Why does the ‘King of Cashmere’ sell so many plastic clothes?
Six questions for the ‘gloriously potty’ Italian billionaire fashion company founder Brunello Cucinelli and the press who cover him
Imagine for a minute a British or American billionaire chief executive made a two-hour long film about himself with the title “Businessman X: The Compassionate Titan”.
A documentary biopic, ponderously shot with slow mo and soft hues by a renowned film director known for his heartfelt saccharine stories, it tells the story of how the billionaire saved the life of a sex worker, how he considers himself more of a “philosopher” than a businessman, and, preposterously, borrows a plot device from a 1950s Ingmar Bergman film.
Imagine further that President Trump or Prime Minister Keir Starmer came to the premiere of the film wearing the billionaire’s product, where no independent critics were invited, and the journalists in attendance were plied with champagne on the company’s dime, and who then wrote glowing stories about said billionaire.
Imagine further still that the billionaire, whose company turned over more than $1 billion last year, managed to get taxpayers to pay for a chunk of the film’s production costs while the government in question cuts back on subsidies for film productions where the money is legitimately needed.
You’d hope that the potential press reaction in the UK to that kind of a thing would prevent a billionaire founder from thinking of doing any of that.
And yet, that is more or less what has just happened in Italy.
The billionaire is Brunello Cucinelli, whose eponymous company makes expensive woolly jumpers, and the film is Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, dir. Giuseppe Tornatore of Oscar-winning Cinema Paradiso fame. This expensive, partially taxpayer-funded puff piece and the largely uncritical reaction to it made me want to look a bit further into this “gloriously potty” man, as one journalist who’s interviewed him described him, and his company. You only need to take a two minute-long look at the website (SEO strapline: “Philosophy, Online Boutique & Investor”) which features quotes from Kant, philosophical tracts on AI and photos of Brunello at the UN, to understand why.
Here Dark Luxury asks six questions of Brunello Cucinelli and his company, and the people who cover him.
Why is the fashion press so uncritical of this company and man?
How did the company get the Italian taxpayer to pay for part of a glorified advert?
Why does Brunello Cucinelli still have a boutique in Moscow’s Red Square?
Why does the “King of Cashmere” sell so many plastic clothes?
Why are unions banned at Brunello Cucinelli?
Is Brunello Cucinelli really that gracious?
