BRUNELLO CUCINELLI

Brunello Cucinelli started in 1978 by dyeing cashmere sweaters purple, red, yellow and forest green — at the time the Italian mills treated the fibre as a neutral and made it in beige, grey, cream and the occasional navy. In 1985 he bought a crumbling fourteenth-century castle in Solomeo, a hamlet in the hills above Perugia, and moved the company into it. He calls the arrangement humanistic capitalism: staff paid around twenty percent above the comparable rate, no overtime permitted, ninety minutes for lunch.