causes such as schools for traditional craftsmanship, clothing drives and food aid; as well as his decades-long restoration of Solomeo, including the building of a theatre, park and public library housing 150,000 books.
Cucinelli’s ideas have also been tested. During the early pandemic, he followed through on his pledge not to lay off a single employee or cut wages. Last year, the brand was alleged to have maintained a presence in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, though it has said it continued to operate in compliance with European Union sanctions.
The film traces Cucinelli’s idea of ‘humanistic capitalism.’Stefano Schirato/Supplied
Meanwhile, the luxury industry has faced a difficult stretch. Years of steep price increases have cooled demand, and a series of Italian investigations into subcontracted workshops has raised uncomfortable questions about the integrity of the “Made in Italy” label, with brands including Loro Piana, Dior and Giorgio Armani previously tied to exploitative sub-suppliers.
“I would say [the luxury industry] has lost some exclusivity,” Cucinelli said, holding up his Vacheron Constantin watch – one of the relative few the brand makes each year – as an example of the rarity consumers still crave. But after the surge in luxury spending in recent years, he argued, shoppers care as much about how products are made as the products themselves. “You would be far less willing to buy something if you knew it had been made by ruining something else,” he said.
His ideas have attracted an unlikely audience. In 2019, he invited Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman and other Silicon Valley leaders to Solomeo for a symposium on technology and humanistic enterprise.
Asked whether today’s billionaire class, many of whom are fans of the brand, could do more, Cucinelli declined to comment, instead explaining his own approach. He said he decided long ago to set aside profits for projects that benefited others. “My father used to ask me, ‘Do you want to be the richest man in the cemetery?’”
He might be; the brand is a €1.4-billion-a-year business with a market value of roughly €5.5-billion. Despite his success, the designer believes that we are merely stewards of what we create. “You see the tower I’m sitting in? It dates back to the 14th century. Who am I? Just someone passing through,” he said.
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The Gracious Visionary spends a lot of time reflecting on a slower way of life, from Cucinelli’s family swapping stories and singing while husking corn to the countless afternoons he spent playing cards and talking philosophy with friends in bars. This raises the question of what Cucinelli makes of one of today’s most disruptive, fast-moving forces: artificial intelligence.
“AI will never replace man,” he said. “Reason and creativity are two different things. Reason produces calculation. Creativity is born from human folly. They can collaborate. They can become partners. But they cannot become the same thing. AI doesn’t play jokes. I do.”
The Gracious Visionary occasionally drifts into hagiography, but it also makes a compelling case for Cucinelli’s worldview. He is the self-made son of farmers who spotted a hole in the cashmere market and now has more than 130 stores around the world.
Whether you buy into the mythology is up to you, but it’s difficult to fault Cucinelli for his optimism. For him, the movie is a way to pass on his values to younger generations. His message to parents is to let children find their own path. To young people, it’s to chase their dreams.
When Cucinelli first told his father that he wanted to make cashmere pullovers, “he said, ‘I don’t know what a pullover is. I don’t know what cashmere is. But may God help you.’”