If you ever want to feel like the worst-dressed man in the world, just spend a day in an auditorium with Umbrian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli and his closest allies and colleagues.
Earlier this week, I did exactly that as we sat expectantly in Milan’s Teatro Piccolo for an unlikely keynote about the power of artificial intelligence in blending humanism and technology from the man at the helm of one of the world’s most enduring ‘quiet luxury’ fashion brands.
The presentation on July 16 to unveil the new AI-powered website had the visual trappings of what you’d expect from a tech launch – big screens, rapturous applause, headset microphone – yet in reality it was closer to a freewheeling university lecture. And better for it.
At one point early in the presentation, Cucinelli himself, a very young-looking 70-year-old, brought out a basket of bath salts, telling the assembled crowd that we’d need them once we saw the beauty of what his team had put together over the past three years.
Often described as a philosopher-designer, Cucinelli and his 1978-founded brand spend almost as much time thinking about humanism, building libraries and now technology projects as they do about making impeccable cashmere sweaters and wide chalk stripe deconstructed blazers.
So what exactly has been unveiled?
“Our website does away with the constraints of pages and places the human being front and centre, free to discover its content,” says Cucinelli. “The innovative Solomei AI platform, which seeks to visually and instantly represent what one is searching for, is the fine fruit of a plant that has its roots in ancient wisdom.”
In practice, this means a new immersive and interactive AI-powered website – distinct from the brand's existing online presence – that allows you to explore the world of Brunello Cucinelli and its founder’s philosophy. The website even has a dialogue box that will look familiar to anyone who has used ChatGPT in the past couple of years, where you can interrogate it on a series of subjects.
The assembled team on stage demoed the new website asking the model questions like: ‘What is humanistic capitalism?’, ‘What does Brunello mean by human sustainability?’ and even ‘What does Brunello think of taxes?’.
While the site does answer that last question (“He believes strongly in the importance of contributing to the community and his country through the payment of taxes”), interestingly it will not tell us who Cucinelli votes for. This is thanks to the Dioscuri – named after the mythological brothers deemed patrons of travellers and of sailors – anthropomorphic agents figuratively deployed in the technology that ‘monitor the correctness of the conversations.’ In naming the frameworks and concepts that power the website, the team drew inspiration from cultural figures of ancient Greece, from Demosthenes to Theano.
This being 2024 and sentences like this now being possible, I asked the website why it exists. Its response: “This website was envisioned as an innovative platform to reflect our company's ethos and philosophy, utilising the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence.
“By embracing the digital world, we aim to share the timeless values and humanistic spirit of Brunello Cucinelli with wider audiences. It serves as a bridge, connecting our rich traditions of craftsmanship, ethical enterprise and cultural significance with the modern, dynamic world, ensuring that our message of dignity, respect, and elegance resonates universally.”
Why is the brand involved in AI at all, you might ask? It first revealed its interest – and investment – in the technology back in May, during a three-day symposium in Cucinelli’s Perugian hometown of Solomeo, which lends its name to the Solomei AI platform.
The AI-powered website itself is Solomei AI's first project and was created by a group of researchers from the fields of mathematics, engineering, philosophy and the arts, who were initially assembled years earlier in the summer of 2021.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and Inflection AI, is mentioned often during the presentation. He was present at the May symposium. “In fact he was the first to see it,” says Francesco Bottigliero, chief of humanistic technology at Brunello Cucinelli, of the website. We were all given a copy of his speech to that symposium, entitled ‘Dissertation on Humanity’s Hegelian Golden Braid.’
While this might all seem a bit intellectual for a fashion brand, that is precisely what the brand is about. Its founder’s commitment to clearly defining his philosophy over the years is one of the ways the brand has differentiated itself in a crowded and noisy market. It knows its customers, and that they would rather read a treatise on humanism – or at least be in the hands of a designer who would.
Beyond this initial venture, the interesting aspects will be how AI integrates with the rest of the experience, including shopping for the actual clothes. Surely, a revolution in e-commerce beyond the current vast catalogue and filter approach is just around the corner.
But in the meantime, and as Cucinelli himself stated numerous times in the auditorium, this is about signalling to everyone both inside and outside the company that the brand is not afraid of artificial intelligence.
“The guiding principle of our work on humanistic artificial intelligence has been and will continue to be the pursuit of a serene and hopeful attitude towards a technology that, I am certain, will bring benefits to all humanity.” It’s an ethos that’s hard to fault.
