FONTICOLI Nazareno & SAVINI Gaetano (Brioni) (Tailors)

This 1971 high-waisted, double-breasted dinner suit, together with a car coat, describes the progressive tailoring of Rome's extrovert menswear house, Brioni. From the 1954 futuristic space-age suit to the Maharajah styles, which were popular in mid-1960s London, and the elegant tailoring devised for Pierce Brosnan's role as James Bond, Brioni left no avenue unexplored in men's couture. Its colourful silks and metallic threads, rarely seen since the eighteenth century, heralded the "male peacock revolution" in the late 1950s. Even through the use of tunics, bolero jackets, lace and macramé clearly contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, a Brioni blazer epitomized elegance and flaunted wealth in preppie, early 1980s California. Having seen responsible for the first ever men's catwalk show in 1952, Brioni inaugurated prêt-couture six years later, resolving flow production methods within a made-to-measure system. 

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