Brunello Cucinelli was born to a family of modest means on September 3, 1953, in Castel Rigone (Perugia).
In 1972, he earned a diploma as a land surveyor in Perugia. He studied at the School of Engineering of Perugia University from 1972 to 1974.

At 25 years old, he realized that dyed cashmere could be a great innovation (until then, cashmere only came in neutral, basic shades). He started his business, without financial means, in a small 40 sq. m. workshop. After his second year of business, he hired his first employee. Brunello Cucinelli's first export markets were Germany and the United States, which were considered financially solid countries.

In 1985 Brunello Cucinelli bought the dilapidated 14th century castle of Solomeo, a small abandoned village on the outskirts of Perugia where his fiancée Federica Benda lived, as the future headquarters of his small cashmere business. The restoration project began that same year. He moved his company headquarters to Solomeo in 1987. Today the company has two locations: the first, in the ancient village that has returned to its ancient splendor after years of meticulous, patient restoration, is composed of 8 homes, a castle, a church, and a villa. The second, outside the small village, is a new industrial plant with a park and fruit orchard. Brunello Cucinelli's lifelong dream has been to work in a splendid location to make people's work more "humane" and "dignified" and to simultaneously "safeguard" the artistic and cultural heritage of the world.

The group opened boutiques in New York, Moscow, Paris, Capri, Porto Cervo, Saint-Tropez, Buenos Aires, Palma de Mallorca, Osaka, Sylt, Hong Kong, Milano Marittima, and Cannes and in many shop-in-shops in the world's finest department stores.

The company produces Italian-made luxury goods: its flagship brand, Brunello Cucinelli, and the Rivamonti and Gunex lines. The company has almost 500 in-house employees and approximately 900 outside contractors.

Its 2008 turnover amounts to 144 million euros. It produces a total of 870,000 garments in Italy each year.
The company exports 63% of its exclusively Italian-made production. Brunello Cucinelli works with over 1,000 luxury MULTIBRAND clients. Its main exportmarkets arethe United States, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the Far East.

"The history"

About twentyfive years ago, at the start of his career, Brunello Cucinelli chose Solomeo as the location that was eventually to become the headquarters of his humanistic business enterprises. It is here, in this medieval village near Assisi, where the wind still gently carries the spirituality that inspired the "Ora et Labora" of St Benedetto of Norcia and the mysticism of St. Francis, that a new concept of work and the desire to live in joyful harmony with nature are developing. This different way of conceiving a business enterprise is at the same time both modern and old, and in it Brunello Cucinelli has identified a model that will be employed in the future. For this reason he has dedicated himself fully to the task of carefully restoring the ancient village of Solomeo. It has 400 inhabitants and consists of a small medieval cluster of houses which were built at the end of the fourteenth century. There is a castle, which is where the company is based, a church, a village square and the old village farm, recently restored and transformed into a comfortable villa where cultural events are held and where the company cafeteria is situated. The village represents the meeting place where one can rediscover the importance and value of one's individuality and the joy of living and working together with others. At Solomeo the creativity of each individual employed in the workshops is part of the common good, and there is no room for things such as clocking on, certificates, trade unions. It is here that Brunello Cucinelli, with great skill, develops the relationship between colours and cashmere. The cashmere is then exported all over the world where it takes its place alongside the more traditional products made in this elegant material. These craft workshops, like ancient medieval builders' workshops, do not have proprietors, only workers with different roles and responsibilities. True creative workshops, they are the vital force that produces the ideas which, renewed each year, are then exported all over the world.

Stanley Korshak is proud to feature Brunello Cucinelli.

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