For his men’s resort offering, Thom Browne presents a relaxed counter to the couture craft and corsetry he showed for fall 2021. “I wanted to make a collection that feels very childlike and playful, coming off such a dressed-up and very serious collection,” he says. Symbols from Browne’s youth like kites and propeller planes—toys, he explains, that his parents gave him and his siblings to encourage the idea that anything was possible—are appliqued and intarsia’d into his signature gray wool suits. A recurring bag shape made in the likeness of his dachshund, Hector, has been elongated into a streamliner jet. Pleated kilts, shrunken suits, and round-shoulder jackets with exposed shoulder pads are ideas that carry over from past collections, now paired with nautical sailor caps and ponchos—the first Browne has ever designed. A cotton knit version is at least the size of a tapestry; it took a team of knitters weeks to engineer and make.
Such whimsically constructed pieces are signature Browne. More unexpected are freaky bits of mischief like a trio of gray madras looks composed of “obnoxious” miniskirts layered over kinky trousers—totally skintight and totally without stretch. There’s also a “belly shirt,” as Browne calls it, worn with a revealing suit sure to provoke those with puritanical ideas of gendered dress.
“Over the last 20 years, the collections have evolved, but they haven’t changed,” says Browne. That mix of classicism and surprise speaks to the strength of Browne’s freewheeling-but-strong aesthetic: Anything can be Browne’d, from belly shirts to Bermuda shorts to Bonnie Cashin–ish ponchos.
