Why Right Now Brioni is as Good as it Gets

Fashion critic and editor Godfrey Deeny reflects on 80 years of Rome’s most innovative tailor. 

This past decade, many great Italian houses have made material innovation a vital leitmotif: Zegna with its 100 percent traceable Vellus Aureaum fine wool; or Tod’s with ‘pashmy’, combining the sturdiness of glove-like leather with the delicacy of pashmina. Dolce & Gabbana keeps breaking new ground with its remarkable tapestry-style men’s couture, while Loro Piana’s innovative silk tweed blends Italian panache with UK poise.

I would argue that the most advanced ideas are currently to be found at Brioni, the Italian tailor which suited Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig in their portrayals of James Bond and attired Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini’s classic La Dolce Vita. A source of impeccable tailoring since it opened in Rome in 1945, Brioni celebrated its 80th anniversary in late November in the Eternal City, with a Lucullan dinner of risotto cacio e pepe, washed down with Selva della Tesa, my favorite Italian Chardonnay.

Under its Austrian-born creative director Norbert Stumpfl, Brioni now creates clothes in the most rarefied fabrics in menswear. Using 18th-century looms that one expect to find depicted in the background of a Caravaggio canvas it has developed stunning jacquards, it coats threads with gold, literally dust shirts in real silver dust, and infuses silk-linen with enzymes to create a fuzzy finish. Above all, it creates the unique.

Examples of such craft were visible at Brioni’s recent Tailoring Legends exhibition inside Il Chiostro Del Bramante, an architectural jewel in the Centro Storico of Rome. One example:  the crafted silk jacquard shawl-collar white tuxedo that Regé-Jean Page wore to this year’s Academy Museum Gala. It was composed in fabric that replicates original tapestries from the Royal Palace at Caserta, the Versailles of Italy.

Another remarkable piece was the herringbone 24-karat tuxedo and matching shirt made from gold, extracted from ingots melted and applied to the threads. A perfect example of how Brioni under Stumpfl has revolutionized menswear fabrics.

Though what sets the house apart today is the couture-like quality to its raw materials, often sourced from suppliers using techniques invented in the Renaissance — from Veronese brocade jackets, which require 42 days of weaving to create, supplied by the Fondazione Arte della Seta in Florence, Tuscany’s greatest fabric repository, to the pure silk textured velvet Doge Tuxedo, handwoven on 19th-century jacquard hand looms balanced by wrought-iron weights in Genoa.

“It’s a very complicated loom that very few craftsmen know how to use anymore. A meticulous process that means you only produce a six or seven centimeters per day. That’s why it’s so expensive,” explains Stumpfl, standing beside a tuxedo priced at around €100,000 (approx. $115,800). The designer has a mania for such materials; his iPhone has a map of Italy, dotted with images of dozens of mills.

Other ideas emerge from experiments in Brioni’s studio, like a remarkable iridescent tuxe made of hundreds of horizontal ribbons granting a unique ripple effect. “We had been playing around with ribbons late one night, and the effect was so special I said, ‘let’s make a whole jacket.’ It reminds me of a quiet lake at midnight after someone threw in a stone,” smiles Stumpfl.

Beside tailoring, Stumpfl has dreamed up his own take on the menswear garment of the moment — the shirt-jacket. Brioni’s version is in the lightest of spongy cashmere, knitted by a team of local women outside Florence — another secret resource.

“They are incredible pieces, the best thing I have seen in months. So airy and soft, you just have to buy one. Then you go home and want to buy two more,” enthuses Bruce Pask, the senior director of men’s fashion of Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, and thus the most influential menswear buyer on the planet.

“I’d say that when it comes to creating that sweet spot of great tailoring with truly special fabrics, Norbert is unrivaled,” he says.

Norbet’s other great innovation is levity, a key trend in menswear, driven by the demand for post-Covid ease and by global warming. A superb double-breasted blazer worn by actor Oscar Isaac in a recent campaign practically floats in the air — modern day matinée idol mode. That said, when things get chilly, Brioni also has gray great coats made of American crocodile, though again artfully shaved to take away the traditional shine.

Historically, Brioni is credited with staging the first menswear show in history in Florence in 1952; of inventing the trunk show; and dressing John Wayne, Carey Grant, and Clark Gable.  Like the Gotha of the Golden Age of Hollywood, our soirée ended with multiple negronis. Faintly blasphemously in the cloister’s sacristy.

The founders opened a plant and tailoring school in the 1950s in Penne, in the mountainous Abruzzi region, that still operates today. Luxury group Kering acquired Brioni in 2011, and since then it hasn’t staged a show. Stumpfl prefers to hold elegant presentations in palazzos, with life models or stockmen placed beside Renaissance statuary.

Stumpfl is not your typical tailor. Born in rural Austria, he studied in fashion’s most famous college, St Martin’s in London, where he met his wife, a freelance designer— both went on to work for Alexander McQueen on several of his most notable shows. A stint working in Paris for Alber Elbaz, the Lanvin designer who died during Covid, added a layer of Paris couture sophistication to his armory.

McQueen’s sense of iconoclasm is apparent in a diamond-pattern Barathea evening jacket finished with martellato, or tiny hammered plates, culled from Opus Romanus, an Ancient Roman technique. While nearby a Luce jacket shimmers thanks to being embroidered with tiny micro baguettes. “The needles they use to sew these are as thin as hair,” Stumpfl marvels inside the beautiful Chiostro del Bramante.

Bramante, one recalls, was the out-of-town architect who brought the High Renaissance style to Rome. Which in a sense is what Norbert Stumpfl has achieved as well — overseen the renaissance of cool and cultivated menswear at the Eternal City’s most innovative tailor.