Executive Design Director Norbert Stumpfl is a man with a vision blending Brioni’s past and present. The Roman house first launched its menswear line in 1945 and staged the first men’s fashion show in 1952. From that point, their sartorial Italian sensibilities took over the American audience, appearing on Hollywood runways and becoming standard for a chic downtown set like Kirk Douglas and Cary Grant. For Fall 2022, Stumpfl expanded the brand’s designs into womenswear with its first La Donna capsule collection, a diverse line of fluid tailoring for the Brioni woman. The latest Spring/Summer 2025 collection represents the most expansive yet, featuring intricate dinner jackets that take hundreds of hours to embellish.

In a conversation with Document, Stumpfl discusses his inspirations for womenswear, the differences between luxury and being fashionable, and his adoration of the Brioni atelier.

Accompanying this interview, photographer Antonio Ysursa and stylist Morgan Jimenez capture the La Donna Spring/Summer 2025 collection in and around Manhattan, calling back to the house’s early connection to the United States.

Top: Houjing wears shirt and coat by Brioni. Bottom Left: Shirt, blazer, trousers, and shoes by Brioni.
Bottom Right: Shirts by Brioni.

Colin Boyle: Thinking about the Brioni legacy and the legacy of the house, what parts inspire you? What do you feel like you touch back on when you envision a collection?

Norbert Stumpfl: I mean, the house has such an interesting history. I don’t know if you know about it, but it was created by Nazareno Fonticoli, a master tailor, and his business partner Gaetano Savini. They did such incredible things with this little tailoring shop in Rome. They would go outside conventions of fashion. They were really almost avant-garde, using women’s couture fabrics to create men’s jackets. They would create dinner jackets [in colors like fuschia] for the stars who were at the time filming in Rome.

A lot of actors would be really excited about this movement and they would bring it to the states. So this is really like the starting point, not being afraid of things like color and really looking at what’s next? For instance, they were introducing trunk shows. Brioni was the first one who brought the collections abroad, showing it to the clients. Trunk shows became something normal after that. They of course did the first ever men’s show in Florence. Before that, there were just women on the catwalk. In the early ’60s, during a show in New York they flooded the entire floor. So they were really forward thinking. There’s always been a little bit of fearlessness within the brand.

Top: Kaftan, trousers, and shoes by Brioni. Bottom: Shirt, coat, and trousers by Brioni.

Colin: Could you talk a little bit about La Donna, and how the development of these womenswear collections tie into Brioni’s meaning as a house?

Norbert: The La Donna collection actually just started a few seasons ago. It started out as a capsule collection, it was something where women would take garments from men and wear them. It’s just nice to have menswear on women. My wife always takes some coats and jackets from menswear.

We decided to create a little capsule. It was initially like six or seven looks which accompanied the menswear, and in the beginning it was more made to measure for women. Because there was interest, the collection grew every season. Now we present the womenswear on its own and there’s around 20 looks. It’s still a very small and tight collection. Now we are being more experimental with different shapes that can still sit next to our menswear but on equal terms where all the DNA is shared.

Colin: It also acknowledges that the lines between menswear and womenswear are blurring. The womenswear definitely feels housed within some of Brioni’s more masculine codes.

Norbert: Tailoring is the heritage of Brioni, it is our essence, and the essence of craftsmanship. We really wanted to bring this to womenswear. It’s the same [kind of woman] as the man.

There’s [a lot of] tailoring available for women, but it’s always short jackets or very fitted clothes. We wanted to have a more effortless kind of feeling; if you have this really incredible close tailoring it’s not about that. The Italian way is one of ease, where you turn your sleeve or collar and don’t care how it looks, because everybody can see that this is of the highest quality. Perfect is actually boring. We want to create clothing for women who just put it on and forget about it the whole time.

Colin: Who is the Brioni woman? What do you think is the attitude or the spirit that someone wearing La Donna embodies?

Norbert: She’s definitely a woman who knows who she is. She’s quite modern as well, because with my clothes there’s not so much of a seasonal trend. It’s a building up, and you can wear from the first collection to the fifth collection, which I think is the definition of modern.

Colin: So the clothes are perhaps not so precious, they’re actively worn and used.

Norbert: I think they get better with time. Because of the construction, there is a heart inside. It will mold around your body. This is the strength of Brioni in that the clothes look very close to the body, but you can move in them because of all of the hand stitching. So you never feel constricted.

Top Left: Shirt, blazer, and trousers by Brioni. Top Right: Shirt, coat, trousers, and shoes by Brioni. Bottom: Shirt and blazer by Brioni.

Colin: For men, the tradition of Brioni is interesting to me because a lot of people like the ability to keep a garment for years. There’s so many silly buzzwords like ‘fluid tailoring’ or ‘quiet luxury’ that essentially describe something that’s a decades-long practice for houses like Brioni. How do you react to this phenomenon?

Norbert: To be honest we are almost apart from fashion in this kind of little oasis of luxury. Here, everything is done in a certain way. So yes, I’m getting informed of what’s going on in the world, but we still are going our own way as well. Garments have a reason to be there. Yes, maybe now it’s even fashionable, but it’s always been true. It is silly to change garments because they don’t adhere to trends. You have to be stronger than that.

Colin: Do you have any stand out pieces from the Spring/Summer collection, something you’re really proud of either in terms of construction or just the final product?

Norbert: There’s a few pieces that are quite a big step forward for us. There’s color, which is quite new for us. We are experimenting more with shapes, which is quite fun as well because you can be a little bit more free [with the silhouette]. But then there’ s also extreme pieces in the collection, like an embroidered coat which you don’t see on the lookbook, but it’s been made especially for the presentation in Milan. It’s a tuxedo coat and it’s embroidered with threads like a knot. It’s almost like celebrating the starting point of the making of a garment at Brioni, because everything starts with a knot. There are something like 8,000 crystal knots on the coat. It creates this fur effect.

Top: Shirt, coat, trousers, and shoes by Brioni. Bottom Left: Coat by Brioni.
Bottom Right: Kaftan, trousers, and shoes by Brioni.

Colin: How many hours of work was it to construct that jacket? It seems extremely intense.

Norbert: So apparently one knot takes one minute to two minutes and thirty seconds. And we have 8000. So there’s a lot of work. It makes our tailors so proud. It’s really showing the best that Brioni can do, even though we’ve always operated on such a high level.

[The tailors] want to be challenged as well. It’s such a nice feeling when these garments come out of the factory and all of them look amazing. It’s just so much fun.

Shirt and coat by Brioni.

Model Houjing Cui at NY Models. Hair Rei Kawauchi. Make-up Chiho Omae at LGA Management. Stylist assistant Lucy McCabe.