Brunello Cucinelli launches new e-commerce platform

Italian luxury brand Brunello Cucinelli has launched a new e-commerce platform underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI), which is now available in Italy, the UK, and the US, ahead of a rollout to other markets in the coming months.

In a statement, the Italian brand said the new e-commerce platform is an evolution of the site BrunelloCucinelli.ai launched just over a year ago, which the Umbrian designer described as “human artificial intelligence,” as it looks to allow consumers to explore its collections easily.

The new e-commerce site has been developed on the ‘Callimacus’ platform by Solomei AI, the small research centre created to explore the languages of AI and their potential creative, scientific, and technological applications.

The luxury label reveals that at the heart of the new concept of ‘Callimacus’ is a website that has no conventional pages, but rather a new system operating with its own intelligence, which has the understanding to follow each user’s intent to deliver them a real-time personalised experience, which is “dynamic, pleasurable, and engaging”.

Commenting on the new project, Cucinelli said: “For several years, we had been envisioning a project of this kind, arising from the combination of our desire to welcome our esteemed ‘online guests’ with the most promising technological innovations, and our own way of thinking; indeed, we firmly believe that Artificial Intelligence must remain profoundly human.

“Our small AI team has conceived this synthesis of contemporary technology and creative genius, which I find utterly fascinating: our impression is that we have achieved a true invention, as described by friends in Silicon Valley.”

By utilising ‘Callimacus,’ Brunello Cucinelli is looking to ensure each visit to its e-commerce is met with individual, tailored journeys, mapped in real time to personalise every need and preference. The platform has the capacity to organise, arrange, and combine content to guide each user with purpose. By placing the human element at the centre, it allows customers to navigate freely while being supported.

“As they move through this digital space, discovering the collections and seeking suggestions, references, and inspiration, they encounter a new form of hospitality inspired by the relational care that, in person, characterises every boutique, showroom, and Casa Cucinelli,” explains the brand.

Cucinelli added: “The ideas underpinning 'Callimacus', the Solomeo platform’s name, appear today to be very promising: they allow a measure of human intelligence to be infused into the way websites operate, creating personalised experiences that go beyond task execution to place at their heart each of us, our uniqueness, and our manner of exploring and discovering.

“I believe the world of fashion, ever in search of beauty, can enter into a gracious dialogue with technological knowledge, drawing from it insight and contribution for contemporaneity and new visions.

“I am fascinated by the idea that AI can nurture and enhance human intuition, the highest capacity of our mind to imagine, understand, and create beyond what is already known. For this reason, I like to think of AI as a handmaid of humanity, to collaborate with in harmony, rather than as a mere automation for actions, relations, and behaviours. Our freedom to learn, choose, and act, even in our digital lives, is itself a source of richness.”