“It Should Be Pimp! It Should Be Awesome!”—Justin O’Shea Reveals His Strategy for Giving Tailoring, and Brioni, a Boost
That sweetly particular symphony of ice cubes clinking against glass shivers in the background as Justin O’Shea is patched in on the line from Paris. In advance of his first ever show as big creative cheese at Brioni today, the 37-year-old is settling down to discuss with Vogue Runway his plans and hopes for the Kering-owned Roman tailoring brand. “That sound is the ice in a gin and tonic that is coming my way in about 10 seconds!” he confirms with relish.
It is pre-show, so O’Shea is naturally disinclined to provide spoilers as to what the 90 or so guests inside Brioni’s new Rue Saint-Honoré space across from the Mandarin Oriental hotel will see today. But we’ve already had a few hints. The house recently released its new collection images, art directed by O’Shea: They star Metallica messing around wearing confidently lapeled, broad-shouldered suits in a new house cut called the “Continental.” The Brioni logo’s soft cursive flourish has been dumped for (what appears to be) a new direction: a thick, hard, clean gothic font logo that’s reminiscent of recent merch from Vetements and Kanye West. Plus this show is being held during Paris couture, so what could that mean?
O’Shea wants to let the show provide the answers. Although he sometimes sounds almost recklessly irreverent in interviews, he understands the value of reticence when it matters. Before diving into the edited highlights of a delightful 40 minutes working through that G&T—and its successors—it’s worth recapping some context. O’ Shea’s appointment at Brioni earlier this year raised certain eyebrows; he has no formal design experience. Instead of the cookie-cutter fashion school route, his rise has been peripatetic and driven by intuition. Born and raised in Australia—where he proudly recounts that he was the only non-Aboriginal player in his Aussie Rules football team in Nhulunbuy, Arnhem Land, a town over 700 km from the next one—he set out for Europe in his early 20s. Via London, Amsterdam, and a period working for a retailer in Kuwait, a natural nose for retailing brought him to the attention of the German firm MyTheresa, for whom he moved to Munich, acted as buying director, and over seven years provided a powerful catalyst for growth. Along the way he became a social media avatar thanks to a combination of striking looks, striking beard, and a dashing penchant for suits cut to highlight the fruits of his time in both gym and tattoo parlor. So fast forward to now and that icy tinkle.
Tell us your plans for Brioni.
Basically it’s pretty simple. The first thing I wanted to do was to make the suit cool again. That’s my primary goal. Brioni has the strongest heritage and history and craftsmanship of all suiting in the world. So that is the best place to start. If I can make that the key item [in fashion] again, our business is secured. Because it’s like, why pass up on the opportunity to focus on what we do best? I want to show people who have forgotten or who have got lost in the world of modern fashion why we [Brioni] became famous in the early days. For me, the heritage of the brand and what those guys did in the ’50s through to the ’70s—Brioni were the [Italian tailoring] pioneers in America, which is what attracted the John Waynes and Clark Gables and all those A-list Hollywood actors.
They made it cool and made it fun. You didn’t wear Brioni because you had to, you wore it because you wanted to. And that is kind of what I want to really emphasize in all shows, especially in the first show, that the suit is a fashion item. It is not only to go to work in or for the formality purposes. It’s just the way that a man should look.
I also want to be more fun. In the past [the rhetoric of tailoring] has probably been a little boring. A little dry. You know how geeky menswear can get? You know what it’s like! But it should be pimp! It should be fun! It should be ****ing awesome! It should make guys be like “That’s so cool!” [I want to] make people get emotional about it, which is what women do when they love shows—they go bananas!
So what is the magic dust to make men go bananas for Brioni?
Look, a suit is a suit. One will fit a little bit better, one will fit a little bit worse. At the end of the day it’s got two arms, a couple of pockets, the pants—so you know, same ****. I could talk about bespoke tailoring qualities and the amazingness of the guys in Penne and blah blah blah and we got all exclusive fabrics and rah-di-rah-di-rah. All that stuff is super fabulous and I find it totally awesome and naturally cool that we have it. But that is not what a guy necessarily cares about so much at the moment. Guys want to get the coolest thing. They want to get a silk bomber jacket with a dragon on it. The modern guy has got more fashion, that is true. So I don’t really want to focus on the artisans attributes—I just want to make the brand. I want to make the logo cool. And make guys say, “I have to wear Brioni because, more than just pure threads, it represents something. It’s a feeling. It’s an identity. When I put that on I’m part of something.” So that is the main focus. It comes through the identity, the campaign, the mood: You know, I hate to sound like something from The Big Lebowski, but it’s the vibe, it’s what’s in the air, what goes around the world digitally and what people pick up on. There’s no recipe for the secret sauce or the magic dust. But I know I need to sell a dream before I can sell clothes.
This new suit shape worn by Metallica in the campaign, called the Continental, that looks pretty much like your own paradigm garment.
I designed every square centimeter of the suit! I also created a suit which is my dream suit. A combination of all of my suit wearing. It’s flattering, it makes you look a little bit more manly, it makes you look a bit fitter and athletic. The mood of the ’70s I find to be the most exciting in terms of where I live mentally. It takes part of that but it is totally something that I would wear. If I designed a suit that I wouldn’t wear I would have no clothes!
Presumably you didn’t wear suits every day growing up. When and why did tailoring become your thing?
When I quit working in Kuwait and I took the job working for MyTheresa in Munich, I was like, “As soon as I land, I will wear a suit every day. I need to get out of this total recklessness that was consuming my life! I need to be a professional otherwise I am going to be a bum forever. So I’m cleaning up my act, I’m not going to party, I’m going to wear suits every day and I’m going to try and work really hard and create something which hopefully turns into something awesome.”
[What prefaced that is that] when I was around 25 and I moved to London I met this guy called Steve Edge in Shoreditch. He was always dressed impeccably and I was like, “Wow, someday I would like to dress like him.” And my grandad was always wearing suit pants and shirts with the sleeves rolled up in Toowoomba where I was born. I look back at the pictures and see grandad was smooth: He had this white Elvis hair, a Stetson hat. I pilfered all his ties and always thought it would be cool to look like a dude like that.
You are not a ‘trained’ designer. What do you say to anybody who suggests that is a problem?
It’s not your problem man, worry about yourself! Go annoy someone else. That is the thing that worries me the least. You’ve got to shake it up. The world of fashion cannot go on the way it has for the last 10 years. The mould is broken! So if you don’t change now you’re totally ****ed. And that is what will be the demise of a lot of these old brands. We are dong the right thing and are the first to do it and that is why I have to applaud Kering and François-Henri Pinault. Because he understands risks, he takes gambles, and he knows that the world is changing—that’s what I love so much about working here. The support behind me is so great and I don’t have one moment of doubting myself: They are like, do your own thing.
Your experience as a fashion professional is in womenswear, not menswear; although you went to the menswear shows you were not there as a buyer. Do you bring lessons from womenswear to mens?
I bring all of them! Every lesson that I’ve learned. It is useful having a business side from womenswear, which is far more evolved than mens. And also to be a menswear consumer [myself] in a changing environment . . . watching the rise and fall of the world’s best brands taught me what to do and what not to do.
What’s not to do?
To do things half-arsed. To change things just a little bit. To worry about what happened before, and to be scared to be different. To worry about what the press and what people are going to say. Who cares? Draw a line in the sand, go for it, and if people follow it that’s awesome. And if it’s wrong and you’re wrong then at least people will know early that you ****ed up and maybe it’s not right.
That gothic font logo in the new campaign represents a strong new direction. Medieval mid-European lettering is suddenly the font of fashion, huh?
The best thing about that gothic font for us is that it was our logo between the 50’s and the 80’s. Yeah—really! It had an extra tail on the B and it was a lot more decorative. So when I was looking through the archives and I saw it I was like, “What is this?!” And they were, “That is what we used during that period.” And I was like, “Well, that was the best period Brioni, plus it’s awesome!” And so then with some convincing they were like, “Okay then, go on, change it.” I got a good mate of mine Danny to help redesign it. And to make it a very clean gothic logo—something that can stand the test of time for the next 50 years.
When individuals start at so-called ‘storied’ houses there is always a push and pull between their individuality and the weight of aesthetic precedent. Your previous jobs have been about reading desire and provisioning for it—this is about creating it too. What’s the process?
For me the design process is that I kind of go backwards. I start by asking how do I create product that is cool and that will sell. So when I design something I also want to do the buy and merchandise for the stores at the same time. You cannot have one without the others if you want to be successful. As I have the skills of the other things, for me the design is just capturing the right product at the right time. For me a lot of the archive, there is no use for—like any archive—but there will be some things in there that are perfect.
Because remember, a lot of the time the best things have already been designed. In your wardrobe, the best thing you possess isn’t something that nobody has ever seen before. You don’t have three-legged pants or something. At the end of the day the general consumer doesn’t want to be a freak or a circus. They just want to get the same thing that they’ve had—but cooler. So I figured that looking at it holistically would be what makes the design process simple. I designed looks, I wasn’t designing random product that doesn’t sit together. Everything is calculated so it can sit harmoniously, retail well, be priced accordingly—or unaccordingly, according to the crazy fabrics that I chose! I thought, “Why not do it all at the same time rather than go on a design trip and then give it to your wholesale team, who are like, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do with this?’ I’ve sat through those appointments before!”
Brioni’s reputation is as a tailoring brand, but it has knit factories and sportswear factories and more besides. Will you use those assets or is just about tailoring for you?
I’m presenting the world of Brioni. A big focus for me is shoes and bags, the accessories, eyewear . . . It doesn’t need to be for the diehard Brioni [tailoring] fan. When I go shopping for shoes I just go shopping for the coolest pair of shoes. I don’t need to be faithful to someone; you shop for what is coolest. You want to have a little bit more fun with those products and that is a huge focus for me and our future development. For so many brands I know the accessories drive the majority of business, whereas we have the opposite: we have a full clothing brand. So for me growing that is your fastest way to move forward.
The point shouldn’t be that you are peacocking around. I don’t want to make pink and yellow and purple Pitti Uomo crap! I want to be refined and understated, but the ultimate in luxury. Because that is how guys like it.
Yeah, of course...! My gaydar is beeping like mad!
