brendan mullane

brendan mullane
H U
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A
N E W
Y O R K
C I T Y
A F F A I R
Story by
victoria camblin
Portrait by
marco pietracupa
_
Not long ago, the Italian luxury brand Brioni closed down its women’s wear line, was acquired by the PPR luxury conglomerate, and, in the Summer of 2012, announced the appointment of a new Creative Director. Enter the British-born Brendan
Mullane, fresh from Givenchy and having held positions at exclusive labels from Hermès to Alexander McQueen. Brioni
has been the official suit of James Bond since the mid-1990s, and the unofficial suit of the European aristocrat, of Golden
Era Hollywood giants like Clark Gable and Henry Fonda, of the crime boss John Gotti, and of the mogul Donald Trump—
enticing a Kennedy and a Bush here and there along the way—since its founding in 1945. It is a prime example of the
older European house tasked with maintaining the integrity and values of a prestigious heritage, while growing its product
portfolio into a fast-paced 21st century of emerging markets, hyper-mobile consumers, and rapid-fire technological growth.
Yet Mullane is unphased. Here he sheds light on an approach to our volatile times that is part tradition, part intuition, and
every bit about what underpins the Brioni man, from his psychology to his jacket lining.
You have said in the past that the 21st century man has
evolved from wanting to appear powerful, to wanting to
be desired—something that men hadn’t previously been
interested in? I think that is the case, though it’s not just a
question of male versus female roles. Yes, today, it’s no longer the case that a man has to chase a woman, and there’s
something really quite flattering about the idea of being desired. But that feeling of desirability comes entirely from
confidence—if you discover confidence, then you become
more desirable. And I think that in the past couple of years,
men have come around to that idea. You can see it in the way
they carry themselves: they are starting to perceive the way
they dress as a way to enhance their confidence again. There’s
something passionate, and also something reassuring about
dressing thoughtfully. So dressing well is also a kind of social reinforcement? It really can give you a sense of purpose
inside—not everyone believes this, but it’s true. You can
dress a certain way and completely change how you are perceived. I put on a three-piece suit and went to dinner the
other day, and people looked at me in a completely different
way—people that I’ve known for a really long time. Not to
sound too philosophical, but it’s almost like you breathe new
life into yourself. In the way that putting on a mask is liberating, traditionally. But you’re not getting dressed to hide
behind the suit. It’s far more extrovert in a sense, because
you’re getting dressed to attract specific attention to your94 _ ISSUE V / VOL. II
self, not to protect yourself from it. You enter that circle of
desirability and feel confident; you’re not scared of having a
conversation, of being introduced to new people. You can be
outgoing, you can push the boundaries of the person you
normally are. If you don’t usually wear three-piece suits to
dinner, what is your personal go-to look? When I’m off, I
wear jeans and a t-shirt. But when I’m at work I really like to
practice what I preach. I wore that three-piece suit with a
crew neck cashmere silk jumper—not with a shirt and tie. If
you do it in a certain way, putting on a suit can be very contemporary; it doesn’t need to conform. I like to think about
it in terms of choice: you’re really choosing something. There
is a thought process behind getting to that point where you
think, “I know I look good in this suit.” Have things
evolved from being about conforming to how a threepiece suit should be put together, to being about the sheer
quality of the materials you’re wearing? Yes, for sure. I always say that in times where people might be a bit nervous—
in times of crisis—you go for something that is “safe,” that
has guaranteed success. You find that in amazingly high
quality materials, just as you find it in really simple, really
good food. You just know it, you feel secure. And there’s an
industry understanding there that if you really want to have
a suit that is one-of-a-kind and that is going to last you your
whole life, then you come to Brioni. Because you know it.
It’s an educated decision. You mention this idea of a fashion
VOL. II / ISSUE V _ 95
TWO-PIECE SUIT
and SWEATER, all by
Brioni.
COAT, SWEATER,
TROUSERS and
LEATHER GLOVES,
all by Brioni.
Photography
txema yeste
Fashion editor
francesco sourigues
VOL. II / ISSUE V _ 97
Cashmere COAT with fur
collar, TURTLENECK and
TROUSERS, all by Brioni.
model
Louis Stayaert at VNY
hair
Danilo for Pantene
a t T h e Wa l l G r o u p
make-up
Ty r on Ma chhausen at Br idge
using MAC Cosmetics
fashion coordinator
Gabriella Norberg
producer
We i - L i Wa n g a t B r a c h f e l d N Y
fa s h i on a s s i s ta n t
Adrian Manuel
p ho t o a s s i s ta n t 1 s t
Jose Antonio Lopez
p ho t o a s s i s ta n t 2 n d
Nick Brinley
g r o om i n g a s s i s ta n t p ort ra i t
brendan mullane
Andrew Guida at Close Up Milano
p ho t o a s s i s ta n t p ort ra i t
Angelo Iannone.
education—how does one acquire that kind of “intelligence”? I was interviewed in China recently, and I was
amazed by how young the journalists were, and how much
they knew. In Europe there’s a kind of hand-me-down mentality. It’s a generational thing—your father shopped here,
and bought his ties there, and you would automatically follow. Now you have a developing market that is educated
through research, through communication, through travel.
There’s a very contemporary discourse there, and it’s moving
very fast. It’s also important to have a brand with a very clear
identity with these new markets. Brioni also has that. The
heritage is hidden inside the suit; you can open the lining
and rip it to bits and you won’t see these details, but they’re
inside. On that worldwide level, luxury brands must consider how they reach out and adapt to new markets, which
are changing very rapidly. How is Brioni—traditional,
European—approaching these new consumer groups?
The difference I’ve seen in China in a year is just crazy.
Buildings are going up, the architecture is über-modern…
yet there is this real pull towards traditional detail. It’s a
good thing for a brand like ours—an unfair advantage,
even—that these markets have moved forward so fast. These
new customers are demanding, and I think that on a certain
level, at Brioni, we’re used to that. We have that level of
service, that level of product; we can meet the expectations
of an uncompromising new consumer. So how has the “Brioni man” evolved, globally? When I think of the “Brioni
man” I think of 5 or 6 men in one. He literally leaves the
office and gets on a private jet on Friday to go skiing in the
mountains. Or maybe he’s going to Cannes and he’s going
on a boat. We can’t just imagine that he’s only wearing a suit,
or that he literally just goes to work and does nothing else,
and you have to accommodate this. Consumers are also just
becoming more difficult, and men in particular becoming
more aware. A woman may take something back to a shop if
something’s wrong, but you know a man won’t? Instead you
just lose him as a customer. Men really don’t like to take
things back to a shop. Why is that? It’s not laziness. I think
it’s because taking it back would mean accepting that you
made the wrong decision—accepting that the suit doesn’t
really fit, or that you should have invested more time into
choosing it. Men are also beginning to enjoy a slower shopping experience. They like to be spoilt, and these are things
we have to consider within the shop environment. You don’t
just need to make the customer desirable, you have to make
the whole shopping experience desirable as well, right down
to how thick the carpet is for when he takes off his shoes—if
he has a really thin pair of socks on, he might not want to be
standing on a cold floor. It’s a really keen detail, but that’s
how I am, and I imagine that if I’m that way, the customers
must be too. Maybe it’s also about spoiling yourself, about
letting yourself be a bit egotistical, say, by wearing something that has mink lining on the inside, but that nobody on
the outside can see. You know it’s there. You know you work
hard, you know you’re moving at the extremely fast pace of
the world, and you also know it’s time to enjoy yourself. Do
you think the metaphorical “mink lining” is like a refuge
or a counterpoint to the high-speed 21st century lifestyle?
I think so. You know the “comfort zone”? It creates a special
area; it’s your “special thing.” You take these luxuries with
you when you’re constantly travelling; you want that comfort, because you are going from A-Z and these are the
things that keep you in the know of what you are. Keeping
a heritage brand fresh is a constant negotiation between
the past and the future, but people can be cliché when they
talk about “timelessness.” How is Brioni navigating the
predictable vocabulary? I never think about terms like
“timeless elegance” or whatever. I just came to Brioni and
found this incredibly desirable brand, a really big diamond in
the rough. Now, I’m starting to polish it. You have to be respectful of what is really working in menswear, and aware of
what you can do to make people start looking at it differently. Sometimes people will think I did something completely new, when it’s a jacket Brioni has doing for a very long
time, and people just hadn’t really seen it before. We’re not
trying to be another brand; we’re trying to be Brioni. Lots of
traditional brands are bringing in new creative directors, but
Brioni was doing things in the 1950s that would be considered completely wild now. And some of the master tailors at
Brioni today are younger than I am. So you can imagine
what innovation is possible inside the company: we’re passing craftsmanship down through the generations, but we’re
also travelling as a society. The point of being contemporary
is that you’re always going to be “of the moment”— which is
accumulative; it’s all of the time. And there is a shared language between the men who buy Brioni. When you put together a contemporary silhouette you create a contemporary
language that is a product of that history, that tradition, that
craftsmanship. Then people start to speak that language,
worldwide. My job is to oversee its typography.
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