As Tom Stubbs observed in his excellent Italy-centric Pitti Uomo preview piece for Runway, Brunello Cucinelli is an in-apparel epitome of the farm-to-table philosophy that makes this country’s produce stand alone. And like all true Italian bottegas, Cucinelli is an independent, family-run affair. However, while still very much in charge, its patriarch is slowly devolving operational power to the next generation.
That is why, after a bracing espresso with the big boss, Runway ran through the detail of these pieces with Alessio Piastrelli, Cucinelli’s borderline annoyingly handsome son-in-law and husband of Carolina Cucinelli. “You’re not going to find a lot of patterns this season,” he warned. “But you will see a lot of different nuances in color and textures.”
Piastrelli continued by revealing that in a typical Cucinelli menswear collection, the team follows a golden ratio of 3:20—or around 15 per cent—when it comes to imposing color against neutral. This season, he said, about 30 percent of the garments came in what the team counted as colors; a soft red he called ‘ginger,’ a smoked-salmon adjacent orange, a sunflower yellow, an extremely muted olive green (radical for Cucinelli, who is suspicious of the color in menswear) and blues. Perhaps most striking was the no-color all black section, which, tuxedos apart, is an extremely rare spot in this particular casa’s menswear output.
“We really believe in the suit,” said Piastrelli, and the tailored two-piece was indeed well represented. However, as well as being shown in traditional top-to-toe form—with a notably fuller and longer pant this season—Cucinelli’s tailoring was also integrated with other dialects in masculine dress. Around 20 percent of the pants featured cargo style buttoned patch pockets, and sometimes button down shirting was eschewed for knit rugby shirts or colored T-shirts. Shoes included highly polished moccasins but also color-blocked skate-style sneakers. A black leather biker, faintly washed ultrasoft denim trucker or drop dead gorgeous khaki safari in perforated suede were presented as occasional punctuation marks alongside the soft shouldered tailoring.
Cucinelli’s all-Italian, hand-cultivated ingredients remain consistently and enduringly of the highest quality. Every season, however, he and his family of menswear chefs subtly reconfigure the recipes in their classical menswear menu to ensure its flavor never grows stale.
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