Days before his eponymous knitwear label was publicly listed in 2012, Brunello Cucinelli requested an audience with the prior of the Monastery of Saint Benedict in the hilltop town of Norcia, Umbria. To the average holidaymaker, the central Italian town is probably unknown. For the spiritually inclined, however, it is a place of pilgrimage as the birthplace of Saint Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism. Saint Benedict, the extoller of moderation and temperance, also happens to be Brunello’s favourite saint.
Despite its cultural cachet, by 2012 parts of the 16th-century monastery were in ruins. Brunello drove to the town with an unusual proposal for its monks: if his initial public offering (IPO) went well, he would restore their monastery. “But,” says Brunello, “there was a condition. I told Father Cassian,…
