FROM CULTIVATION TO COUTURE

The ‘peasant’ who built a £5bn empire clothing the super-rich, Bruno Cucinelli’s clothes are now the must-haves for the royalty of Hollywood and Silicon Valley

- Jim Armitage

If you've never heard of Brunello Cucinelli, chances are you can’t afford him. The Italian designer to the super-rich, he has built a 6 billion luxury clothing empire that dresses people so high in the social stratosphere that they'll happily part with 3,000 for a jumper. Pronounced "cucinelli", the founder of the eponymous company is as pally with real royals, King Charles, for one as he is with the royalty of Silicon Valley. The late Steve Jobs’s trademark black turtleneck? Cucinelli. Mark Zuckerberg’s classic grey T-shirt? A 390 Cucinelli. In womenswear, think the understated cashmere draped on Shiv Roy in the TV series Succession, or the whispered elegance of another Cucinelli chum, Gwyneth Paltrow.

You get nothing so gauche as a logo with this brand, but those in the know, know. It is,” as one devotee at Goldman Sachs quipped to me last week: “What you wear when you're walking on the tarmac from your limo to your private jet.”

While lesser labels, Burberry, in particular have been struggling amid a cost of living crisis and slow demand from China, Cucinelli has kept churning out the highest quality profits for its shareholders on the Milan stock exchange. In its recent half-year figures, the company posted a 19 per cent profit growth to €105 million (€88 million) and a 14 per cent increase in turnover to €620.7 million.

The fact is, customers who'd happily drop €3,200 on a cotton men’s jacket never really feel the pinch, no matter how the rest of us are faring.

Given the discreetly loaded nature of his clientele, and the business he’s in, you might expect him to be a snooty type. But when he spies me across the hushed lobby at his HQ in the Umbrian countryside, he is anything but. “Ah!” he bellows, in loud Italian: “He is wearing a tie! Ha ha! Of course, how English!”