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"FacebookPinterest\n\nOn the day the unexpected package arrives, I'm wearing\u2014and bear with me, because this matters\u2014my favorite torn Levi's, circa 1998, a gray, well-worn tee, an old flannel shirt, and a blue sweater with a hole in the right elbow. On my feet is a pair of furry L.L.Bean slippers that gave up the ghost during the late Bush years. Similar ensembles have caused me, in various moments, to be mistaken for homeless, misconstrued as a past-due college student, and celebrated for assorted fashion faux pas including, once, the wearing of not one but two sweater-vests.\n\nSloppy casual has always been my  default look. My preppier classmates in  high school would sometimes sport two,  three, even four shirts at a time\u2014Lauren,  Izod, Brooks Brothers, all collars-up\u2014  while I wore secondhand faded olive  German-army fatigues and this cool T-shirt  with a troll on it. And when that T-shirt  disintegrated, a T-shirt with a stick-figure  guy falling through space. And after that,  later in my T-shirt Hall of Fame, one that  simply said 'UPSTATE'. After college, at my  one brief dress-up job, I wore some truly  awful suits, all cheap, complemented with  clownish ties that I imagined as some sort  of protest against conformity. But then  years pass, old rebellions die. You realize  that sloppy casual is also its own kind of  masquerade, and one day you find you  can't even dress right for a funeral (it's  dark colors, stupid!), and you begin to ask  yourself: What's my problem?\n\nAnd now, here on the kitchen table, sits  the promise of a sartorial awakening, a  brown box festooned with colorful tape,  written over with words in Italian. Tearing  it open, I discover three wrapped bottles of  olive oil and then an oversize burnt-umber  tome with a crest bearing the initials bfc.  Stamped on the back is a regal coat of  arms that depicts a castle and a winged lion wearing a crown, below which runs  the legend Solomei, AD MCCCXCI. When  I open the book, I'm greeted by the image  of an idyll: green fields below, olive and  pine trees clinging to a hillside, and then  ancient steeples and turrets rising from  a lit stone village at twilight.\n\nOn another page appears the portrait of  a man\u2014the town's patriarch? He sits atop  bales of a snow white substance like clouds,  grinning impishly, tan with a head of dark  hair, adorned in a gray tux, with a black  propeller bow tie, pant legs riding high  enough to show off his socks and exquisite  caramel-colored suede shoes. In his hands  is a pillowed ball of this soft gossamer,  but here it's as if he's caught a huge piece  of popcorn as it popped.\n\nFolded into the pages is a note, a  confirmation of my approaching trip to  visit the village and its master on the  mountaintop. Dear Michael, the tudoed  man writes, I'm very glad that you are  coming to Solomeo...to see what we have  been doing with our \"hands\" during these  years.... I would be most happy if you felt  right at home with us. He signs off with  a sort of benediction: Wishing you health  and serenity, Brunello. \n\n\n\nI arrive in Rome to a once-in-twenty-five-years snowfall. Or that's what they say.  People seem crippled merely by the idea of  it. Estimated travel times are quadrupled,  quintupled. It will take forty minutes to get  to the bottom of the Spanish Steps. \"But  they're just outside of the hotel,\" I protest.\n\n\"The ice and snow,\" says the doorman.  \"No one has the right clothes for this.\"\n\nGoodness, that's funny: The city's in  crisis because there're not enough plows  or salt...but the Romans are in crisis  because they don't have the right clothes?  In America, we just throw on \"another  layer,\" as if slathering mayo. But this is  a country where the drama, the gesture,  the seriousness and comedy of the lightfilled  moment, the squiggly line between  simplicity and grandiosity, and the shoe  or fabric worn, all of it, is everything.  I've always loved this about Italy\u2014the  dichotomy of this hard-boiled practicality  versus warm, showy indulgence. Being  partly Italian, or rather having an Italian  last name, I've always dreamed of really  becoming partly Italian, of eating piles of  mouthwatering fettuccine in the piazza,  speaking a language that demands music  over mumble, and yes, if I'm honest,  perhaps dressing a little better. Seeing  pictures of my Italian grandfather as  a young man, newly arrived in America\u2014  dressed so nattily in a double-breasted  suit, round-ponced-collar shirt, thin tie,  leather shoes, and straw hat\u2014I've always  attributed some great mystique to him,  some intangible, wondering: What was up  with that guy? What did he have that  I don't? I suppose that, in part, is what I  hope the tudoed man may teach me.\n\nI've been asking around about this  Brunello Cucinelli, and here's what I've  learned: In fashion circles, Cucinelli  is\u2014to quote an e-mail from my way-morefashionable  brother\u2014\"a god. Like insanely  nice clothes, timeless, beyond trends.\"\n\n\"A man of substance in a surface world,\"  another knowledgeable source tells me.\n\n\"The most important designer you've  never heard of,\" says another.\n\n\"A quiet peacock.\"\n\n\"The philosopher king: He'll teach you  more in an hour about life than anyone  I know.\"\n\nCuriosity piqued, I dive into the  burnt-umber Book of Brunello, which is  part memoir, part history of his adopted  village, Solomeo, and part marketing  campaign for a company he claims is  guided by \"new humanism.\" Brunello  Cucinelli has been labeled the King of  Cashmere for his abundant use of the  material in his high-end clothing line,  which favors a dusky palette (no black,  ever! ). With such global appeal, the brand  sold $320 million worth of clothing last  year. But as he points out in his memoir,  Brunello started from scratch.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nBorn to a farming family, the third of  three boys, he first studied to become a  surveyor, while his brothers took blue-collar  factory jobs. An unmotivated student,  a lover of the bar life, he had the idea to  free cashmere sweaters from their beige  purgatory. Why? Because he'd noticed  women wearing cashmere sweaters, baggy  with rolled-up sleeves, belonging to their  husbands or boyfriends. There weren't  any such sweaters for women to buy\u2014and  he trusted they'd gravitate to a brighter  palette. Although he had barely even  touched cashmere before, he went to a local  factory and bluffed an order to be paid  later, based on droves of imaginary buyers.  When the sweaters came back in oranges,  pinks, a nice yellow, he instantly sold out.\n\nHow he'd traveled from being that  25-year-old dreamer, forced to disguise his  voice on the phone to create the appearance  of having a receptionist, to the 58-yearold  chief of a company that today makes  every conceivable type of clothing, as well  as home goods, and employs over 700  local people\u2014while increasing profits in  quantum leaps\u2014is a more involved story,  one that includes repeated pilgrimages to  Mongolia in search of a grail (the perfect  cashmere from the chin of goats) and the  subsequent conquests of luxury markets  in Italy, Germany, the United States, and  now China. In the book he claimed to  have accomplished all this by reading his  favorite philosophers: Socrates, Plato,  Seneca, St. Augustine, St. Francis, Marcus  Aurelius.\n\nIn my world, \"luxury end\" tends to be a  piece of clothing that costs $200 (and still  most likely emanates from a factory in  China). That's the most I'll usually spend  on one item, not because I can't afford to  spend more but because I've never really  wanted to, have always found what I need  for roughly that amount, or much less.  Cucinelli's clothes, on the other hand, are  extravagantly priced: a pair of cotton knit  cargo pants for $800, a cable-knit cardigan  for $2,000, a purple m\u00E9lange cashmere  wool tweed blazer for nearly $3,000.  Whether it's genius marketing or an  extension of certain philosophical precepts  that Brunello himself follows, from  Socrates to Kant, the implicit argument  seems to be that wearing a well-made  shirt, sweater, anything, not only feels good  but dignifies a human being. And more,  these aesthetic choices make you a better  man and citizen.\n\nIn the Roman bar that night at the  fancy hotel, two separate parties of  Americans are in attendance\u2014one in  black athletic turtlenecks, casual polos,  and black sneakers, the other sporting  the Scranton stylings of Dunder Mifflin's  Dwight Schrute. They sit gabbing about  TV shows and iPhone apps when a group  of suitably glamorous Italian women  blow in on a cold zephyr and quickly absorb  the pale pageantry. It's La Dolce Vita colliding with happy hour at Buffalo Wild  Wings: In synchrony, the women turn  on their collective high heels and stiletto  back into the ersatz Arctic in search of  real Italian gentlemen.\n\n\n\nThis is the way to Brunello: out of Rome,  up the autostrada (the city bowing to the  open expanse of country), cloverleafing at  the Orte exit toward Terni (the coruscating  stony hills and declivities of near purple  earth), and then on to Perugia and seven  more miles through the fallow fields and  olive trees of Umbria, as the road climbs to  Solomeo, a story village of 400 inhabitants,  most of whom work, in one way or another,  for Brunello.\n\nThe designer first came to Solomeo over  forty years ago and met the woman he  would marry, Federica Benda, who lived  here. He, too, was reared in a small village  nearby (Castel Rigone, founded in a.d. 543),  grew up without electricity or running  water, and immediately fell in love with  Solomeo: the solitude, the beautiful vistas,  the intimacy. But like many Italian villages  abandoned by its residents for the promise  of jobs in the city after World War II, the  town was near death, crumbling in on itself.\n\nAs his business took hold, Brunello  moved his operation there and bought his  first property, the castle and its tower,  in 1985 for $150,000. And then he bought  more. Today he owns or has helped  renovate most of the historic buildings in  Solomeo\u2014from the meticulously restored  eighteenth-century brick-and-stucco  church at the village center to a newly  finished theater (patterned after the  extant Renaissance theaters in Parma and  Sabbioneta) and the Accademia Cucinelli,  in which Brunello's arts foundation resides, with its lovely library open to all, its grand  piano, and its oversize fireplace. If Solomeo  was once dying, Brunello has worked not  just to save it but also to style it with a  patron's hand. The piazza has been rebuilt;  the quaint houses bear trussed roofs and  ironwork on their doors and windows. In  springtime the Brunello-built pergolas  overlooking the valley burst with flowers.\n\nSolomeo is divided into two levels,  what the people here in conversation call  \"down below\" and \"up above.\" Down below, bordering the fields, is the company's  headquarters, a low-slung modern white  complex that houses Brunello's corporate  office; while up above, on the hill, is the  old village with the original Cucinelli  fabbrica, or factory, housed in a renovated  fourteenth-century castle. It is here that  the cashmere arrives from Mongolia and  China, the silk from Italy, the suede from  South Africa, and here that the workers  begin to stitch and weave the sleeves and  capes of the Cucinelli clothing line.\n\nFifty yards up the road from the  cobblestone hive of activity, behind iron  gates and a security guard, is Brunello's  lordly residence, an august, sprawling  villa with pools and gardens, where he lives  with Federica and their two daughters.  On a ceramic tile hung by the iron-gated  entrance appears a message attributed to  Socrates: love of knowledge echoes  in our hearts and nourishes  great thoughts.\n\nStrolling the village that first afternoon,  with the edifying thud of bootheels on  cobblestone, the whine of metal gate hinges  opening and closing somewhere in the  near distance, I'm subsumed by a feeling.  Perhaps it's the gray light that filters into  gold as the clouds open, perhaps it's the  confusion of ancient ghosts in an old place  that has been thoroughly modernized, but  on that hill it feels as if I'm walking inside  a monument, a monument to an idea,  that the past can indeed be resurrected.  And that it can have immediacy and  application in this modern world of ours,  though we show so little time and regard  for our own history. Brunello's ceramic  tiles keep appearing, speaking insistently,  even a little imperiously, from the ages,  a reminder that the village patron is also  the village scholar:\n\nWhen our soul is full of  feeling, our words are full of  meaning\u2014Vauvenargues. You were  not born to live like brutes but  to follow virtue and knowledge\u2014 Dante. Beauty will save the  world\u2014Dostoyevsky.\n\nThat first evening Brunello, acting  as CEO of Brunello Cucinelli SpA, is  entertaining investors from abroad, here  to drill down on the company's upcoming  plan to take 30 percent of itself public. And  though we're scheduled to meet the next  morning, there's a moment at twilight, as  the church bell sounds just before evening  mass, when I catch a glimpse of him from  afar as he leads a group from the fabbrica  to the theater. Among the dark shapes,  bundled and hunched\u2014jotting notes,  working phones, processing numbers,  all of those money people seemingly  anonymous in aspect and attire\u2014Brunello  is almost buoyant (truly like a bobbing buoy on some vermilion  sea), bursting with a kind of casual ease  and good-natured enthusiasm that shoots its  own ions. He gesticulates, he calls out, gathers  and enraptures all the little ducklings in line,  flares like a comet, and then he disappears  through an enormous wooden door just as the  night shifts one more shade to dark.\n\nThe next morning, Brunello enters his  office whistling, in gleaming light, upright  and tan, wearing his neat stubble, cotton  moleskin cargo pants, a white shirt, a tie,  and a blue cashmere blazer with red-spotted  pocket square. And yes, he looks as if he's  stepped off a yacht (isn't this a prerequisite  of high-end designers?)...but also as if he's  just left the sidelines of a soccer match featuring  the team he owns...or is just back from a  meander in what he calls \"the woods of spirituality\"  above his home.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n\"Why do Italian men always enter whistling?\"  he asks me, aware that I've noticed,  maybe wanting me to notice, the whistling.  He wags a finger, smiling. \"That's a question  for later.\" He has me sit, sits himself. We're in  a room big enough to fit a couple of Cessnas,  at a long wooden table that is his desk, bookshelves  bearing the carefully arranged stuff  of his world: his leather-bound books by history's  great philosophers, bos of Cuban  cigars, glass vessels full of cashmere in every  shade of an Indian spice market. There's a  small mountain of soccer balls, lamps with  cashmere shades and cords, and piles of blank  paper from which he picks out two sheaves,  lays them on the table, and makes columns to  organize his day, his thoughts, your desires.  (\"Order and tidiness is the first law of heaven,\"  he proclaims.) \"If it's okay with you,\" he announces while scribbling, and then points  to the sheet, \"today we talk about life\u2014and  tomorrow, fashion.\"\n\nAnd so begins the symposium. Listening  to Brunello Cucinelli is like getting your  own personal tutorial with a very glamorous,  fatherly professor. He is charming and  solicitous, speaking in an urgent, musical  voice. Associates say he is both disciplined  and happy, as well as extremely meticulous.  When it comes to business, he's known as  savvy and calculating. You see, he says, it was  St. Benedict, \"this very rigorous man, who  taught me the most important thing: Look  after your mind through study, your soul  through praying, your body through ercise\u2014  and then work.\"\n\nTo this end, it is essential to divide the day  in a pleasing way, to make room for thought  and pleasure. Brunello says he rises at six,  swims for an hour, then does a series of yoga  postures called the Five Tibetans. The workday  begins at eight, often with a thirty-minute  walkabout, sometimes solo, sometimes with  designers or builders, about reconstruction  plans for the village. \"We work hard here,  quickly and efficiently,\" he says. \"We break  for ninety minutes at lunch, and this place is  empty at six. I tell my staff, 'Give me your best,  and then go home and live your life.' I've never  asked anyone to work harder, but I've told  plenty that they needed rest.\"\n\nBrunello smiles. He makes it sound so  easy, so attainable, this balance, this good  health. He scribbles a square on a piece of  paper and labels it Business, then a circle at  the bottom, which reads Profits, and an X off  to the side with the word Brunello, like some  etched trinity. \"I believe in capitalism,\" he  says. \"I need to make a profit, but I would like  to do it with ethics, dignity, morals. It's my  dream.\" In order to attain it, the value of the  day's apportionment, and \"the gap when we  meet ourselves again,\" can't be overstated.  \"Otium,\" he declares. \"It's Latin for the art  of doing nothing, in a constructive way. It's  as important as work itself. The other night  I was sitting, staring at the fire\u2014this is something  I do frequently\u2014and my wife came in  and watched me for a while and said, 'What  are you looking at?'\n\n\" 'The fire,' I told her. 'It helps me think.' She  shook her head\u2014but that night it was me who  went to bed drunk on nice thoughts.\"\n\n\n\nIf you spend time with Brunello  Cucinelli, one thing you instantly realize is  the power of the narrative that he's created for  himself (the story of how a little village, with  the Keebler work of many hands, reimagined  how the world could be), the rooted depth of  his self-actualization (farmer's son turned  benevolent baronial fashion magnate), and  his fervent belief in resurrecting \"dignity,\" as  he has it, by reviving Solomeo\u2014the name itself  a clarion call of some new dawn\u2014while trying  to take a \"humanistic\" approach to the 700  workers who do his bidding. In the canteen,  employees, who are regularly given Cucinelli  clothes as gifts or at deep discount, can eat  a three-course lunch, often with handmade  pasta, for $4. The theater has become the  locus for cultural happenings, including one  of the country's finest provincial music festivals.  There's a medieval street fair that lasts  nine days. And in Italy's uncertain economy,  there's the simple fact of having a job, especially  one in an organization that stresses  pride in one's craft and contribution. (And  it's a favor returned, it seems, by a workforce  bearing serious, focused expressions, hustling  hard to please the boss.) All of this also  goes into your handcrafted $1,580  cable-knit sweater. It is what gives  the garment dignity, says Brunello.  And for him, dignity can be cultivated  and expressed in many ways,  big and small.\n\n\"When you're finished eating,  your plate\u2014the arrangement of  what's left\u2014should have its own  dignity!\" he says.\n\n\"When your cigar is done, you  let it burn out on its own, you don't  stub it out. That's dignity!\"\n\n\"You must sit with an upright  carriage. If you find someone  slouching, they don't have  the same dignity. They lose all  fascination!\"\n\nTHE ITALIAN GENTLEMAN   STARTER KIT\n\nWe asked Brunello Cucinelli to     name five things he'd have a     hard time living stylishly without.   Here's what he chose and why.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Marcus Aurelius,\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Fresh bread and olive oil\u2014the simple flavors that I grew up with.  Ercise guide\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n A perfectly tailored gray one-and-a-half-breasted blazer or suit. I travel often, and this is something I must always have with me. It must always accentuate the shoulders and chest, to create a more flattering look. \n\nAll the minutiae of dignity matter:  the fine stitching on a sweater,  for instance, or the subtle color  matchings that have become one of Brunello's  trademarks. Why is this? Because in a world  of mass production and a fair amount of random  chaos, it's intoxicating to believe that  the individual human being still matters\u2014  and that someone is bearing down on these  details, on the quality of what might be worn  against \"the dignity\" of your skin. If living  well is one of Brunello's fixations (he lists \"the  five c's\"\u2014cashmere, cognac, chocolate, cigars,  and champagne\u2014as the essence of the good  life), he also considers it a responsibility. And  that responsibility extends to how you dress  and the philosophy of dressing well.\n\nIn his twenties, Brunello is quick to admit,  he had many ideas about who he thought  he might be: \"It changed every two weeks. I  wanted to be a writer, a philosopher, a monk.\"  What he knew, though, was that he wanted  to make something that might last. This idea  of conservation, of lastingness, perhaps had  something to do with being a farmer's son, with not just the cyclical nature of agriculture  but also the fact that his family had little  money and so he wore the same shoes and  trousers every day. Even when once a year his  mother would buy him a new pair of green  pants, he would immediately take a hoe and  bury them. \"Green is not my favorite color,\" he  says. \"I didn't mind my clothes, but I did mind  a bit when the children called me a 'farmer,'  because it was meant to be something despicable:  poor, uneducated, dressed differently.\"\n\nStill, Cucinelli's mother read Dante and the  legend of King Arthur by candlelight in the  evenings. Brunello, the youngest boy in the  family, became a voracious reader and a bit of  a dreamer. Signorino, his older brothers called  him, an endearment and a critique that suggested  he was \"a delicate young nobleman.\"  Perhaps it was true: He gravitated to the allure  of making something high-end, something  aspirational. Which is how he came to the idea  of cashmere, a fabric that had symbolic power.  \"You never throw out a cashmere sweater, do  you?\" he says. \"I've worn a sweater of mine for  many years, and my wife told me the other  day, 'Perhaps it's time to say good-bye to this  one,' and I said, 'Never\u2014at the very least we'll  use it to dust the furniture.' \"\n\nBut more than just the quest for longevity  and quality, there seems to be something  else in it for Brunello, something important  and profound that he can't quite put words  to. Instead, he tells a story. After  the World Trade Center collapsed  on September 11, he went up into  the castle tower, with its fifteenthcentury  frescoes depicting important  scenes from Italian history,  and found himself thinking  about Hadrian, the great Roman  emperor, who built the Temple of  Venus and rebuilt the Pantheon.  There was a lesson, a reassurance,  in that sort of permanence. This is  the world. How many people have  died for it! And yet we go on.\n\nWhen he tells this story, I ask  what that might have to do with  fashion, with the work of his own  life. \"This jacket that I'm wearing  is eight years old,\" he says. \"I don't  want to throw it away. It will go in  my wardrobe eventually, and I will  revisit it. For me, it's like gazing upon the frescoes.  This is where fashion touches eternity.\n\n\"The dead never die,\" he says. \"They're  always among us.\"\n\n\n\nBrunello has promised something special  for the next day. He's volunteered to show  me how to dress as an Italian gentleman. I've  not been dressed since the days of diapers,  and even in the hands of a maestro, I'm skeptical,  assuming that old defensiveness. I'm  certain that I can't be salvaged\u2014\"You're the  only adult I know who wears Crocs as dress  shoes,\" my wife tells me\u2014because surely I  don't want to be.\n\nWe are standing now in another large white  room that adjoins Brunello's office, a room  packed with Brunello Cucinelli menswear,  soft cashmere sweaters arrayed in all the colors  of some dusky candy rainbow, cashmere  suits that hang comfortably from the hanger,  leather and suede shoes of all varieties waiting  for feet. There are blazers, scarves, and ties, all  begging to be worn. Brunello's soldiers glimmer  in and out, bustling and assessing, assembling  at his command \"a look\" that might  work for me.\n\nWhen I fall into a litany of my various sartorial  afflictions, he steps back and squints  at my ensemble, a fairly innocuous uniform  of J.Crew jeans, flannel shirt, Patagonia  sweater. \"Be honest,\" I say, then hold my  breath for the damage. \"Why not!\" he says to  my surprise. \"You appear young, sporty, intellectual.  You look American.\" Two out of four,  and one is a reach, but I'll take it. But why  do I look American\u2014what's the giveaway?  \"The American wears three layers,\" says  Brunello, \"always the T-shirt, another shirt,  and a sweater. The Italian man never wears  the T-shirt. This is not good or bad. I like the  way the gray of it matches the sweater. But we  don't do this.\"\n\nAnd he's off and running. \"The hair, hands,  and shoes are very important to the Italian  gentleman,\" he declares. \"The hair, even if  there's no raw material there, you can tell if it's  been cut. The hands can't be overestimated,  because we talk with our hands, and so they  must be tidy. But the shoes, the shoes for us  are the most important. You could be wearing  a great suit, but if the shoes are no good, you  lose all of your fascination.\n\n\"Look,\" says Brunello, \"the whole idea of  wearing clothes is not to look ridiculous.\"\n\nYes, I want to shout, this is my mantra,  too\u2014exactly! But then we are dressed as polar  opposites, Brunello and I. Rather than even  try to look good\u2014expressing one's aspiration  or flair or idiosyncrasy\u2014rather than trying  to own the clothes I wear, which seems, for  some reason, an act too revealing, too intimate,  too much of a risk, I've unconsciously  veered the other way. My disguise says, \"Pay  no attention to the man behind the curtain\u2014  and while you're at it, pay no attention to the  curtain, either.\" Or: \"I'm too busy for the vanity  of clothing.\" But what does that say about  my dreams, then?\n\nNow Brunello's hand flutters for the pocket  square in his blazer pocket. He's wearing light  gray pants, a thin blue tie, and a blazer that  resembles oatmeal in color, though I see flecks  of the Umbrian countryside in fall, an underlying  purple hue, a shade from a Fra Angelico  painting... What is the color of the blazer  he wears? The pocket square is white with  red dots trimmed in brown and floats about  a quarter of an inch from the pocket, but  now Brunello yanks it another quarter inch.  \"Ridiculous,\" he says, then replacing it to its  original form: \"Fashionable.\"\n\nIt's true: With the pocket square out a  little, he's a man calling attention to himself,  begging attention. With the pocket square  tighter in, he's a confident man who knows  he has your attention. The point, he says, is  to dress by a set of rules that you then break  by your own personal style. For instance, one  of Brunello's great icons, the Fiat scion and  exquisite tastemaker Gianni Agnelli, was  a man with a classic style of bespoke suits,  personalized and made wholly original by  his sense of sprezzatura, a series of odd yet  deliberate flairs\u2014the wearing of hiking boots,  a fine watch worn over a shirt cuff. Like this,  you have to feel fashion in order to be fashionable.  That is, the gesture must come from  within, from the voice of your own inner  stylings. In Brunello's case, if you look more closely at the classic package he presents  dressed in his own clothes, there is a smattering  of little anomalies: the belt that he buckles  but doesn't guide through the loop; the  elevated pant cuffs (either by rolling or tailor,  never higher than the socks, but enough to  show them and the all-important shoes); the  unbuttoned collar points and the tie tied with  the bottom panel being slightly longer than  the top (its own version of Agnelli's famous  askew tie). \"This is the Cucinelli way,\" he says.\n\nI put the clothes on, at first a white shirt  with a gray suit. I might wear a suit  once or twice a year, uncomfortably,  but this is almost instantly  different. That is, I can't feel the  suit. I know it's on my body, but  it floats. And so I float a little, too.  Brunello adds a blue tie, a white  pocket square. (\"An Italian only  wears white for the most formal  occasion,\" he says. \"You are winning  an award, you are stepping  up to make a speech. This is what  you wear.\") I'm wearing cashmere  socks, cordovan leather shoes. He  fusses over me, steps back smiling,  circles deliberately, veers in  to yank my lapels, button a button,  shake out the pant cuffs, then  steps aside and directs me to the  mirror. I approach sheepishly.  Minus the hat, what I see reflected  back is my grandfather, a man to my mind of  great fascination and dignity. For one brief  flicker, I'm him.\n\nThere are other \"looks\" Brunello assembles  for me, a mix of what he calls \"casual chic,  sporting, and intellectual,\" none of which I  could ever imagine wearing at first, let alone  wearing at home, but that feel so organic  once on, so uplifting that I thoroughly regret  the moment when I have to take them off.  (His voice patters on: You are walking across  campus to teach your class... You are boarding  a plane on assignment... You are giving a  reading.) As we go along, trying and shucking  clothes, I'm reminded of something Brunello  said to me when we first sat to talk. He was  remembering his youth, the hours of sitting  with his father and grandfather, who'd been  orphaned in Assisi as a child. Being farmers,  they talked about the weather endlessly, the  possibility of what was to come. They sat and  watched the sky.\n\nExplaining this, Brunello paraphrased  Kant\u2014that the philosopher was \"fascinated by  two things: the starry sky above and the moral,  ethical world inside\"\u2014and then lamented how  we humans of the modern world spend so  much time looking down: down at the computer  or screen before us, down in our worry,  down at our lack and want and absence. \"How  many people do you know, Michael, who  spend time looking at the sky? I try to look up  at the sky as much as I can,\" he says.\n\nThe suggestion is contagious. Wearing the  clothes in that light-filled room, I find myself  looking up through the window at clouds carried  by the wind and bright patches of a blue I  can't name either.\n\n\n\nI w e a r t h e last outfit to lunch in the  library: a pair of cashmere khakis, a collared  jersey, a gray sweater, and a sienna-colored  sport coat with caf\u00E9 au lait&amp;amp;#x2013;colored dress  shoes. I love it. According to Brunello, I could  do almost anything in this outfit, even play  some impromptu soccer, if I were so inclined  to try out for his soccer team. It's weird, I confess,  but I've never been more joyful in nice  clothes before. Everything feels so light and  comfortable, so soft to the touch. What are my  dreams now?\n\nBrunello's assembled a bunch of male  workers to join us to eat. He's asked these  compagnos to dress up a little. All the men  are somewhere in their early twenties to near  60, and what he means to show  is that his clothes look good on  anyone, that this is not fashion  for an 18-year-old anorexic that  the salesman is pretending looks  good on us.\n\nThe food arrives, antipasto,  breaded zucchini, cheeses, p&amp;amp;#xE2;t\u00E9,  good bread, red wine. The subject  again is the good life, the  necessary life of the Italian gentleman.  But what if you don't  have the money for the Cucinelli  label? What if your fate is not tothe-  manor-made-because-youhad-  the-bright-idea-to-spin-acashmere-  empire-out-of-nothing?  Brunello waves a hand dismissively.  \"I've always lived like this.  Years ago I was reading my books  of philosophy and taking notes.  And when I sold my first fifty-three cashmere  pullovers, I felt like Alexander the Great. It's  not quantity, it's what you appreciate. It's  how you embellish the world.\n\n\"Now, when you write a sentence, Michael,  you're working for the world. You're trying  to embellish it with beauty. When you prepare  for the day, you should try to smell nice.  I shower two or three times a day. You open  your closet and ask yourself: Am I slightly  more serious or joyful today? With whom will  I meet, and do I want them to think I'm an  intellectual or an industrialist? I take twenty  minutes to dress, giving myself three options,  depending on weather. It takes at least three  times to get my tie right. But it doesn't matter  what the clothes, you try to match your colors  with love, one bright color, the rest neutrals.  And this is how you embellish the world, too.\"\n\n(Regarding the question of how you  smell\u2014Brunello is deadly serious about it. He  tells the story of calling a meeting of one hundred  employees and announcing, \"There are  two people here who smell bad, and I would  like to urge you to take measures.\" When I ask  if that's a little extreme, he responds by saying,  \"Oh no, not at all. If I work with you nine  hours a day and you smell, then you're ruining  my life.\")\n\nI ask the well-dressed men at the table what  they think makes the gentleman, and Brunello  blurts out, \"Oh, good night!\" as if afraid to hear  the answer. One offers that it's important \"to  know how to behave,\" when to say and do the  right thing, kiss your mother-in-law's hand,  for instance, hold the door. Another says, \"It's  important not to stand out,\" to be part of the  harmonious whole in manner, dress, and attitude  by enhancing it.\n\nBut Brunello is intent on adding to a  definition that goes beyond his nobly delivered  polemics (...Only listen to the Rolling  Stones in the morning, Mozart's \"Requiem\"  when it's time to concentrate...). It goes back  to responsibility, the obligation of the human  being to other human beings\u2014this is the  legacy of the Italian gentleman: to work, to  make something with one's hands to leave  behind. There's the fashion empire, yes, but  there's also the construction and renovation  (Solomeo; the 2,300-year-old Etruscan Arch  in Perugia; the 500-patient hospital he's just  built in Malawi). \"But I don't possess any of  this,\" says Brunello.\n\n\"That's the secret: I consider myself a  guardian, here to keep it a while. My house  is 300 years old and will have another owner  someday. But this is the world as it's always  been: Something grows, rises, and dies, and  from the ashes something else is made. We are  tiny custodians.\"\n\nHere, Brunello looks down at his steepled  hands and up again, seemingly moved. \"I was  sitting before the fire the other night, thinking  a lot about the farmer's son, me, who once  wore the same shoes every day. And my granddaughter  was asleep on the couch, and I was  talking to her softly. And I was telling her,  'You know that all of this work is for you. And  that I work for the world, too. And the world  to come.' When you think like this, living a  good life is easy. It comes down to one question  only: Can you be satisfied with what you  have tonight?\n\n\"That's the whole secret of life!\"\n\n\n\nI leave in a blizzard, a down-flood of  pearl-moth snowflakes that crystallizes  in drifts and sends the Italian motorists  fishtailing. Solomeo recedes behind that  white veil, accompanied by a small pang in  my newly filled American heart. It's as if I've  had a glimpse of something I shouldn't have,  some garden with apple, a little wonderland  in which everyone is swaddled by Mongolian  goat hair, and now I fear the spell is destined  to wear off. And I must return to my  own closet.\n\nWhen I said good-bye to Brunello, he told  me that \"the world needs more people who  are serious, enlightened, and with an elegant  spirit.\" As if it might be important to spread  the word. And he left me with something  to wear while in Florence, some slacks, a  sweater, a blazer. He didn't implore me to  try to change my ways but, in the tradition  of the Stoics, had laid a path. Besides, he'd  already dignified me as \"sporty,\" even if in  that American way. But then something happens  that day after arriving in Florence, as  I wander the streets before heading home.  At the hotel, at the monastery San Marco,  admiring the Fra Angelicos, I seem to pass as  Italian, for several people try speaking with  me in our native tongue before registering  the dumb expression on my face.\n\nLater, out on the street, an older Italian  woman carrying shopping bags asks directions  to the Piazza San Marco, where I've just  been. Without uttering a word, smelling good,  I remove from my blazer pocket a map, sketch  with my tidy finger the direction she should  take. When I'm finished, she regards me  briefly, and says, \"Grazie.\"\n\n\"Prego,\" I say back, then go whistling the  alleys for home."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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