The New Brioni, Shaken and Stirred

PARIS — The first time Justin O’Shea, 37, the new creative director of the Roman tailoring label Brioni, saw his finished debut collection for the brand, he was sitting in the basement of a nightclub in Paris with — in case of emergency — a well-stocked and easily accessible bar.

It was last week, seven days before his first show, which will take place Monday, during the Paris women’s couture season.

“I was so frightened,” Mr. O’Shea said. “If this is bad, my life’s over. But I started trying everything on, and it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Whether the brand’s traditional clientele will agree — and whether it can draw new ones who do — is the question. Mr. O’Shea’s appointment in April represented a revolutionary new image for Brioni, an expletive lobbed into a neatly tailored history. (Mr. O’Shea swears plentifully, and his conversation was peppered with amplifying expletives. Here and throughout, they have been redacted, but for the full effect, imagine him describing five-figure suiting in language better suited to HBO than to network TV.)

Brioni, founded in 1945, has a history of men’s wear innovation; it staged the first men’s wear runway show, in 1952. But it had lately settled into the role of a tailor to the superrich and not particularly fashionable, despite attempts to introduce more casual and fashion-forward designs under a succession of creative directors.

Its bread and butter is suiting — 95 percent of Brioni’s sales are in clothing, said its chief executive, Gianluca Flore — of the ultraexpensive and timeless variety. They begin at $4,900 off the rack, and have been worn by heads of state, potentates of industry and celebrities, real and fictional. (James Bond has worn Brioni, and though the company declines to comment on its customers, so has Donald J. Trump.) The appointment of Mr. O’Shea, tattooed to the knuckles with a metalhead’s beard and an avid following among street-style photographers, is a bid for reinvention. He has no design experience and no history with Brioni. (Before Brioni, he favored suits made for him by the New York tailor Jake Mueser; less than a year ago, he tried a Brioni suit and didn’t find it to his taste.)