Nina-Maria Nitsche joins Brioni following a career that has seen her work for 20 years alongside Martin Margiela, plus several more at the house he founded after his departure. Then there was a recent aside at Vetements. So what would she make of Abruzzo’s high temple of tailoring? Since starting in June she’s been spending time in Rome, where the HQ is, and in and around Penne, where the clothes are made. She seems galvanized by what she has found: “It is incredible to see how a jacket is constructed in 230 steps. . . . This was quite amazing and I am very interested also to see the know-how, and and see how to evolve the know-how.”
Brioni has been in flux since letting itself be flummoxed by its appointment of and rapid disappointment in Justin O’Shea, who is now running his own brand his own way. Nitsche’s first collection, which she described as a “start-up,” was carefully done, but in its way experimental. Ten real men, of different colors, ages, and nationalities, were cast and shot wearing three looks each from the collection. This was done to show the span of the brand, or as Nitsche said: “Brioni is about a man who is not linked to an age, physicality, or nationality.”
Thus Alessandro, a youngish medical director from Milan, was shot in his child-cluttered apartment wearing a version of one of Brioni’s most interesting vintage couture commissions, a travel jacket featuring extra poppered loops by its patch pockets. This was over a double-faced cashmere sweatshirt with loose wool pants and white sneakers. Another Brioni man, a “far-fung traveler” from New York named Brian, wore a beautiful cashmere camel coat over a black hopsack suit and a fine-gauge white turtleneck. Gabriele, an older businessman based not far from Brioni’s home, worked a boldly lapelled single-breasted brown suit (of the type he favors as a real-life customer) over a crocodile blouson. And so it went. The closing three-look set, starring a furniture artisan from New York named Hisao, featured two beautiful couture pieces, a jacket and a robe both made from vintage Japanese tapestry. There was handsome beaten metal jewelry—lapel pins and cuff links—in the shape of mistletoe, laurel, and bamboo, designed by Nitsche.
These were luxury pieces of mostly tailored menswear that made no grande geste (those tapestries apart), but were nonetheless full of unassuming for-the-wearer touches: mismatched checks, cashmere denim, the bespoke embroidery on a tuxedo scarf. Perhaps the most encouraging part of this collection was the recognition of the designer behind it that this is a brand with an established constituency, and that those customers come first. Describing dressing her models, she said: “I always like to ask them, ‘How do you feel in it?’ And they said, ‘Oh, yes!’ This is the most important thing at the end, that you feel good in these garments. First of all you see something, you say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s nice.’ Then you touch it, and say, ‘Wow!’ And you put it on and say, ‘Yes!’ ”
She added: “Of course as an external when you come into a house with such a big history you have to respect the DNA that is in place. The challenge is what to keep, and what to leave for other moments—which kind of codes we can evolve, and which kind of codes we can renew to enrich the vision.” That will be as welcome to the ears of Brioni executives and long-standing customers as the black cashmere corduroy suit worn by Johan, a Valencia-based bearded vinyl trader, was soft to the touch.
