Tariffs and Conglomerates Are Chasing Them. Italy’s Biggest Fashion Families Are Unfazed.
Family-run Italian labels like Zegna, Tod’s and Brunello Cucinelli are clinging to homegrown independence—and an enviable work-life balance—in a luxury landscape that rewards scale.
One morning this spring, Brunello Cucinelli whistled as he strode from a cafe he’d just finished refurbishing to the 14th-century castle that houses one of the 130 stores in his luxury sportswear empire. From the top of the hill that crowns Solomeo, the Umbrian hamlet where he’s lived and worked for four decades, nearly everything in view had been touched by Cucinelli in one way or another: low-lying modern factory buildings home to his operation, but also a theater, a soccer field and production facilities for both wine and olive oil. An agrarian park, open to the handful of villagers who don’t work for the company (1,500 are Cucinelli employees), contains Cucinelli’s travertine Tribute to Human Dignity.
“Every human being,” Cucinelli said, “is supposed to live where they were born.” This is why, even as he built his eponymous brand from a collection of a few dozen sweaters to a swaggering empire heavy on the casually luxe Italian style philosophy known as sprezzatura, Cucinelli remained here in Solomeo, where he’s lived since 1985, and where his wife, Federica, was born. His daughters, Carolina and Camilla, were born here, too, and now live in town with their spouses (“the husbands,” Carolina calls them). All four work for the company.
Cucinelli’s radical vision—one where family, work and place are braided in quiet harmony—is representative of a mindset increasingly rare in the fashion business. In an economic climate beset with fickle consumers and even fickler tariff regimes, the hottest buzzword in fashion these days is scale. With a bigger-is-better mindset, luxury groups LVMH and Kering snap up premium talent and real estate without hesitation.
But Cucinelli is not alone in his home country, where a spirit of independence prevails. There, a number of brands prefer a family-run model, flying solo through skies that only seem to get cloudier each quarter.
It’s not an accident, Canali CEO Stefano Canali said, that Italian brands focus so intently on protecting and nurturing a Made-in-Italy ethos. “If you live in Italy, you basically happen to live in an al fresco museum,” he said. “So whenever you walk down the streets in Milan, if you pass by the Duomo or you see ancient palaces—you end up absorbing all this heritage.” To say nothing of what you pick up from your own family: Stefano’s grandfather and great-uncle founded the C-suite-beloved menswear company way back in 1934.
A multigenerational org chart comes with its own set of challenges. A conglomerate doesn’t suffer if the great-great-grandson of the legendary founder is suddenly more interested in AI than artisanship. Leonardo Ferragamo described heritage to me as a double-edged sword. There is, on the one hand, the benefit of history—as exemplified by the designs and techniques pioneered by his late father, Salvatore, who parlayed a successful business making shoes for Hollywood celebrities into the global operation Leonardo now oversees.
What are the downsides? “It is the habits,” Leonardo said. As in: the temptation to rely on what you’ve done before, rather than focusing on what you’ll do next.
The upside is control: the ability to run things your own way, with a hands-on focus on materials and craftsmanship. Under founder Ermenegildo, for instance, Zegna began as a textile company in 1910, sourcing raw materials and then producing and selling fabric to companies around the world. Ermenegildo’s sons began making clothes under the Zegna name, while third-generation Gildo, currently chairman and CEO of the Zegna Group, helped the company build out its filiera, or supply chain: a vertically integrated collection of farms, textile mills and manufacturers. A Zegna-owned sheep yields wool woven at a Zegna-owned mill, which eventually becomes a suit or jacket or sweater put together at a Zegna-owned factory.
“The way we talk about it internally, it’s a bit like a kitchen,” Gildo’s son Edo (fourth-generation, chief marketing, digital and sustainability officer) explained. And thanks to the company’s steady beat of acquisitions (a silk weaver here, a wool comber there), Zegna’s kitchen has become one of the most enviable in the luxury market today. Consider the company’s acquisitions of Thom Browne and the license to make and distribute Tom Ford as especially talented new chefs on the line.
And while these companies regularly rack up nine- and ten-figure annual revenue figures, their heads often note that success is rooted in not doing anything too complicated.
“It’s a typical story about the Italian family,” said Diego Della Valle, chairman of Tod’s Group. The Tod’s story begins with his grandfather, Filippo Della Valle, who was a cobbler. Filippo’s son Dorino expanded his small workshop to produce shoes for other Italian fashion companies. And Dorino’s son Diego, now 71, supercharged the operation, introducing the signature Gommino loafer and eventually rebranding the whole thing as Tod’s—a name Della Valle pulled from the phone book on a trip to Boston. (Under the Tod’s Group umbrella, they also control shoe company Roger Vivier and the Hogan and Fay brands, mostly sold in Europe; separately, Della Valle owns Schiaparelli.)
At the company’s marble-floored Milan offices, it’s hard not to notice signs of the family business: Conference tables, desks and even Le Corbusier club chairs are wrapped in Tod’s signature caramel-colored vachetta leather. And the job today, Della Valle told me, is not so different from the job as it was done by Della Valles past.
“My father made shoes in the factory, and I, you know, I make shoes,” he said. “I cut leather.” It’s the raw materials and the care with which they’re assembled, not any tricks of design, that classify an item as luxury, Della Valle explained. “For me, luxury is a fantastic Tod’s crocodile bag,” he said. “But spaghetti and tomato sauce is the same level when the quality is the same.”
Your last name alone might not get you a place in the family firm. When James Ferragamo was coming of age, the company introduced a new rule intended to guard against complacency: Of the 22 cousins in his generation, no more than three could have active roles in the business at any one time. Which meant that James had to spend time working for others as a sort of proving ground—first at Saks in New York, and then Goldman Sachs in London—before joining the family business, where he currently serves as chief transformation and sustainability officer.
Something similar happens at Zegna, where family members have to make a presentation to an external board of evaluators. Consequently, Edo explained, earning your place among Zegna’s wool wizards engenders a special kind of care. “There is an ownership perspective of knowing that you are bringing along something that was created before you,” he said. “I don’t think you can manufacture that.”
While the broader fashion industry is currently in the throes of a head-spinning shake-up of designers and executives, keeping things in-house allows for continuity. As a kid, Maria Giulia Prezioso Maramotti accompanied her mother to the offices of Max Mara, the company Maria Giulia’s grandfather Achille Maramotti founded in 1951. She grew up there, she told me—and though the company grew, too, some things didn’t change. One employee, Maramotti said, has been with the company for 65 years. Creative director Ian Griffiths has held his position for 35. “These people are part of the history of the company as much as the family,” Maramotti explained. “I mean, these are people that came to my wedding!”
Running a company in this fashion isn’t for everyone. It’s expensive to operate this way, and the conglomerates cast a long shadow over the landscape. (Even Prada recently agreed to grow further, acquiring Versace for $1.4 billion.) Borrowing from their global business playbook might help grow your margins, or ease the burden of training successive generations for leadership. But where’s the fun in that?
Some years ago, a financial whiz in Milan suggested that Brunello Cucinelli move his whole operation to Luxembourg for tax purposes. Cucinelli invited the man to Solomeo, only to disappoint him upon arrival.
“As soon as he walked in, I said, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, I had you drive all the way here. But I forgot to tell you that the factory has no wheels! How can I transport it to Luxembourg?’ And then I told him, very quietly and nicely, to go somewhere else.”