PHILOSOPHER KING
Brunello Cucinelli runs a half-billion-dollar luxury biz, yet he lives a simple life. JACQUELYN FRANCIS jets to Italy to meet the designer.
WHEN I GET TO ROME, I AM MET AT THE AIRPORT BY
the first of many drivers. This one speaks some English but doesn’t look like a driver. There is no chauffeur’s cap; he’s quite casual; and, after he folds up a sign with my name on it, he takes my bag and leads me to a station wagon. The early morning transfer has knocked me out, but the two-hour drive from Rome into the region of Umbria is rejuvenating. Lush green hills backlit by blue skies roll from one to the next; gleaming terracotta-hued villages perched on hilltops drift in and out of view. Just one perk of being invited to the 14thcentury hamlet of Solomeo to meet Brunello Cucinelli.
At the hotel I realize why this is called Italy’s “green heart.” The air is almost tropical, and when I take lunch at a picturesque restaurant housed in a 17th-century villa, the leaves for my salad are torn from boxed planters close to my table. That night a different driver shuttles me to the city centre of nearby Perugia, and he motions to an ancient (literally) archway and tells me that Brunello Cucinelli financed its restoration. Brunello Cucinelli—brand and man—looms large over this rustic landscape. Design and marketing teams, seamstresses, tailors—there are 1,000 people working here in the countryside. Offices and stores around the world employ another 400 people, including a 2,700-square-foot location that opens this month at Vancouver’s 745 Thurlow office tower.
“We have our headquarters in a small village because the idea was for employees to work in different conditions,” says Cucinelli when we meet in a large boardroom at the company’s 270,000-square-foot facility at the foot of Solomeo. The offices are airy and windowed and the staff noticeably chic. Table lamps with cable-knit sweater shades and matching wax candles are a sophisticated nod to the brand’s cozy heritage. It’s a 30°C early summer day yet everyone looks cool in their light-coloured attire ripped straight out of the brand’s winter lookbook. When all these divine individuals move en masse to the workplace cafeteria for a company-supplied three-course meal, the space feels a little like an ashram.
Sixty-three-year-old Cucinelli embodies his company’s sporty chic aesthetic. His hairdo is shaggy and he wears sneakers with a tie and a blazer. He smiles constantly, listens intently and speaks quickly in Italian (aided throughout by an even quicker translator) about a range of complicated topics—but rarely fashion, which is somewhat refreshing. “In the 1950s and 1960s, people and farmers, like my father, abandoned the land and agriculture to move to the city to »