No one loves a fashion fantasy more than Thom Browne. Guessing where his imagination will go next is part of the thrill of the show. Still, his brand has been built on a down-to-business aesthetic, one that begins and ends with a gray flannel suit.
At Browne’s Fall show this afternoon, the first troop of models was clearly on the clock, each one marching towards a desk that was furnished with an old typewriter and a chic mid-century modern lamp. After last season’s death-trap heels, the click-clack of sensible brogues against the wooden floor was a reassuring sound. Browne ditched his curious fetish for masks, too. Instead, his women had monocles and spectacles suspended in front of their eyes, all the better to see the runway and the world.
On that sure footing, Browne proposed three distinct uniforms for Fall. The first, his signature: an ankle-nipped pantsuit; the second, a bourgeois pleated skirtsuit; the third a midi-length sheath cut loose through the body. Browne tends to twist all notions of perceived reality in his clothes, and trompe l’oeil motifs gave the illusion of layered tailoring. There were some highly intricate applications of the idea, including one dress that appeared like a pointillist reimagining of a suit. Look close enough and you could trace the minuscule pearls that studded the outline of a tie, a shirt, and the three-piece skirtsuit. It was tough to pick standouts, given the couture-like trimmings that were applied to virtually every piece. One look appeared like a smorgasbord of textured red, white, and blue tweeds, for example.
Several portraits of Lady Una Troubridge by Romaine Brooks, the 1920s French artist who was known for her grayscale paintings of women in androgynous clothing, were writ large in the collection. In the case of one cropped tuxedo suit, Brooks’s portrait was even bigger than life-size. Ultimately though, Browne was referencing his own canon, specifically his first menswear show at Pitti 10 years ago. This time around there were no elaborate flights of fancy, just Thom Browne at his most exquisite and essential. His female fans won’t have much trouble putting that fashion notion to work.
