The obvious headline of Thom Browne’s pre-fall 2022 menswear collection would be “Lashes and Lobsters.” Models sport inches-long falsies and tote leather lobster bags and backpacks in a display that is so provocatively Surrealist it recalls Elsa Schiaparelli’s daring 1937 dress with a crustacean across the crotch. Browne’s version relies less on the obvious pun of that exoskeletal creature—he says the lobster is just the latest of the animals he has welcomed into his zoo—and more an examination of the beauty of skirting on men.
It’s a continuation of ideas he started nearly 20 years ago but have taken hold of late, with Pete Davidson, Dan Levy, and Lee Pace wearing Browne’s skirts on the red carpet. Business for mid-shin, pleated skirts is booming, Browne reported over Zoom.
This season he’s constructed half-pleated, half-straight versions of his classic kilt, worn with “one-and-a-half”–breasted blazers with self-tipped seams and covered buttons. Modular dresses in melton wool carry over from the spring 2022 collection, now in warm dove gray and mossy celadon. A selection of slim, sexy black-tie options, from midi-skirts to short suits, close out the collection.
Saving the best for last, there are also jade green floral intarsias. Those of us who have followed Browne for the past two decades may think that he’s tapped all his personal references—the runner, the Olympian, the Catholic school boy—but a wise designer always leaves himself room for more. Just before the pandemic hit, Browne and his partner, Andrew Bolton, purchased a new home in Manhattan, which they spent two years renovating. This fall they finally moved in, and their central aesthetic compromise was the hand-painted jade green floral wallpaper above their bed. The same flowers are cut in furs and wools, winding up on overcoats and embroidered into jackets. “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything as personal,” said Browne as his dog, Hector, nestled into his lap. The couple’s home, he says, will be off-limits to design mags, but this simple shared gesture is open to everyone to try on and try out. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that who you spend your life with matters. I can’t say a Thom Browne suit will find you love, but in the TB family, there is always kinship and kilts.
