I hate to start with a proverb, but after a resort-themed conversation with Thom Browne, I can’t knock the saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” from my head. That idea seems to relate to a lot of what Browne makes: You can show people his suits and shrunken dresses, but you can’t turn them into believers until they slip a thigh into a short suit to understand just how fun and freeing Browne’s garments are. Once they do, the Browne universe is their oyster, though the designer has his own proverb of sorts for it: “I’m asking people to come to the edge of the pool and dive in however they want to.”
Diving into his women’s resort collection provides endless opportunities to make it one’s own. The cropped and provocative “belly shirts” and skintight trousers of his men’s resort lineup give way to a madly layered proposition for women: skirts over pants, dresses over oxford shirts, blazers over cardigans over corsets over shirts. Everything is topped off with a hat, a Hector Browne bag, a kite envelope clutch, and a pair of Browne’s signature four-stripe socks. The childlike spirit of wonder and possibility central to the collection, represented through cloud and aviation motifs, puts the wearer in the driver’s seat, able to choose her own quirky or posh Browne stylings. (Still, Browne “strongly suggests” you try the skirt over pants.)
Within this densely populated array of merchandise, you’ll find some new ideas too. An A-line minidress, not unheard of but rare in Browne’s oeuvre, was inspired by a pre-pandemic dinner in Paris. “A good friend walked into a restaurant in an insanely short dress, and everybody turned and looked,” Browne recalled. Whether you layer it over pants, another skirt, or just some patterned tights, the A-line number is the kind of thing that could turn even the most ardent punk into a Browne-style prep.
