[00:00:00] Sean: Brunello, I’m so excited to talk with you today, but I would love to start with the early days. What do you remember most about growing up?

[00:00:25] Brunello: First of all, I would like to apologize because my knowledge of English is not enough to speak with my soul, so I use an interpreter.

Early Years 

Brunello, second from the left, with his brothers and a cousin, at home in the countryside in Castel Rigone

The first part of my life, I spent in the countryside. We had no lights, and no electricity at home. We were farmers and we would work the land with animals. I enjoyed a very special relationship with the ground, with the animals, and with creation in the world. And since we had no electricity at home, we would follow the sun along its path until sunset. The stars and the sky were a great source of inspiration.

It was a very important time in my life. And I say it even now as a grownup because there were 13 members of my family living together, and there was such a high degree of spirituality, humanity, dignity, and respect for everything that surrounded us. And my task when working the land was to pull the oxen, and since my dad was stronger than me he was to hold the plow. And, oh, by the way, did you hear the bells ringing and tolling? We are in a hamlet of the 14th Century, and every day we hear the bells ringing, it relieves the hardship of life for us.

And so when I was pulling the oxen, I had to make sure that they would walk straight and follow the furrows. And I would ask my dad, why do you want our furrows to be so straight? And he would say because they look better that way. That’s when I started to understand the pleasure of beauty. And then when we were harvesting our wheat, we would make about 150 bags of wheat. The first part that we harvested would always be gifted to the community because that’s what my grandfather wanted. So I started grasping the first glimpses of this balance between profits and giving back, which is a very contemporary and topical theme.

Two families lived close together, 13 of us and then 14 members of the other family, and we would always help each other out. It was a great human relationship that we enjoyed. We were not poor because we had enough food on our table, but we did enjoy a very special relationship with creation, and by that, I mean, the ground,  the animals, and the water surrounding us. And still today, I believe that we need to recover the kind of harmony with creation that we were able to build back then. It is a very contemporary thought I have to say. And also, for example, the rabbits, we would breed the rabbits and then eat them later on, or maybe we would comb or brush the hair of the lambs but then we would eat it for Easter. Still, it was a great example of a good relationship between human beings and the whole of creation. And it was a great inspiration for my life.

And so these were 15 years that were earmarked by spirituality, intimacy, and also lots of humanism. There was dignity and a lot of respect. For example, I never saw my parents and grandparents being subject to humiliation or offenses in any way. It was a very special time in a nutshell. And then we suddenly decided to go and move to the city because that was the dream of old farmers back then, to find a job in a factory and everything changed overnight. Overnight we found ourselves living in a house in the city with a TV, with electricity and also with a toilet. And the whole world was capsized upside down, upended just overnight.

A 16-year-old Brunello, studying as a building surveyor

And that’s how the second part of my life started between my 15th and 25th year of age when I started my business. And that is what I call my university of life because we would go to school obviously, and we were residing on the outskirts of the city, and that’s when the so-called life at the local cafe started for me. It was a local bar that I usually hung out in. There were only male patrols between 40 and 50 different people of different ages. We would discuss a wide range of topics from women to politics, philosophy, and culture. We would also play jokers in France because that’s part and parcel of Italian culture. And that was much the beginning of something new, a very fascinating time from the human point of view.

So that was why this was yet another very important, relevant time of my life because at the local bar, the local cafe there is always someone willing to listen to your sorrows and because today there is no way that you can go where you will come up, find someone willing to listen to what you have to say. This is a very humane part of my life. And then at night, when it was already dark outside, all the customers would dwindle to just three or four people, and we would mainly discuss philosophy. There were a couple of friends of mine who went to school and they knew about Kant and Søren Kierkegaard, but I couldn’t take part in the discussion because I did not study philosophy at school. That’s how I was prompted to start researching, especially about Kant, Immanuel Kant. And if it was extremely difficult back then for me, I found it still difficult today but still a very big source of inspiration.

And then two very important things happened in my life when I was about 17 to 18 years of age. The first one was coming across philosophy and Kant in particular. And there’s one famous quote by him that I’m sure you have heard of, which says “There are two things that move me, the starry sky above me and the moral law inside me.” And then there’s another one that we would place at the entrance to our village, our hamlet, “You should act considering mankind, not just for you, but for others too, not just as needs, as simple needs but as the highest purpose.” I was 17, or 18 by then, and that’s precisely something that changed my life.

So the first thing that I did that was a game-changer was my discovery of philosophy, and the second important thing is my dad. My dad took up a job at a plastic factory, and he did not complain about his wages or the work conditions, but rather he moaned and complained about the way he was subjected to humiliation daily. And then he would come back home in the evening and say, what did I do wrong to God to be subjected to such treatments? And those key statements and also his eyes that were filled up with tears, actually, by the way, my father who had just turned 100, passed away a few days ago. Well, both of these two things were a source of great inspiration to me. That’s when I said to myself, I don’t know what I will do with myself in my life, but one thing is for sure, I want to work to foster the moral and economic dignity of the human being. And that’s where this whole culture of life began for me.

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Brunello Cucinelli with his father

And then when I turned 20, those were the years of the cultural revolution in Italy. I was not a good student because I actually attended the faculty of engineering for three years and I only sat one exam in between. But I do believe there are two types of intelligence, the one that comes from educational study, and another one that comes from your soul. And I believe that we must mix and combine them both to have the best results. So this was my life until I turned 25 when I decided to start up my business in the colored cashmere. So the years between zero and 15 were the years that I spent in the countryside, and it was a fascinating time from the human point of view. Between 15 and 25, this is when I was hanging out at the local bar, learning even more about life there. I have this belief that when a person turns 20, their personality is already fully formed and shaped. So when I was 25 years of age, I didn’t yet know what would become of me, or what I’d do in my life but I had quite a clear-cut character and personality.

So then you could say that’s between 20 and 25 years of age, I became fascinated by this, I would call it humanistic culture. And then while I was still pondering as to what I would like to do in life, I already, however, felt the importance of always fostering respect and dignity for the human being, because I was moved along those lines because of what my father has suffered, and also my brothers that have been subjected to it too and what they were saying to me. I kept asking myself, why should I or anyone offend other human beings? At 25, the man Brunello was ready, and then I came up with this idea of colored cashmere. You might ask me why, how did it happen? And I do not know because until the day before I was still busy at the bar playing cards.

So one day I decided to make a cashmere pullover, and I remembered that I had been reading the work of Theodore the American economist who lived around the end of the 70s, who stated and claimed that one day developed countries we would have to focus especially on making very high-quality products because there would be other poorer countries than other countries who would take out the production of low-quality products. And that’s when I decided to focus on a high-quality product, and I picked cashmere. Although I didn’t know much about it, one thing that I knew, I knew that cashmere is not something that you throw away easily.

It lasts and it is a durable material. I wanted my production to be established in Italy. I wanted it to be made in Italy. I wanted to make colored cashmere because I thought it would look more chic, youthful, and fresh too for women. But I didn’t have any money in my pocket to start my business. And I remember the evening I went to my dad, my head bowed a little bit and I said to him, you know, dad, I’m going to make cashmere pullovers. He didn’t know what cashmere meant, he didn’t know what pullovers were but still, he said to me, “Okay, you do what you have to do, but please always try and be a good man, and may God help you.”

And that’s how and when I started my very tiny business. I wanted my company to foster the human and economic dignity of human beings. That was the main purpose because I was moved by the tearful eyes of my father. 

So this very small company, how was it going to be organized? Well, I wanted my employees, and my co-workers to work in better places. For example, we are here now in a castle that dates back to the 1300s, and then I wanted them to make better wages. I wanted them to become the thinking souls of this small business because that’s what’s the underlying idea that I have. I wanted dignity, I wanted respect for human beings! 

Those were the main themes because I knew damn well that every single man, every single person has a pinch of genius in them. There is creativity and a little bit of genius in each one of them, and I just wanted to be the organizer of this genius of these co-workers.

And it all started here in Solomeo. And initially, I started making some small renovations to this castle, small renovations because I didn’t have that much money available. And then one of the main countries that I started selling to after Germany was precisely the US market. So I can say that many assets belonging to this village are owned either by the Germans or by the Americans because you were the first who decided to buy my product. And you were the ones who funded the renovation of this hamlet. 

We Must Act as Guardians & Caretakers  

And still today, I feel as if I am a temporary caretaker of these places. I don’t feel like the owner of them, yes, I’m the one who looks after them. I’m the majority shareholder, but still, I’m just someone looking after them. 

Just think around this table, wherever we’re sitting now, and think of how many people were here, and they felt joy, concern, and sadness for 700 years and still counting. We have to act as guardians, and at the same time plan for the coming 2000 years.

And whilst I was renovating this hamlet, I have always carefully listened to the very wise words of the greatest men of humanity. For example, the great thinkers, the scientists, the emperors, and the saints, because they were the ones who taught me to feel and act as a guardian and as a caretaker. They were the ones who taught me to believe in respect, dignity, kindness, grace, and good manners. 

And you see the underlying issue that we all share is that every one of us, we all have some sort of malaise of our soul that we carry around with us from day one of our life, and it can be more or less strong depending on the circumstances. And I wanted to set up a work-enabling environment that could help relieve this daily malaise that we have in our souls every single human being.

You Must Have Courage 

Sean, you are very young, I could be your father, and what I’m saying to you is that you must have the courage to envisage the golden century that is forthcoming, that is before you. I think that we fathers have made two major mistakes. First of all, we have taught you children, our children, to always be fearful. You always have to have fear of something. 

Why don’t you replace the word fear with the word hope? Because a life without hope there’s no point in living it. And secondly, however, my grandfather taught me courage because courage was very important because he went through hunger, and went through the war. And he never, never talked about the hardship of that time, always talking about courage. So that’s the first warning.

The second mistake that we fathers have made towards you children is the fact that we have said to you, so you’re no good at school, you have to go to work. And this way we blamed work for everything that we had done wrong with the school, for example. And this is not the right way to go, because I believe that you have two kinds of intelligence, the intelligence that comes from what you learn at school, and then any intelligence that you have inborn in your soul. And we must support this, the latter, this kind of intelligence, and this means trying to nourish a very special relationship with human beings. 

For example in the 13th Century, Saint Francis went to Egypt because he wanted to get to know the Sultan was the most powerful man of the time. They had different cultures and different religions, and yet they were able to forge a friendship. And also Frederick II a Christian king in 1240, did the same. He went to meet the Sultan who was from another religion. That’s the idea of having this kind of intelligence of the soul.

Sean, I don’t know whether there will be a better world ahead but what I can say for sure is that this time is the best time that we have lived so far. And I know that because I’m passionate about history. 

2000 years ago in 170AD, Marcus Aurelius was an emperor who was also a philosopher, he had a lot of things on his plate. So he had to run Rome, there was a play he wrote, there was an economic downturn, there was the war against the Germans, and still, he would say, “Live according to nature. Try and find peace, find balance.”  That’s precisely what we need to do now. We need to find a balance, yet another important point talking about balance is to find a balance between humanism and technology. And this is particularly important for the next generation.

I believe that over the past 30 years, we have tried and attempted to rule mankind through science only, but it is not possible. We need our souls too into the equation. We must mix technology and humanism. And mind you, I believe that technology is a blessing. A blessing we have received from creation. And I say to my staff, you should always buy the most cutting-edge technology there’s on the market, but be careful the way you go about it because otherwise, it will steal the soul that creation has given to us. 

That’s why I say that we need to find and strike a new balance. We also need to have the most serene relationship with ourselves. We must have less fear of the future and be kind all the time. For example, Emperor Hadrian once stated, “I have never met anyone who did not feel better after being paid a compliment.” For example, Sean, if I speak to you, and I start by saying, how are you? How is your family? You would feel differently rather than just saying hey and that’s it. So we really must find a new spiritual and humane relationship with lots of answers.

You are young, Sean, that’s why I address you this way. I want to tell you that we need to find a balance as far as our work is concerned. Saint Benedict was a great source of inspiration for me, he used to say that we need to feed our minds through study. We need to feed our souls through praying and then we need to work. This means that we need to balance out all these different aspects of our life. And we are in dire need of this balance because if you work a lot if you are online a lot, when do you have time for your spiritual freedom? When do you have time to raise your gaze to the heavens? 

At difficult times, we all need to take a break, and then raise our eyes high to the heavens. And we must nowadays discover this balance. I want to be contemporary. I want to buy the latest technology, but I also want to have time for my soul because Sean, our soul needs to be nourished and fed daily like our bodies.

I have always felt a great love for the Greeks. You could say that I have led my life and run my business as an Italian man, but I have always thought like a Greek because the Greeks came up with a culture of eternity. We as a company have plans for the coming three months, but we must also think of having plans for the coming three years, for the coming 2000 years for those coming after us. And we must feel this responsibility. We must feel and act as guardians who plan for future generations.

And then shouldn’t forget the band of brotherhood, that’s also a very important concept. And I’d like to mention what Rosseau said back in 1765 when he said, “I can’t even envision a human being who is even slightly similar to me.” Meaning that we are all different. We all have our culture, our nature, and this is something that wants to convey to you and all the young people you are surrounded by, you should be the guardians. You should be the defenders of this world of ours. And I wish I could express this thought in English, but I would never be able to.

You as a young man have the responsibility for the coming century and we must all be guardians and act as caretakers. For example, here, right in the heart of the village we have built a theater, that theater will still be standing in 1000 years. And then we built a winery and also a monument that will still be there like the Colossus in Rome. We are in the process of building a library, drawing inspiration from something that happened in 250BC in Alexandria, Egypt, when Ptolemy Ⅰ, built the library of Alexandria. And that’s precisely what we want to do for mankind. And so I want to say to you and all the young viewers or listeners to your program, that you should be enlightened. And now I will tell you what Hadrian and Ptolemy Ⅰ  said.

Hadrian the emperor once stated, “Books have shown me the way in life. When I grew up I understood the meaning of books.” And also another thing that he stated, “Whoever builds a library will have built a granary for future generations.” King Ptolemy Ⅰ, after the death of King Alexander, basically build a library to protect all the works of Aristotle. And that’s why he came up with the idea of building this giant library because everything is eternal and we are guardians. 

We are guardians that need to do things for the coming century, not just for the coming months. And this is a message that I wanted to convey in this fascinating call. When I was told that you want to interview me I said, yes, I accept immediately. And I was so pleased to do it because I hope that I can be a source of inspiration for your younger viewers. After all, you need to have respect, to be surrounded by respect. And another thing we should now learn is to never turn our backs on poverty. This is what two years of the pandemic have taught us.

Sean, the past two years have been very sorrowful and painful for our body, for our mind, for our soul, and I think that we have devoted lots and lots of time to raising our gaze to the skies and the stars to find inspiration. And I’m reminded of what happened back in 1937 in Russia when the world’s great thinker, scientist, and a philosopher Leon Trotsky who had been condemned to the death penalty, actually decided to write a letter to his children a few days before the sentence was carried out and he wrote, “My beloved children whenever you soul feels heavy, whenever you cant manage to do something, whenever you feel humiliated, you should walk outside. Just go out, look at the sky and the stars, and everything will fall back into place.”

And that’s why I think that in the past two years or so, I don’t think that anyone has ever thrown away any piece of food because now we have adopted any new approach towards poverty, towards creation in general. And I’m thinking back to Plato,  Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and Rosseau, they all mentioned one specific theme, the social contracts, and agreements among human beings. I believe that today, what we need is a new type of social contract with the creation and the parties to this contract should be human beings, but also the ground, the earth, the water, the wildlife, and the fish. And this is what I find fascinating about the time that we’re living. That’s why I’m saying to you, you should feel responsible, but also creative, genius-like, and kind and you should never turn your back on poverty and I can assure you, you will feel better if you behave this way.

I am a firm believer in human sustainability, because I believe in different sustainability on the climate, then economic sustainability, sustainability of the labor conditions, how human beings work, where they work. And then there is also cultural sustainability because everybody needs culture daily and there’s spiritual sustainability for that matter. For example, if you’re sitting somewhere and somebody’s there close to you and they might come up to you and ask you how you are, you would feel better. If you feel respected, you will feel better. If you can look out and see and have a view, you will work with better spirits. This is what I call spiritual sustainability.

I don’t know whether you know this, but I was invited together with Prince Charles to address the G20 summit last year. Prince Charles was supposed to talk about climate sustainability, and I dwelled on human sustainability and humanistic capitalism, and the G20 was very fascinating. And another thing I am used to is not ever writing anything down before a speech. I’m used to speaking off the cuff, and I was a bit concerned before the whole event started, but everything turned out well.

That’s why when the Prime Minister gave me a call and asked me whether I wanted to give my contribution to capitalism at the G20, of course, I rushed and I said, yes, I’m very willing to do that. And then I spent a month worrying and getting concerned about it because I knew that I would speak off the cuff. Then I decided to go to Rome two days in advance and I spent two days locked up in my hotel room in Rome. I did not eat any food because I thought I might lose focus if my digestion is a bit heavy. And then I decided to go to the venue two hours in advance because I thought what if the car breaks down before I reach the place.

And then I asked to provide the speech, and I was a bit nervous because I was to speak in front of the people that I hold as the temporary guardians of creation. And when my turn came I begged the heavens, please give me the strength to do this. And then I remember the final statement of my speech, when I said you people are temporary people in charge of the beauty of the world. On behalf of humankind, please show us the way in life, show us the way that should lead us to universal humanism because that’s precisely what we need. And it was a fascinating time.

Socrates once stated, “I don’t know what will happen to us after death, but I’m sure that it will be different with good people separated from the evil ones. And if nothing happens, I will have lived better anyway, being a good man.” We must always strive for this balance, for respect. We need to have this aspiration for human happiness. We must aspire to human happiness because happiness comes from very small things and we must be able to find them. 

For example, in the evening you should listen to the teachings of St. Augustine when he said you should tidy up your soul. You should try to always understand whether you are being good to others or harmful, and this was the purpose of my life. I always wanted to never harm mankind. I don’t know if we succeeded to do that as the company or as a person or at least to do as little damage as possible.

And today as a grandfather or as a father, I would like to warn you. First of all, when you speak to your kids, as parents, you should always convey an idea of courage, humility, creativity, of passion to your children. And you should be understanding if someone disagrees with you. 

Your United States, I have to express my gratitude towards you, not just because you were among the first to buy the product, but because also you were a source of inspiration and education for me with your poets and with your ways of behaving. And so you should keep talking about the courage to your children and when life becomes less amiable, you should try and accept it all the time. For example, now in Italy, we are concerned about the war.

I have come to this interview, on one hand feeling serene and peaceful, but on the other hand, we are also weighed down by this concern of the war that is there in the air. However, I want to say that I’m a firm believer in the wisdom of human beings and I never imagined that such a war would break out on this continent. And on the one hand, we have our soul that is grieved, that is weighed down by the war but on the other hand, we must think about the fact that we must be guardians. And also in our companies, our different businesses, you might be the owner, the majority shareholder but still, you must act as a guardian. And to you I’d say once again, as a young man, you have a responsibility because you are the defenders of creation and you should try and be courageous, graceful, you should be open. Openness is a good thing. You should be open to the world, to culture, fascination, and beauty. When my father would say to me, you have to make the furrows straight because straight means more beautiful, that’s the importance that beauty has in our lives.

So the first part of my life was a very important source of inspiration because back then I spent about 30% of my time looking at the sky because we didn’t have any television. We didn’t have any electricity at home. And about the sky, last night we enjoyed a special moon here, it was the red moon. And the moon reminds me of another thing, an experience that I had with some monks a few days ago, some nice people from San Francisco, four male monks, and one lady monk who came to dinner. They were vegetarians and before we sat down for dinner, the lady monk said we should eat a fair amount of food so that is enough left for the rest of mankind. And then she raised her gaze to the moon, it was 10:00 PM, and there was a beautiful moon shining, and she said, our teacher taught us that there are three things that you can’t hide for a very long time, the sun, the moon, and the truth. And I liked this statement, and we need to be able to convey it and pass it on to others.

So this great idea that they conveyed of respect for mankind, and all the thinkers that I’ve come across and there are not many for me. I did not study Latin, I was younger then, but I did go deep for some of them. They all taught me to be kind, and the value of grace, respect, and courage. And by the way, we live in a small hamlet. I want to tell you, come and visit whenever you have a chance. Bring your friends. You must spend at least one night here in the village so that you can see the village during the day, the business life, and then in the evening, you can enjoy maybe the theater, the spirituality of the evening life here in the village, and the really important things that we feel responsible for, all we do.

My end advice and I would like to end with this, you should always try to strive for justice, truth and mankind. You should always try to invest highly and heavily in the great ideals of human beings which are politics, family, and spirituality, because we are in dire need of good people, Jesus-like, kind and polite people. 

And also try and look at the sky as often as possible, because you can find inspiration in the sky and the stars. They can show you the way in life. And you should also never consider that this time that we’re living in is a time of darkness for creation. Erasmus from Rotterdam in the 500s, actually said, “My God, please let me live 20 years more because the golden century is about to come.” Well, I say the same thing, I think that the golden century is forthcoming. It will be a century of contracts, agreements, and brotherhood. What language does God speak? Well, I don’t know what language he speaks, but he conveyed the same message to everyone. And the message is that of love and respect.

And this is my final message for young people: try and be good, decent people, try and be visionary, be amiable, be respectful, and try to take care of creating all the time. Being good people pays off. Also, believe in universal humanism. And another thing I want to say, my warning to you is may the sky and the stars always protect you, protect you and your future. If I can sum it up in one single piece of advice, be enlightened, be yourself enlightened, and enlighten others. Thank you. Thank you very much. And may creation always protects us.

Sean: Thank you Brunello. It makes me think of the line that you wrote which is one of my favorite lines of all time and that’s, “After all of these years and experiences, I know nothing, nothing at all that compares to the love for another person when it comes to reaching immensity and infinity.” So thank you for this.