If you didn’t know Justin O’Shea before, get ready to be fully acquainted. The tattooed, bearded Australian is the new creative director of esteemed Italian house Brioni, and he’s just taken the fashion house in a whole new direction.
The street style icon and fbrormer womenswear buyer was recruited back in March of this year, and with next to nothing in the way of formal design training, it’s fair to say his course of action has been fairly unpredictable.
With a sweeping rebranding of a magnitude which competes with the likes of Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent, O’Shea has departed from Brioni’s luxurious, James Bond rooted past and has instead enlisted the help of internationally acclaimed heavy metal legends Metallica to front the new campaign.
The members of the band are featured wearing white tuxedos and black suits in a campaign which oozes a distinctly rock ‘n’ roll vibe. It signifies a new era of Brioni tailoring, one that is flashy, sexual, somewhat sinister, but above all, confident.
Individual images of each band member feature a new suit style from Brioni, reportedly termed ‘The Continental’. There are no signs of Metallica’s trademark shredded denim and death metal t-shirts here, instead, an amped-up Italian silhouette with wider shoulders, a narrow waist, and a longer body is the attire of choice.
Another striking change is the logo. Gone is the red handwriting and in is the bolder, more Gothic script. Although rather fitting with the newly revived, edgy image, the logo is actually inspired by the house’s first official logo of the 1950s.
So, with such a dramatic shift in brand image, all eyes will be firmly fixed on Brioni’s Spring/Summer 2017 show at Paris Couture Week. With O’Shea seemingly incorporating so much of his own cool image into the new collection, will he trigger the revival of the suit among the younger generation? Watch this space…