How luxury brands like Brunello Cucinelli and Tiffany are making CSR sexy

No one would blame you for never having heard of Solomeo. With a population of less than 500, the small Italian town barely registers in comparison to the teeming fashion capitals of Milan and Rome. If you were to do a web search for the name, however, Google comes up with a number of helpful suggestions, one of which is “Solomeo Brunello Cucinelli”. How does a frazione (the Italian word for “hamlet”) that holds fewer people than one city high-rise, come to be associated with one of the top fashion brands in the world? This comes down to one man’s vision, which happens to be in line with a movement that sees luxury brands transforming the local communities in which they operate.

“The great dream of my life has always been to work for the moral and economic dignity of the human being,” says the eponymous CEO of the brand. “I believe it is important for people to work in a pleasant environment, to be paid a slightly better wage, and to feel a shared sense of responsibility

and respect.”

This year marked the completion of Cucinelli’s incentive to restore Solomeo, the town where his company took root. The motivation behind the restoration stemmed from his childhood memories of his father working under an employer who held human dignity in scant regard. His vision as he matured towards adulthood and became a father was to restore not only the infrastructure and economic viability of a small town such as Solomeo, but also the more elusive sense of pride and dignity of its residents, easily lost in a hamlet that threatens to shrink as younger generations leave to seek their futures in big cities.

“Today, outskirts are a problem throughout the world, but it is precisely for this reason that they have potential to become pleasant and special places. I am convinced that the future of the outstanding civil, human and spiritual renewal will start to take form in these locations,” Cucinelli explains. “In Solomeo, we have restored that vital relationship between the centre and the outskirts. We focused on carefully restoring every little detail… Solomeo has renewed its old manufacturing tradition, oil, grain and wine, and today we still produce the same products, with the addition of cashmere.”

The restoration project involved renovating a 12th-century church, building a theatre and wine cellar, and most notably, erecting a monument that stands for Cucinelli’s vision of upholding human dignity. Travertine blocks form a 24m (length) by 5m (height) arched structure, meant to last for centuries and serve as the CEO’s legacy and dedication to humanity.

The term corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ill-suited in this instance; the words lend a clinical, obligatory slant to what is a personal lifelong project. Nevertheless, that is the term commonly used and Brunello Cucinelli is not the only luxury brand that feels a deep pull towards a local community.

Luxury jeweller Tiffany & Co. and the NGO Song Saa Foundation (part of Song Saa Collective, the first company to own Cambodian islands and now operating Song Saa Private Island) both have extensive incentives that feed back to the communities they operate in.