We all have dreams of revisiting our childhood, but how many of us have the chance to reconstruct it with the help of an Oscar-winning director? That’s precisely what Brunello Cucinelli, the 72-year-old son of Italian sharecroppers who went on build a multi-billion-dollar global luxury fashion empire, has done with the biopic-doc hybrid *Brunello Cuccinnelli: A Gracious Visionary, *written and directed by *Cinema Paradiso *director Giuseppe Tornatore.
Earlier this week, Cucinelli hosted a gala screening of the film (to be released in theaters this summer) at the opulent David H Koch theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. Before the film began, Cucinelli stood on stage and addressed a black-tie audience packed with media titans celebrity admirers, many of whom were wearing his clothes, the couture equivalent of wearing a rock band’s tee-shirt to the concert. Among the crowd were Oscar Isaac, Naomi Watts, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson (who reunited with his Dawson’s Creek costar Katie Holmes), Grace Gummer, Martha Stewart, Ryan Seacrest, Grace Gummer, Allison Williams, Jay Ellis, Darren Star, Shonda Rhimes, Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch, and *Vanity Fair *editor Mark Guiducci.