Brunello Cucinelli: cashmere, colour and Solomeo

In 1978 Brunello Cucinelli began a small business devoted to coloured cashmere sweaters for women. Colour became his early design idea for the material. The first sweaters joined a fine material to a contemporary silhouette.^[1,2,3]

Cucinelli moved to Solomeo, his wife Federica’s village, in 1982. Three years later he bought its medieval castle and made it the company headquarters. As the business grew, production moved into a reused factory in the valley in 2000; the castle and village retained a cultural role in the company’s life.^[1,2,4]

The house continues to place cashmere at the centre of its material story. Cucinelli recalls taking six ecru women’s sweaters to a dyeing plant and asking for six restrained colours. That small trial explains why coloured knitwear, rather than cashmere alone, marks the label’s beginnings.^[1,3]