Brunello Cucinelli was the only member of his family left in their hometown of Solomeo, Italy, on Wednesday. Everyone else was in New York for the company’s duo of big events: the opening of the Casa Cucinelli private shopping space and the unveiling of the expanded and renovated Madison Avenue flagship.
But that didn’t stop the designer from still being the center of attention at a luncheon the company hosted at the new Casa Cucinelli space on Fifth Avenue and 54th Street. Cucinelli sent his thanks remotely from Italy and offered his best wishes for a healthy and happy holiday season.
Cucinelli said the holidays would always hold a special place for him. He recalled his childhood when his family of farmers would take stock of their land and crop and his grandfather would stand up and say they needed to thank God and creation for everything they had. Whether business was good or bad was not important to him. What really mattered was looking at life through the “human standpoint,” he said.
In 1963, the year his grandfather died, a hail storm destroyed the family’s entire annual harvest and the family was only able to survive when a neighbor gave them crops to grow in the future. Even in that dark hour, he said, the family knew the following year things would get better.
Cucinelli drew the same parallel to today and encouraged the attendees to “take stock of the human condition” as the year comes to a close. “I believe this is the restart of a special century,” he said. “And this is going to be a golden century. I think we are exiting the pandemic and we will come out better. But we need a new social contract with creation. Let’s try and be better.”