Brunello Cucinelli: A rare runway display from headquarters in Solomeo

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 25, 2021

Brunello Cuccinelli staged a rare runway show, albeit without leaving his headquarters in Umbria and featuring a score of stationary models.

 
For the first time, fashion’s philosopher billionaire Cucinelli was listed on the official catwalk scheduled for Milan Fashion Week. Previously, he confined himself to presentations inside his art liberté verrière courtyard showroom in the Italian fashion capital.
 
This season, however, Brunello upped the ante, and presented a fully-fledged video shot inside Solomeo, the mid-14th century village he has lovingly restored into the philanthropic centre of his fashion empire.

This charming location inside his native region of Umbria, an ideal setting for Brunello’s soft power fashion, in a video which opened with a shot of the town’s campanile at sunset above a misty valley. The camera wandering through the brick lanes and paths of Solomeo and floating over ploughed fields, before  hovering before a post-modern exterior proscenium.  Carved into the marble, the phrase: Tributo all'Umanita dell’Uomo; or Tribute to Mankind’s Humanity.
 
Finally finding his cast, attired in the soft-hued cashmere that is the Cucinelli signature.

 
All 15 models wearing surgical masks even as they posed in a looming glasshouse with views of distant poker pines.
 
Newspaper-boy pleated pants into which were tucked ribbed turtle-necks; intarsia-style woven cardigans in the palest of gray;  soft-shouldered coats with curvy lapels; corduroy sweat-pant style trousers; micro-ribbed cashmere down coats.
 
A study in contemporary knitwear – from the chenille tanks; llama-style coats; shaggy vests; lightly glittering waistcoats – all interchangeable in the Cucinelli manner.
 
A contemplative moment at the half-way stage of the four-city and four-week women’s ready-to-wear fashion season, underlined by the perfect choice of music – the instantly nostalgic Separation by Spanish composer Adrian Berenguer.