Of course, Brunello Cucinelli’s clothes may seem quiet at a glance, but it’s when worn that their intent is adamantly pronounced. “They’re clothes designed to enjoy life in, but not to be moving fast in,” she remarks, while sporting a structured cream blazer with organza sleeves, and a strict A-line skirt, its surface puffed up and puckered with dense, textural embroidery. “They’re clothes that are made for you to enjoy the textures and the feeling against your skin, and be aware of how you’re moving through the world.”
These, naturally, are important qualities for someone whose reputation predicates on her ability to occupy and move through alternative worlds – or “curated truths”, as she calls them. “Whether it’s a performance that I am performing in as an actor or that I’m watching, I’m looking for as close to the sense of truth one can get in expressing something, using technique and stagecraft to convey that,” she says.
Courtesy of Brunello Cucinelli
It was with a sharp eye, then, that she observed last night’s event, a feat of cinema. Staged on the staircase beneath the Basilica di San Giorgio, a Baroque marvel at the heart of the mountainside hamlet of Modica, it was a decadently ornate scene. Models glided down the steps in looks that were paragons of sprezzatura at its most refined. For the women, casual shirt dresses and insouciant slips shimmered with delicate beading, as if caught in the Ferragosto sun, with sparkle amped all the way up in the closing black evening gown, and a scalloped knitted minidress that required 66 hours of handcraft to make.
Elsewhere, tailoring lent an air of quietly confident rigour, with breezy jackets and dinner suit trousers with buttery-leather cumberbunds making a quiet yet pronounced statement. They were complemented by men who looked like they’d strolled straight off the superyachts moored in nearby Noto – linen tailoring, supple leather bombers, sockless boat shoes and all.
