Brunello Cucinelli Hosts Celeb-Studded NY Premiere for His Biopic
Brunello Cucinelli in Brunello: The Gracious Visionary
Courtesy of Stefano Schirato
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We all have dreams of revisiting our childhood, but how many of us have the chance to reconstruct it with the help of an Oscar-winning director? That’s precisely what Brunello Cucinelli, the 72-year-old son of Italian sharecroppers who went on build a multi-billion-dollar global luxury fashion empire, has done with the biopic-doc hybrid Brunello Cuccinnelli: A Gracious Visionary, written and directed by Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore.
Earlier this week, Cucinelli hosted a gala screening of the film (to be released in theaters this summer) at the opulent David H Koch theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. Before the film began, Cucinelli stood on stage and addressed a black-tie audience packed with media titans celebrity admirers, many of whom were wearing his clothes, the couture equivalent of wearing a rock band’s tee-shirt to the concert. Among the crowd were Oscar Isaac, Naomi Watts, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson (who reunited with his Dawson’s Creek costar Katie Holmes), Grace Gummer, Martha Stewart, Ryan Seacrest, Grace Gummer, Allison Williams, Jay Ellis, Darren Star, Shonda Rhimes, Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch, and Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci.
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Brunello Cucinelli at Tuesday night’s screening.
Joe Schildhorn/BFA.com
“I wanted a poet to tell my story,” Cucinelli said of Tornatore. “Because poets are the greatest men on Earth.”
The lofty sentiment was classic Cucinelli, a fashion mogul who would prefer to talk about anything but fashion. In his telling, the raw materials at the heart of the Cucinelli brand are not merely fine fabrics but art, literature, and philosophy. It would be easier to dismiss such high-mindedness if he didn’t live it so fully.
The heart of the Cucinelli operation is the rustic Umbrian village of Solomeo, where his wife, Federica, grew up. After building his fortune, Cucinelli acquired and restored much of the village and surrounding land and transformed it into a manifestation of his worldview, a made-in-Italy fantasy steeped in high culture, la dolce vita and la grande Bellezza. He razed run-down factories and replaced them with vineyards and olive groves (which supplied, respectively, the wine and olive oil on the tables at the reception that followed Tuesday’s screening). He built a theater and a “universal library” à la Borges, and surrounded himself with marble busts of people — mostly men — who have inspired him, including Socrates, Hadrian, and Barack Obama.
Even as he earned his billions, Cucinelli has continued to honor his humble rural past, never more evocatively than with this film. Unlike Citizen Kane, he managed to hold on to his Rosebud. Five years ago, he bought the hilltop farmhouse he grew up in, where he and his family worked the land. The farm serves as the picturesque setting for the film’s semi-scripted early scenes, reminiscent of the Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, and shot with a similarly nostalgic eye.
In a conversation the following morning at Casa Cucinelli, his New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue, Cucinelli was especially animated, shaking my shoulder, bolting up from the couch and pacing the room as he talked about movies, history, religion, artificial intelligence — anything but fashion.
You grew up in central Italy, in a deeply rural setting. The first time you saw the ocean was when you were 14 years old. When was the first time you saw a movie?
I was 12, in the parish youth center. It was Ben Hur, with Charlton Heston. When the chariots in the Roman Coliseum charged toward the camera, we flinched as though to get out of the way. For many people, this was their first time seeing moving images. We had no television at home.
How did this collaboration with Giuseppe Tornatore begin?
Giuseppe and I are more or less the same age. My favorite movie is Cinema Paradiso, because I lived the same kind of life. So when I thought I wanted to do something for my grandchildren, those who will come after me. I wanted to leave a small monument. You have the theater, the winery, these are monuments, hallmarks. But I wanted a poet to create it. He filmed me for 60 hours. It’s truly Giuseppe’s masterpiece.
What was behind the idea to combine scripted storytelling with a tradi