It is not easy to tell everything about oneself. Especially if your name is Alessandro Benetton. If everyone has always tried to X-ray you, define you. It’s not easy to get personal. Especially if you have three teenage children and a recently concluded marriage. Finally, it is not easy to look the recent errors straight in the eye, in the face of misfortunes that have marked Italy and that are still demanding the bill. If you do, it’s because you think it makes sense. “Young people are hungry for stories. Perhaps because there are no more speakers. And not even a priest to chat “ he wonders, citing Celentano. But, beyond the reasons, there are the facts. And the life, really laid bare without hagiography poses, of someone who certainly got off to a good start but who tried every single day to overcome the comfort zone. Winning sometimes. And sometimes collapsing. He could only have a title with a vaguely sporty flavor, The trajectory (Mondadori) the biography of the second son of Mr. Luciano today at the head of Invest 21 entirely his own creation and, very recently, of Edizione, the family holding company after a truly stormy twenty years with the “parent company”. Today’s Benetton is 58 years old. A past to be told, and a future that he intends to design for himself and for his three children in dialogue with the new generations. With their language and their tools.
«This book is dedicated to my mother, who was my source of strength and refuge. And to my father who taught me creativity and a sense of belonging. But above all, the future that I see stretch towards tomorrow is handed over to Agnese, Tobias and Luce, my children. Three macro chapters and three stages of life. Bourgeois childhood in Treviso and Ponzano, the mother figure the first big setback, the failure of high school. But also the choice to leave the nursery, to be “the first Benetton who studied in the United States”. Then Boston, America to be discovered inch by inch with little money in your pocket. “My father paid for his studies and what was strictly necessary, for the rest we had to get busy “ repeats. In the US he is a model, but as a boy he had brought rackets and golf clubs for the Cortina jet-set, and after high school he had been a shop boy in a store even though he was called Benetton.
In the central part he is a young analyst graduate from Goldman Sachs, the bohemian house in Portobello Road and that sudden visit by Mr. Luciano who changes everything and with great courage introduces him to the world of Formula 1 calling him to lead the team. Then the return to the US, the master at Harvard and the third part. The return home, in that province that from being close becomes the ideal dimension of life: a laboratory of ideas and values. He doesn’t discount anyone. To himself but not to others either. He does not do it to his father, Mr. Luciano, an engine of creativity but relentless with his children. “In his harshness – he admits – he was very generous with me. Thanks to his teachings and his example, today I am who I am “. And he does not do it to the Benetton management, which is traditionalist and too rigid. He tells with great delicacy about Deborah Compagnoni. Their meeting and a twenty-year relationship. And it fades to the less cheerful finish. “We are just the four of us because in the meantime my marriage with Deborah has ended: we realized we had different projects, so we took different paths. There remains the memory of the many things done together, of the simplicity, of the feeling and the right pain and disillusionment remain. But there is no rancor “. He writes this when he talks about the lockdown and the children who have chosen to stay in their home.
Among the many figures that occupy these pages is Carolyn Bessette, with whom Alessandro lives an overwhelming and total story during the years of Harvard. “Carolyn is half of my happiness during the Harvard years – she confesses with an open heart – and I think I can say it without betraying her memory, I am half of hers “. Overwhelming passion made up of elegant dinners at the Waldorf and Boston Bruins hockey matches in which she becomes the fiercest of the ultras “. Then the climbs with Maine Hunting Shoes and weekends at the Martha’s Vinyard estate. “Why didn’t it work? ”He asks himself today,“ I felt a stimulating affinity and yet we have never been able to look beyond a weekend ”.
Samantha de Grenet leaves a luminous trail in the television Milan. The incipit is a car accident, during the first outing together. Years of solid relationship followed, between Treviso, Rome and Anzio, where the family lived. But the book also tells about the friendship with Marina Berlusconipartly author of this book, and Simona Ventura, dashed with the tip of the pen. But then there is the gens Benetton, so colorful, impetuous and lively. Uncle Gilberto, the financial soul of the family, to whom he was tied a special affection and the legendary years of Formula 1 with Flavio Briatore and the discovery of Michael Schumacher.
The last pages of the book are marked by the pandemic that returns an all-encompassing dimension with the children and by the tragedy of Genoa on the Morandi bridge. “I hope that your son will eat the sharks “. It is Tuesday 14 August: Alessandro is in California with his children while the drama of the Polcevera viaduct has just been consummated in Genoa. The phone is teeming with messages. “We take the car and anticipate the return flight », Alessandro says,« We should have had a big party for Agnese but we will cancel everything. I know my daughter will understand. And I don’t do it just out of a mere sense of decency. I do not feel like it”. Then he lines up negligence and panic. “I say it right away. We must speak: the word is a voluntary act of openness, availability, humility. In the days, in the weeks, in the months the errors follow one another – Benetton explains again- some in good faith, others caused by erroneous beliefs, provincialisms, excessive trust in legal consultants and communication agencies “.
In short, there is everything. The sweet and the bitter, the infinite possibilities of an undoubtedly privileged life but also the tenacity in wanting to trace one’s own trajectory alone.
“It was a long journey” Alessandro a tells about the book, with his usual immortal New England look, the result of his youth spent in Boston and his love for markets and vintage “but what I wanted to emerge was first of all transparency. I wanted to tell myself like this, exactly as I am, and the ruthless judgment of my children has reassured me. It’s me”. On the other hand, the book arrived only last week for dad Luciano. “I didn’t want to be conditioned,” he throws there. Around is a buzz of youtubers and content creators. The lights of 21 Wol illuminate the unusual way in which he chose to tell his story for the first official presentation of the book, in front of an audience of millennials. A happy day, soiled by the umpteenth mistake on the tragedy in Genoa. “Scheme 43? disastrous and offensive – he says openly, entering into the controversy linked to the Atlantia takeover bid- I’m in awe. We immediately ordered that the name of the company be changed, also as a gesture of discontinuity. Genoa will always mark us all. I chose to talk about it because our silences were a very serious mistake “.
Source: Vanity Fair
