When King Charles complimented him on his gray suit, he chivalrously replied that it was shetland, even though he's the king of cashmere.
It is Brunello Cucinelli who recounts his meeting with the English king, who received him at Buckingham Palace together with the founder of Yoox Federico Marchetti.
The three are linked by the Himalayan Regenerative Fashion Living Lab project.
The Fashion House is a member of the "Fashion Task Force" of "The Sustainable Market Initiative", conceived and chaired by Charles of England.
Various task forces operate within the initiative, each dedicated to a specific sector, including fashion.
And this is where Brunello Cucinelli comes into play, which financed the project which aims to "restore the harmony between the small local communities of some areas of the Himalayas with nature and the environment and at the same time, create chains of fashion value that are sustainable".
Specifically, "in the eastern Himalayas, the focus was on regenerative agriculture, with the planting of 1 million trees, while in the west, efforts were made on breeding, all - explains CEO Riccardo Stefanelli - in areas where these knowledge was being lost due to depopulation".
"The project started in the spring of 2022 and involves 70,000 people, the communities - says the CEO - are joining, so much so that the first five kilos of yarn have arrived".
But the contacts between King Charles and Cucinelli began before the project presented at the last Cop 26: "six years ago King Charles - recalls Stefanelli - asked to visit the village of Solomeo, which fascinated him, but in the end he failed and we then met at the G20 in 2021".
"At Christmas King Charles sent me greetings, I replied - says Brunello on the eve of Milan Fashion Week - with a letter that moved him, he told me it was the most beautiful he had ever received and he invited me to lunch, of course I replied 'I'll come on foot too!'.
In the letter "I wrote to him that he was a great source of inspiration because he is always very elegant and because he was the first to talk about sustainability, I also remembered him as his mother in a loving way".
At Buckingham Palace, the king, Cucinelli and Marchetti took stock of the evolution of the project, as Marchetti also recounts on Instagram: "the world requires immediate action and we love things to happen now. Other than bla bla bla"." "The updates that His Majesty wanted to communicate to me regarding the extraordinary "Himalayan Regenerative Fashion Living Lab" project, which we are carrying out together with authentic passion - writes Cucinelli instead, posting a photo with the king and Marchetti - enthused me for their positivity and their progress". (ANSA).
