Brunello Cucinelli, Italian comfort:- PART 1

Today I visited the Brunello Cucinelli boutique on Burlington Gardens, adjacent to Savile Row. I went with the purpose of an interview and I got just that, along with enlightenment. Initially, the brand itself is a fashion forward yet elegant Italian cashmere company, but it turns out to be so much more....

I spoke to the retail manager and she told me that Cucinelli started off as a cashmere purveyor, supplying some of the finest Mongolian cashmere. After a while, they started to make some cashmere jumpers and it grew from there. Brunello Cucinelli was made with the purpose of conch comfort, fashionable twists on classic designs; they recently started making suits and that would be a prime example:

As you can see, the suits appear quite run-of-the-mill to the casual passerby, but to see the pathology of any tailor, you must look inside and below the fabric. The two jackets you see in the above picture are made of lightweight cashmere, silk and wool blends which are all sourced from Ermenegildo Zegna mills in Italy. The Zegna mills offer more superior fabric with less imperfections or uneven weaving. 

Their ready to wear collections are all with natural,a casual shoulders and fabrics, offering wider peaked lapels to broaden one's chest. Personally, I find the shoulders and lapels in this conjunction to be contradictory to each respective purpose, but it works with these more casual jackets. They offer comfort ability through the lack of full linings and horsehair canvases (half canvas). These choices equal in a natural drape that hugs the body lightly without moulding to the fit, making them perfect for wearing regularly with layers or draping over the shoulders. In the above picture, you can see that their buttons may not work functionally, which doesn't necessarily matter, but their lining is 100% cupro which is more eco-friendly and less high maintenance as opposed to silk linings.

Pay close attention to the shoulders, they appear to be Neapolitan due to the fabric being sown underneath the pad, as opposed to curved and sown parallel or sown straight like a British shoulder; I digress though, shoulders are a whole article in their own right. They are not  cut like a Neapolitan shoulder, they are roped with stitching to appear so, they may not be true Neapolitan but the result is still the same, a unique elegance. These shoulders (or imitations even) are difficult to find in RTW suits, usually American slope shoulders or British straight padded shoulders are donned for the jackets, so this is rare to find and that makes them even more elegant. 

Brunello Cucinelli is separated by many things, as I was told and shown, but their most prominent difference from other fashion brands are their understated details like you see above. The first and last pictures have a very special detail, it's a lapel roll. There are 3 buttons on the jackets but the lapels are rolled as if they're for a two button jacket, ergo being lower set in gorge but visibly 3 button in other construction. This is a feature shown nearly exclusively in bespoke suits, yet Brunello Cucinelli offer this in a style staple nevertheless. 

The second picture of the 3 is for a cropped overcoat with the same 3 buttons with 2-button roll, but they have the functional collar like a tradition chesterfield overcoat (the variation it is). This functional collar means that the it fastens the right lapel to the left by the button shown. This keeps the cold out and is not a requirement for overcoats anymore. Although, the lapel rolling makes this only an aesthetic detail, not functional. Nevertheless, this detail makes Brunello Cucinelli a different to other fashion brands.

I hope you enjoyed the first of a 3 part article on Brunello Cucinelli and my experience of the brand. Thank you for reading,

Stay stylish-stay happy,

Kieran.