“In regards to my runway collections, I almost don’t design for men and women anymore. It’s more that I just design clothing that can be worn by a man or a woman. I think we live in a time when that’s very interesting to our customer.” So said Thom Browne to preface a chat about a resort 24 menswear collection that clearly closely echoed his same-season womenswear released last week. Of course, he added, there are differences between the two gender categories in terms of fit. But all of the fabric development was done together. And a large proportion of the garments in each collection are to all intents and purposes twins, albeit with minor variations here and there.
Browne said that runway instinct, now spread to pre-, first exhibited itself in spring 2018’s menswear collection, entitled Why Not? That show featured men in perfectly sharpened pencil skirts in sartorial fabrics and stemmed from Browne’s consideration of how, as infants, we are all effectively dressed in identical garments. It is only as we “develop” that the genders become divided by the boundaries of dress code. Disregarding those divisions has allowed Browne more space to focus on other elements of clothes-making, and as he prepares for his first-ever couture show next month the most significant of these has become quality. He said: “I am putting in front of people something that is as beautifully made as possible.”
Quality in clothing is challenging to assess, so in order to showcase it—and to insert a separate message of inversion and reinvention—Browne sometimes moved the interior elements of his tailoring to the exterior. Look 28 riffed on the naval sartorial tradition by using gold bullion thread to etch the contours of construction on the outside of the classic sailing club double-breasted gold-buttoned blazer. Placed above a sectioned pleated skirt and button-up cardigan both edged in Browne’s signature red, white, and blue stripe and nu-duck boots, the look was simultaneously disruptively unconventional and harmonically proportioned.
Tweed, that woven kaleidoscope, makes a perfect material vehicle for Browne’s philosophy and here was developed in Look 2 into an astonishing melange combining horsehair, grosgrain, suiting fabrics, the house label, and other sub-tweeds. Elsewhere tweed was cut into scenic abstract patterns on suiting or used in panels on multi-skirted jackets and outerwear.
As ever, Browne toured the touchstones of 19th century masculine preppy dress—the itinerary this time round included collegiate jackets, cricket jumpers, and pinstripes—but on each stop added a satisfyingly unsettling twist. More evidently anarchic was the final radial stitched transparent overcoat with Browne’s hit jockstrap lurking beneath. “We’ve sold a lot of jockstraps,” he said. The Little Bo Peep bonnets and floating sheep bags pointed to the post-Hector portage of the season.
