Page 25 - Damianos Sotheby's International Realty Magazine Vol. 3

PROFILE BRUNELLO CUCINELLI
When an earthquake devastated the Italian town of Norcia last year, it wasn’t just the emergency services that responded. So did a manufacturer of €300 ($318 U.S.) cashmere socks. “I’m extremely tied to that small town—it’s
a mystical place,” says Brunello Cucinelli, the designer who has made his name, and his fortune, producing super-luxe casualwear, including pricey socks. “What we’re doing there goes beyond just getting a building back up. It has symbolic value to Italy.”
Cucinelli is quietly restoring the Torre Civica, the town square’s 18th-century landmark and the focus of local life; the project should be completed later this year. Indeed, this sideline in architectural rescue has become something of a habit for the designer, who is esti- mated to have a personal worth of around €750 million ($792 million U.S.). In 2011, he paid for the restoration of Perugia’s Etruscan Arch. More locally, over the last 30 years he has, piece by piece, been transforming Solomeo, the town where his company is based, building so far the Forum for the Arts, the Square of Peace, a theatre, library, school, agricultural park and public stadium (Cucinelli likes his soccer).
“Philanthropy should be a very important theme in a life,” says the affable designer, who has a penchant for quoting classical philosophers. “You have to find the right balance between profit and donation. My grandfather, a farmer, would look to the sky and ask for the right amount of water and sunlight—just what he needed, not too little, not too much. I want a correct profit, generated ethically. As for the rest of the money, I think we’re just custodians of the land and,
ICONIC DESIGNER BRUNELLO CUCINELLI WANTS TO LEAVE THE WORLD A MUCH BETTER PLACE THAN HE FOUND IT
By Josh Sims
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