Brunello Cucinelli, fashion’s philosopher designer, has issued a Letter to a Beautiful Soul, a heartful request that people start listening to each other again.
 
Cucinelli sent the letter to a select few friends this weekend, right before coming to Pitti, fashion’s most important trade show, staged twice a year in Florence.

“It’s about time we all started talking to each other again. What do most parent do today? They get on the iPhone as soon as they come home, and tell their children, ‘Oh, I’ve just a quick email to send.’ And the kids reply, ‘let me just finish this game please,’ as they look at their phones too!” lamented Cucinelli.
 
Hence, Brunello, whose company village Solomeo in the central Italian region of Umbria is dotted with scores of plaques quoting the likes of Socrates, Kant and Chaucer, did not write his letter on a laptop or iPhone. But confessed: “I write everything by hand, including this letter.”

The missive comes at a very good time for Brunello, whose company just announced a 12% increase in sales to €1.28. billion last year. Feting his latest success on Tuesday night with a gala dinner in Renaissance jewel Palazzo Corsini on the city’s river Arno. Where, in time honored tradition, he stirred an enormous copper vat of paccheri pasta with his favorite tomato sauce, impressively avoiding splattering his pristine red chalk stripe blazer.
 
“O beautiful soul, in this serene evening, in my beloved Solomeo hamlet, where. silence, safeguarded by memory, reigns as king, and thought is unshackled from words, I wish to think of you and dedicate my heart to you. Beautiful soul, in whom are reflected all the beautiful souls of Creation, all those whom a benevolent destiny has allowed me to encounter for the joy of my life, you are graceful because you cherish the hope that leads us towards a new time,” opens the letter, before Cucinelli cautions we are entering a new era, or tempus novum.
 
“The tempus novum already emerges, like the dawn of the joyous future that awaits us, as day by day, year by year, century by century, it enriches memory with the wisdom of nameless generations. O beautiful soul, in the hope of the new time, I delight in glimpsing the shoots of a youth undiminished by years, eternally renewing itself, and ensuring the perpetual beauty of nature — that nature which the Enlightenment thinkers deemed divine. And you alone, in the vastness conferred upon you by Plato, are perhaps she who allows us to discern the delicate balance between the future and the past,” argued Cucinelli, who despite being 71, still plays for his own local football team.
 
He is such a fan of football, Brunello flew to the UK recently to see Liverpool defeat Real Madrid in the Champion’s League. As a guest of Tom Werner, Liverpool FC chairman, and the latest billionaire to be seduced by Cucinelli’s breezy elegance.
 
“Let us remember that we are all brothers and sisters; we should listen more frequently to the hope that dwells within the soul. This letter, then —this humble praise that I dedicate to you, O beautiful soul — arises from the sentiment that stirs within me when I reflect on all those souls who long to reclaim happiness, and who.  shall rediscover, in the eyes and words of those who know how to listen, a renewed trust in the tempus novum. This is the wish I make with all my heart,” concluded the letter.