Brunello Cucinelli Home: The Soul of Quiet Luxury

Cucinelli was born in Castel Rigone, in Umbria, in 1953. In the 1980s he began buying the buildings of Solomeo, a largely ruined hilltop hamlet, and moved his headquarters into its 14th-century castle. He now owns most of the village. “I wanted to preserve it, safeguard it, embellish it,” he has said.

The village has since gained the 240-seat Teatro Cucinelli, opened in 2008, and a school of craftsmanship founded in 2013 on the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris, which teaches mending and linking alongside masonry. Cucinelli calls his approach “humanist capitalism”: staff finish at 5pm and send no email before 8:30am.

The story is a large part of the house's appeal, and some critics find it a little too polished. In your home, though, a throw has to earn its place on its own terms, through how it feels and how it wears, and the best of these do.

The first home pieces appeared in autumn 2016 at the brand's East Hampton shop, among them cashmere blankets, scented candles and linen placemats. The range widened for spring/summer 2021, when Carolina Cucinelli (Brunello's daughter, now co-president and co-creative director) led a lifestyle collection with Nora Eisermann and Laura Muthesius.

Linen, terry, silk and cashmere sit alongside mouth-blown glass, Murano drinkware and handmade Umbrian ceramics, with walnut for the board games and the Studio line. The rustic finishes and uneven colours are deliberate, so if your ceramic bowl has an irregular glaze, it is doing what it was made to do. “What I like to have in my home are pieces that inspire me,” says Carolina Cucinelli, and the collection reads like a home put together on that basis rather than a catalogue.

The throws and cushions show the house at its best. Pick up a cable-knit cashmere cushion or a fringed silk throw and the fibre and finishing are obvious straight away. The board games, pen cases and globes are lovely objects too, and the ones to add once the room around them is settled.

Put the knitwear where you sit for long stretches, over the arm of a reading chair or across the end of a bed. Cashmere and wool bring a warmth that linen and silk don't, so the silk throws tend to suit a summer bedroom better than a sitting room in January.

Current pieces are mostly beige, grey, cream, off-white, white and brown, with terracotta and caramel in the lifestyle pieces. The palette suits rooms already built on wood, stone and wool, the materials we think outlast any trend, and sits comfortably with our edit on the soft side of quiet luxury.

A room of beige cashmere on a beige sofa against beige walls can read as unfinished rather than calm. Give the throw something with grain or weight to sit against, such as an oak table or a limestone hearth. Two or three pieces per room is usually enough; beyond that, a room can start to feel like a showroom.

Start with one cashmere throw in a mid-tone such as grey or brown, which hides wear better than cream and works across seasons. Add a pair of cushions in the same family, then glassware if you want the brand on the table; it sits happily beside plain white china. Add the objects last, once the room has settled and you know where each one will live.