Brunello Cucinelli’s festive takeover of Harrods turns the department store into a cashmere wonderland

There are few things more synonymous with the arrival of the festive season than the unveiling of Harrods’ Christmas windows: since 1931, they have become magical – and oftentimes transportative – portals that attract shoppers from around the globe. In this almost-century of the tradition, designs have spanned conventional Yuletide tableaus – sugary snow-covered Christmas trees; spinning ballerinas; foliage dotted with fairy lights – and more surreal scenes, whether featuring bobbing astronauts, piles of hot pink packages, or even a pair of enormous legs in ruby red slippers, as if Harrods had been blown into Oz and dropped onto the Wicked Witch of the East.

Recent years, though, have seen Harrods hand over the reins to a series of international fashion houses who have ‘taken over’ the store for the festive season – including the iconic Brompton Road windows. Most notably, Dior, who constructed an intricate gingerbread wonderland – and opened numerous pop-ups inside, including a restaurant – in 2022, while last year, Italian brand Loro Piana created a ‘Workshop of Wonders’, populated with a cast of miniature workers and animals painstakingly hand-carved in wood.

Explore Brunello Cucinelli’s Harrods takeover

This year, as revealed in a special ceremony this morning, it is the turn of Umbrian fashion house Brunello Cucinelli, a brand known for its work in cashmere which is made possible by a lifelong dedication to craft by the house’s namesake, who runs the company alongside his children in the hamlet of Solomeo. Not only turning the store’s windows into a tactile and inviting cashmere wonderland – complete with fluffy clouds, idyllic scenes of Solomeo and a protagonist in the form of a flying griffin – Brunello Cucinelli has also inaugurated a series of ephemeral stores across Harrods’ various floors, as well as designing limited-edition pieces for the house’s existing boutiques within the department store.

The theme, says Mr Cucinelli, who presented the windows this morning, is ‘Feelosophy’, a playful nod to the designer’s dual fixations: the creation of superlative fabrics and the philosophy of craft and community behind them (he is a longtime student of philosophy, which informs the way he runs the company – he deems his approach ‘humanistic capitalism’ in its focus on worker’s rights and a respect for the land). The windows are ‘narrated’ by Philo, the griffin which appears in the Brunello Cucinelli emblem and a longtime symbol of Umbria. Taking its name from the ancient Greek term phílos, meaning ‘one who loves’, the half-lion, half-eagle is rendered here in soft white, evoking ‘the noble cashmere fibre’.

In a speech this morning – in which Mr Cucinelli evoked a number of thinkers, from Sir Thomas More to Arthur Schopenhauer – the designer said that the arrival of the festive season had put him in a contemplative mood. ‘I’d like to spend a few moments, not on cashmere, but rather to dwell on life,’ he said through a translator. ‘We have learnt to run and rule mankind through science. But you need science combined with soul. This is the time when we need to treat our soul and tidy it up, the same that we do with our kitchen. How do we do that? We talk more, with our fathers, children, husbands, wives. We should try and heal as much as possible.’

The unveiling marked the beginning of a busy week ahead for the designer: this evening, he will take home this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award at The Fashion Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall, while on Thursday, in Rome, he will premiere a new film on his life and philosophy, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Titled ‘Brunello: The Gracious Visionary’, the premiere at Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios – known as ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ – will be followed by an Italian release on December 9, 2025.

brunellocucinelli.com