The fashion house Brioni is best known for dressing James Bond in black tie and creating hand-sewn custom suits that start out at US$4,000 and run as high as US$47,000. But this fall it is adding something a lot more humble to its line-up: a T-shirt.
With luxurious touches like hand-stitched Italian embroidery and a price tag of US$250, it won’t be an ordinary T-shirt, of course. Still, while other high-end Italian fashion companies like Armani and Ermenegildo Zegna crossed that threshold years ago, it will be the first offering of its kind for Brioni, whose image — and bottom line — have been built on formal wear and dressing rich Town & Country-style men since its founding in 1945.
As such, it’s a telling sign of how both the financial crisis and changing consumer habits are forcing even the most conservative, family-owned luxury goods makers to adapt to a new world.
Unlike bigger rivals such as Zegna, Brioni has refused to move any of its manufacturing out of Italy to cheaper locales like Mexico.
Nonetheless, the fashion fallout from the global financial crisis has reached even into the rolling hills of the Abruzzo region two-and-half hours east of Rome, where tailors still start their careers as teenage apprentices and pictures of patron saints adorn the walls of the company’s main workshop here.
While the company, which is private, won’t make any specific predictions about its financial performance this year, it concedes the environment is difficult.
“Knock on wood, we will be profitable in 2009,” said the company’s top executive, Andrea Perrone, whose grandfather co-founded Brioni.
Brioni said it managed to make a healthy profit last year. The company said it earned US$45 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, on revenue of about US$283 million, roughly in line with its results in 2007. The introduction of the T-shirt coincides with the rise of a new generation at Brioni, whose tailors regularly measure the likes of Nelson Mandela, Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew for suits and tuxedos. “It’s a provocation for the market,” said Perrone, who is 39. “It shows we can do everything from the shoes all the way to the hat.”
The T-shirt is “a sign Brioni is focusing on a younger clientele and a sign that their loyal clients have changed their lifestyle a lot,” said Armando Branchini, a professor of management at Bocconi University in Milan who also serves as the executive director of the Altagamma Foundation, an association of Italian luxury-goods makers.
The new T-shirt is also a departure for Brioni while still reflecting its tradition.
“It should feel different from Hanes,” sniffed Perrone, a soft-spoken, aristocratic heir who became Brioni’s first sole chief executive last month after being one of a triumvirate of top executives who ran the company since 2006.
“Even if you’re committed to your heritage, you have to be aware of where the market is going,” added Perrone, running his hand over the La Dolce Vita-era Brioni labels from the 1950s and 1960s that adorn the new T-shirt.
The top end of the formal wear market is contracting faster than the general men’s wear segment, according to Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner at the consulting firm Bain & Co who tracks the luxury goods industry. “If you have plenty of beautiful suits in your wardrobe, you can postpone a purchase,” she said.
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