Fade To Grey. Thom Browne AW23 Couture

July 4, 2023July 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

It’s quite shocking that Thom Browne officially showed couture just now. Pretty much every collection he has presented in the last couple of seasons is haute level. His entrance into the Parisian schedule couldn’t be more dramatic. The audience were seated on the stage of Garnier Opera house. Then the curtain went up. And they gasped at the sight: the red and gold auditorium was entirely populated by three thousand black and white cut-out illustrations of someone who looked very much like Thom himself. You had to wonder: was there to be something autobiographical in the formal introduction as a couturier he was about to make on this storied stage? Well, there was definitely a momentous sense of occasion in it for him. “It’s really special – the idea of taking almost American sportswear, the tailoring we do, and bringing it into a couture setting,” he said. “I thought it was important, even in representing American fashion.” The collection was heavily costume-y and theatrical in every possible sense. To the strains of Visage’s “Fade to Grey,”Alek Wek walked up the aisle and onto the stage wearing – what else – a gray Thom Browne jacket and kilt. She sat on a pile of gray luggage, and things commenced around her. There were Thom Browne gray suits and coats in multitudes, all strictly narrow in silhouette, but each almost a vignette in itself. There were patchworks of small country town landscapes, and seasides with sailboats. There were elaborate brocades, Prince of Wales checks, coats and short-suits embroidered with silver and gold sequined stripes. One coat had a pattern of 3D clouds woven into it.

Strange symbolic people began to come and go. Eleven characters dressed as bells, with bell-hats and enormous swollen patchworked coats and bells as spurs on their heels. Pigeon-people – one being Jordan Roth – in feathery bodysuits emerging from huge hip-level blazers. The drama took sinister turns. Bells on the soundtrack began to take on a funereal tone. A woman in extravagant black Edwardiana visited and left. And then another, in white. Ultimately, there was a visitation of someone in a white sequined coat, with a conceptual train on their head. Stephen Jones had obviously been working overtime, too. Then finally, a bride in a white coat-dress. Browne related the script, a dark psychodrama with a happy ending. “The main character was sitting at the station, thinking about her life and not being very happy. And then all of a sudden she sees all of her fantasies walking in,” he related. “She was planning on drowning in her sorrows. So that was the reason for all the underwater kind of things – the preppy East Coast iconography that I play with all the time. But then she realizes her life was actually better than she thought. So she didn’t get on the train.” Hard to be sure, but it seemed like a very American story about redemption and triumph – over depression and set-back. In any case, Browne was beaming.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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The Little Price. Thom Browne AW23

February 15, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Thom Browne became the Chairman of CFDA, and his return home – to New York Fashion Week – felt like a promise of some sort of new, creative chapter. But his autumn-winter 2023 collection was a usual affair for the designer: theatrical gestures, cartoon-ish clothes that have more in common with costumes, and an exhausting reinterpretation of the tweed jacket. There was of course a background story for the context. “The Little Prince” was the reference point (Browne heavily resorts to literature lately). The attraction, the designer said backstage afterwards, was “how the story says that children actually see more than adults do. That was really the separation between the more strict tailoring and the more conceptual tailoring – that the kids actually saw things more interesting. Because I like to see things like that.” Browne uses his runways for story telling – “for me the shows are pure creativity, I don’t think about the business and commerce at all,” he said – and he stuck quite close to the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novella. An aircraft pilot and a little prince stumbled around the downed plane, taking their time, the former in a quilted space suit trimmed in Browne’s signature red, white, and blue stripes, and the latter in a too-big jacket and gold knits that matched his hair. A group of models in intarsia’d silk dresses representing the six planets visited by the Little Prince prior to his meeting the pilot emerged next. They were followed by the “adults” Browne was talking about, in strict but supersized tailoring, who themselves were followed by “kids” in Comme Des Garçons-like deconstructed suits, shirts, and ties layered over precisely fitted sheaths. It was only at the end that Browne deviated from the script. The Little Prince goes missing or perhaps dies for his lost love, but the designer wanted a happy conclusion, and so Precious Lee assumed the form of an angel and rescued our hero from his melancholy.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Browneian. Thom Browne Pre-Fall 2023

December 20, 2022December 19, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

At first glance, Thom Browne‘s pre-fall 2023 collection has a much more sober spirit than spring, with its shades of navy and gray, and its more typically Browneian silhouettes. But Thom’s clothes typically reward close inspection – and you’ll find humor in them too. See the intarsia’d double-breasted coat in which a lifeboat full of sailors is dwarfed by the giant sperm whale, or the tailored skirt suit in a wallpaper print depicting the final battle at sea between Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. On the accessories front, Hector the bag has made some new friends in the form of not just the victorious whale, but also the Pequod, the doomed ship. About this season’s silhouettes. Though there’s a’60s-short shift or two, Browne’s instinct was to cut his tailoring lean and long, often layering pants underneath skirt shapes to extend the line. Accessorizing the tweed separates with tweed tights created a similar elongating effect. Remarkable.

And now, have some TB magic this Christmas…

Thom Browne Fringed Herringbone Wool-tweed Blazer

Thom Browne Grosgrain-trimmed Cable-knit Cotton Polo Shirt

Thom Browne Merino Wool and Mohair-blend Mini Wrap Skirt

Thom Browne Hector Dog-Shaped Leather Belt Bag

Thom Browne Men’s Light Cotton Mid Calf 4 Bar Sock

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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What’s Hot (20.10.22)

October 20, 2022October 16, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Make A Scene. Thom Browne SS23

October 7, 2022October 6, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Thom Browne, as usual, delivered something more than a fashion show. His spring-summer 2023 presentation was a sort of dreamy and very dramatic performance. In his own words, it was “an American prom mixed with Cinderella mixed with the Paris Opera.” Gwendoline Christie provided a scene to remember. She emerged in a full-length, single-breasted, white-piped, braided blazer and some marvelous golden sandals with little effigies of Browne’s dachshund, Hector, at the front of each foot. After a slow mosey around the golden halls, she returned and began spritzing herself with cologne and brushing her locks. And then she told the guests what was to come: “Thom loves his little stories – and this is going to be a very long story.” And the story went a little bit like this: four rouge-lipped hot boys came and removed Christie’s dressing table, wearing quintessential Browne gray tailoring and kilts: salarymen at a Scottish reel. Then came 20 opera coats – the first in a tricolored arrangement – with collegiate numbers on each back. The came five frock coats and three swing skirts with petticoats, plus one white witch extra. And then all 20 coat wearers returned with their unders revealed: all polka-dot tailoring and pastels and peekaboo underwear. The best section ran 52 to 56, when the punks invaded the assembly. Vivienne Westwood was an unavoidable comparison, but in a Thom-Browne-kind-of-way.