Brioni: Sharp Dudes in Slick Suits

PARIS — Is it possible that Jay Z said it better than any critic could in characterizing the radical brand reset that the storied Italian tailoring house Brioni is undergoing at the hands of Justin O’Shea, a charming, hard-drinking, muscled, unrepentantly macho and lavishly inked Australian retailer?

“We be big pimpin’,” the song “Big Pimpin’ ” goes, about the only lyrics suitable for publication here. “Spending G’s.”

Big pimpin’ about says it. For Mr. O’Shea’s debut Brioni show on Monday in Paris, he restricted the audience to just 95 guests (including members of Metallica; the heavy metal rockers feature in the new Brioni ad campaign) and held it inside the shiny new travertine box that the architect David Chipperfield created for the brand on the fashionable Rue St.-Honoré.

Mr. O’Shea comes to Brioni from a successful stint with the German luxury e-commerce site MyTheresa.com, where he goosed profits with his canny knack for understanding brand narratives. “I’ve seen a million and one shows, and I know what you need to do is create a mood and a moment in time,” Mr. O’Shea said during a preview of the show several days before its runway debut. “I want to put the value back in the Brioni label so that it stands for something more than thread.”

Threads is an apt anachronism to describe the type of suits that inspired Mr. O’Shea’s vision. Born in 1979, Mr. O’Shea looked to an era of Blaxploitation flicks, sharp dudes in slick suits; their furry chests visible in the open neck of silk shirts, like the ones he wears exclusively; mohair blend jackets with modified pagoda shoulders; high-waisted trousers; clothes in a chewy-candy palette of caramel, butterscotch and toffee.