Whoever wants to get inside the brain of the mogul Federico Marchetti, head of the multibillion-dollar online fashion empire Yoox Net-a-Porter Group (YNAP), should watch Amarcord, his favorite film. One of Federico Fellini’s masterpieces, it is profoundly Italian yet universal in its aspirations: a sumptuous rendering of boyhood memories, where dreamworlds and reality overlap. Marchetti says he recognizes himself in almost every character.

You may not know Marchetti by name, but if you’re an online shopper, you’ve probably bought something from him. The 48-year-old Italian entrepreneur is the business maverick who revolutionized retail by bridging the formerly oppositional universes of high fashion and the Internet to create what he defines as a digital luxury conglomerate—one that is worth, after a recent buyout by the Swiss luxury conglomerate Richemont, about $6.4 billion.