By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ


PENNE, Italy - The fashion house Brioni is best known for dressing James Bond in black tie and creating handsewn custom suits that start at $4,000 and run as high as $47,000. But this fall it is adding something a lot more humble to its lineup: a T-shirt.

With luxurious touches like handstitched Italian embroidery and a price tag of $250, it won’t be an ordinary T-shirt, of course. Still, while other high-end Italian fashion companies like Armani and Ermenegildo Zegna crossed that threshold years ago, it will be the first offering of its kind for Brioni, whose image - and bottom line - have been built on formal wear since its founding in 1945.

It’s a telling sign of how both the financial crisis and changing consumer habits are forcing even the most conservative family-owned luxury-goods makers to adapt to a new world.

Unlike such bigger rivals as Zegna, Brioni has refused to move any of its manufacturing out of Italy to cheaper locales like Mexico. Nonetheless, the fashion fallout from the global financial crisis has reached even into the rolling hills of the Abruzzo region east of Rome, where tailors start their careers as teenage apprentices.

While the company, which is private, won’t make any specific predictions about its financial performance this year, it concedes the environment is difficult. Its top executive, Andrea Perrone, whose grandfather cofounded the company, said that with luck, Brioni would be profitable this year.

The company said it managed to make a healthy profit last year. It said it earned 32 million euros ($45 million) before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, on revenue of about 200 million euros, roughly in line with its results in 2007.

The introduction of the T-shirt coincides with the rise of a new generation at Brioni, whose tailors regularly measure the likes of Nelson Mandela and Prince Andrew for suits and tuxedos. “It’s a provocation for the market,” said Mr. Perrone, who is 39. “It shows we can do everything from the shoes all the way to the hat. Even if you’re committed to your heritage, you have to be aware of where the market is going.”

The top end of the formal wear market is contracting faster than the general men’s wear segment, according to Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner at the consulting firm Bain & Company, who tracks the luxury goods industry. “If you have plenty of beautiful suits in your wardrobe, you can postpone a purchase,” she said.

For Brioni, as with other luxury brands, casual sales have been about the only bright spot amid the sharp fall-off in the market. An added blow, as much to the company’s pride as to the bottom line, was the loss of the James Bond account to Tom Ford, who dressed Daniel Craig in the latest 007 film, “Quantum of Solace.”

Brioni has benefited from what Mr. Perrone calls a “Silk Road strategy,” opening new stores in emerging markets like Russia, the Middle East, India and China. That has helped bring down the American share of Brioni’s sales to 30 percent, from 50 percent three years ago. In the downturn, Brioni has been forced to reduce the shifts of its 1,400 tailors, seamstresses and cutters in Abruzzo. The Italian government has stepped in to make up some of the losses in workers’ paychecks.

“Abruzzo was quite poor, a closed society, but people were farmers and had food and being a tailor was a good job,” said Luciano Morelli, who began working at age 10 about 60 years ago and is now a master tailor who teaches teenage apprentices at Brioni’s tailoring school. “It was a region of tailors because you could trade 50 kilos of flour for a jacket, or a pair of pants for some eggs.”

Bartering may no longer be in style in Abruzzo, but the old habits endure, said Angelo Petrucci, Brioni’s chief master tailor. “The fabrics have gotten much lighter, but some of the techniques we use are 200 years old,” he said.

Brioni’s hand-sewn custom suits cost as much as $47,000; its new T-shirt, $250. A teacher explains the art of tailoring to an apprentice.