{"id":199536,"date":"2026-04-16T16:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199536\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T16:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T16:31:10","slug":"brunello-cucinelli-hosts-celeb-studded-ny-premiere-for-his-biopic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199536\/","title":{"rendered":"Brunello Cucinelli Hosts Celeb-Studded NY Premiere for His Biopic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWe 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\u2019s precisely what Brunello Cucinelli<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier 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\u2019s 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\u2019s tee-shirt to the concert. Among the crowd were Oscar Isaac, Naomi Watts, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson (who reunited with his Dawson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBrunello Cucinelli at Tuesday night\u2019s screening.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJoe Schildhorn\/BFA.com<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted a poet to tell my story,\u201d Cucinelli said of Tornatore. \u201cBecause poets are the greatest men on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019t live it so fully.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 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\u2019s screening). He built a theater and a \u201cuniversal library\u201d \u00e0 la Borges, and surrounded himself with marble busts of people \u2014 mostly men \u2014 who have inspired him, including Socrates, Hadrian, and Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven 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\u2019s semi-scripted early scenes, reminiscent of the Tornatore\u2019s Cinema Paradiso, and shot with a similarly nostalgic eye.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 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 \u2014 anything but fashion.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou 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?<\/p>\n

\n\tI 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.<\/p>\n

How did this collaboration with Giuseppe Tornatore begin?<\/p>\n

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\u2019s truly Giuseppe\u2019s masterpiece.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was behind the idea to combine scripted storytelling with a traditional documentary?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was Giuseppe\u2019s idea. He had this idea that I would be part of the reconstructed scenes, but he did not say anything beforehand. So on the first day he tells me, come up to the house in the country tomorrow morning \u2014 it\u2019s the house where I grew up, which is mine now, I bought it five years ago. Nothing changed in all those decades. Nothing. The bedroom stayed the same.<\/p>\n

\n\tI showed up, and there were the oxen plowing the land. There was the actor who was playing my dad, the boy playing me, there I was, in the middle of that scene. But I didn\u2019t know Giuseppe was filming. I entered the kitchen \u2014 my kitchen \u2014 all the actors at the table were eating, they were calling each other by their characters\u2019 names, which were the family members I grew up with: There was Giovannino, Umberto, my uncle, my grandpa\u2026 I can\u2019t even tell you how overwhelming it was.<\/p>\n

Steven Spielberg described a similar emotion in making his autobiographical film The Fabelmans, when he reconstructed his childhood home. Very few of us are given the chance to travel to our past like that.<\/p>\n

I spent two beautiful years going into the research and talking about myself. And I was involved in the casting, too. Then Giuseppe spent one year on the edit. He kept asking me, \u201cWould you like to take a look at some footage?\u201d And I said, \u201cNo, nothing, I don\u2019t want to see anything.\u201d\u00a0 It was a risk, because I had done 60 hours of filming. A month before the premiere in December<\/a>, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s done, let\u2019s take a look at it.\u201d He said, \u201cyou have to look at it with grace.\u201d I couldn\u2019t sleep the night before. He handed me a note pad and said, \u201cJust jot down what you want to change.\u201d At the end of the movie I returned the note pad. It was blank. I said, \u201cDon\u2019t change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the film, you talk about your product without ever talking about the product.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot even in life do I talk about the product.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo how does the poetry \u2014 all these lofty ideas you espouse \u2014 make its way into the clothing?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt takes the human touch. Jean-Jacques Rousseau always says that you are creative when everything around you is in balance with Creation. And if I treat you with respect, that respect spawns a sense of responsibility, and in turn that responsibility spawns creativity. We have never allowed employees to work from home because they would miss out on collective creativity, shared creativity. And if you think about it, today, all remote work runs the risk of being replaced by A.I. That\u2019s why I say, do not ever allow people to work from home, because perhaps you will receive a letter one day that your services are no longer needed.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs A.I. something you\u2019re actively resisting?<\/p>\n

No not at all. We\u2019ve just launched a new website that is A.I.\u2013generated<\/a>, which various Silicon Valley titans, Reid Hoffman, Marc Benioff, have said was very highly creative. So I\u2019m not scared of A.I. at all. Because when you think about A.I., it is something rational, scientific. Reason. Zero, one, zero, one. But what it is missing is this touch of folly. Madness. Inside us, with have both Appollo and Dionysus. We have Voltaire and Rousseau. So I\u2019m not scared at all.<\/p>\n

I was surprised to see Reid Hoffman interviewed in the film. How did that relationship start?<\/p>\n

I started having discussions with him in 2015. I went to Silicon Valley, I met with Benioff; Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram; Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs\u2019 widow \u2026 We had a dinner party together. And they asked me to speak about humanism. And I said you and your wives have your mobile phones, and nobody is laughing, talking. So there must be a problem. And that\u2019s when the relationship kicked off. So every couple of years in Solomeo we have a gathering with all these geniuses. And I ask, which of you will be able to insert the human touch into technology? Which of you will be the Leonardo DaVincis of our era?<\/p>\n

\n\tYet the Silicon Valley ethos of \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d seems to be in contradiction with what the Brunello Cucinelli brand is about, the idea that quality requires slowness, patience, deliberation.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, but it needs to be combined with innovation. You shouldn\u2019t be fast, but you need to be quick. In Italian, these are different concepts. You need to be contemporary, in step with the times.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter this first foray in cinema, do you have any desire make more movies?<\/p>\n

\n\tNo, no, no. I told Giuseppe Tornatore, if you were to think of a love story \u2014 but truly a love story \u2014 one of those movies like Out of Africa or Love Story, one of those movies that make you wipe tears away, I would support you. Because I think movies are so harsh these days, and we are all longing for something like that. But I don\u2019t want to make any more movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We all have dreams of revisiting our childhood, but how many of us have the chance to reconstruct…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[79318,79319,9,11,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-199536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-brunello-cucinelli","9":"tag-giuseppe-tornatore","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}