Boom Times at Brunello Cucinelli’s Luxury Menswear Mecca

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On Sunday night on the Umbrian hilltop that Brunello Cucinelli calls house, the menswear mogul hosted a seventieth birthday celebration of epic proportions. It was a milestone second in additional methods than one: his model lately introduced its finest gross sales figures in its 40 years, with revenues set to hit the $1 billion mark in 2023. So there was way more than cake in retailer for the some 500 buddies, purchasers, and celebs who have been invited to Solomeo, the medieval hamlet that Cucinelli has spent many years restoring with a benevolent, well-manicured hand. Like a style present. A prolonged philosophical speech. A mountain of meals and barrels of wine. And an opportunity to see Solomeo, the city that’s achieved a mythic standing within the menswear world. Cucinelli calls it the “Hamlet of Cashmere and Concord.”

One visitor of honor, Martha Stewart, was virtually shocked by the cashmere kingpin’s beige-hued world. “It’s very inspiring, and it really makes me surprise: what have we been doing with our lives, actually?” she instructed me. “I imply, I do know I’ve executed rather a lot, however he is executed extra.”

Stewart, swaddled in a glittery caftan, was sitting with Cucinelli at a big dinner desk festooned with wildflowers and plates of completely marbled prosciutto. I may sense that the girl who is aware of a factor or two about good style and hospitality wasn’t actually joking. We have been about to have a meal catered by Da Vittorio, a restaurant exterior Bergamo that serves rustic Italian delicacies and has three Michelin stars. Beneath a hovering tent, each single visitor—critically—had adhered to a strict costume code of rustic tones. “Shades of white, panama, gentle gray, and beige” learn the invite. (Panama is the colour of the hat, mainly—I needed to ask.) From afar, it regarded a bit like a gathering of the world’s most rich- and relaxed-looking cult.

Solomeo, the place Cucinelli’s spouse was born and raised, is virtually engineered to make you think about life’s huge questions. It’s not simply the large bust of Emperor Hadrian that guards the city’s amphitheater, or the quotes by Socrates and Papa Francesco that adorn partitions across the city. For a lot of menswear fans, the city (pop: round 400) is a Mecca of quiet luxurious, the seat of Cucinelli’s cashmere empire and the supply of his artistic drive. It is usually the place his ethos of humanistic capitalism has taken root; nearly each resident of the city works for Brunello Cucinelli, the place they’re paid strong wages, inspired to learn nice books, and sustained with three-course lunches and chill work hours.

Actual Cucinelli heads will let you know that there’s extra to the model’s flaxen blazers and plush sweaters than the beautiful materials and extremely thought of design particulars. A sure soulfulness. A secret sauce that units them aside from the opposite stealth wealth manufacturers. Earlier, when the village was bathed in golden gentle, I toured the city’s renovated Thirteenth-century church and gazed from completely manicured piazzas at Cucinelli’s vineyards within the valley beneath. Hardly a leaf on an olive tree was misplaced. “It doesn’t seem like this to your profit,” famous a Cucinelli worker as we walked by a cat lounging in a sunbeam beneath a lemon tree. “It’s at all times like this.”