Thom Browne and Andrew Bolton are easily fashion’s most dapper duo. This season, Browne turned to his significant other for inspiration—although not for the way he dresses, but for the way he approaches his role as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. As Browne explained, he wanted to think about his clothes the way that Bolton thinks about the garments in his shows: as objéts, exemplary works of craftsmanship. Browne has long applied exacting standards to the make of his clothes; this time out, he raised the bar another notch. But he also turned his attention to pieces that were meant to stand on their own.
There were two central themes here, both evolved from ideas Browne has explored in the past. The most emphasized theme was trompe l’oeil tailoring, in particular dresses that imitated the look of layered button-down, tie, vest, and jacket by means of intricate intarsia construction. Though the effect was formal, the underlying silhouettes of the day dresses were very easy—mostly lean, square-cut sheaths. For night, on the other hand, Browne didn’t stint on the pizzazz, piling on heaps of bead embroidery. A yet more casual take on the concept was found in Browne’s knitwear, where he marked his first application of the trompe l’oeil tailoring technique to that medium.
The other key look here was a deconstructed shirtdress, made to appear like two shirtdresses knotted together at the waist. Again, Browne has played with this idea before, but what felt new was the lightness of the execution, which came through particularly clearly in the shirtdress in silk organza. Even skeptics of Browne’s think-y deconstruction could see the appeal. And that lightness of tone carried through elsewhere in the collection, to the corduroy khakis embroidered with penguins—this season’s hero animal—to the down-quilted puffer jackets in pebbled leather. There was something a little insouciant about Browne’s non-virtual tailoring, with a new, ’70s-inspired jacket cut added to the lineup. Overall, though, the collection was more about its parts than its whole—which was by design. Browne’s goal here was to attend to individual garments, one by one, the same way you would treat a work of art.
