Thom Browne’s headquarters are in Grand Central Station, one of New York’s most famous landmarks- A location featured in innumerable books and movies, where tales are told against a setting that conjures a bygone era and a mythology that transforms the stage into a proscenium. Because of this, Thom Browne’s debuts travel Haute Couture in Paris. Thom Browne’s first Haute Couture show at the Palais Garnier in Paris transformed the fashion show into a performance, using the runway as a stage, the guests as extras, and the crowd as a backdrop of cardboard cutouts wearing grey suits and ties. The distinctive components of a station, including the pigeons that enter it, the gargoyles that adorn its roofs, the passengers themselves, the uniformed conductor, and even the train, are all transformed into components to be sublimated into sartorial clothing that further expands and elevates the hyper-defined language of greys and preppy uniforms with which Browne narrates our times.
The model Alek Wek, seated on a makeshift railway platform on the Palais Garnier stage, was the star of the show. According to Browne, she plays a woman who is reflecting on her life and how she hasn’t always appreciated what she has, as paper spectators in grey suits observed from seats in the opera facing the audience. The show’s climax was the fantasy picture of her life and how she was happy. The idea may be a little autobiographical but here we are talking about a designer who will soon mark 20 years in the industry and was just named the CFDA chairman.
The show began with a grey suit and expanded into a fantasy of collections that have included items inspired by everything from twisted toys to baseballs to high-fashion takes on lobsters, Cinderella, and the Little Prince. The grey theme persisted throughout the collection, which featured parts of Browne’s traditional American sportswear filtered through the lens of couture “for one night only,” according to the designers’ presentation notes. The cast wore magnificent makeup created by Eugene Suleiman.
Thom Browne’s debuts travel Haute Couture in Paris presented a scene with porters dressed in roped shoulder jackets and pleated skirts, a vast cloche bell, pebbled leather luggage, and even fake pigeons, including one played by American theatre producer Jordan Roth wearing a pigeon headpiece. The scene was inspired by the solo traveler wandering through the train station. Exaggerated forms with dramatic a-lines, variations of the tweed and pinstripe, and textures in various colors of grey dominate the presentation. Stripes of silver and gold sequins were sewn on patchwork checks, short suits, and coats. For extra texture, costumes are braided with 3D clouds and feathered bodysuits.
Fully canvassed coats and tailoring with nautical details like a mermaid with scales made of gold bullion and crabs, lighthouses, ropes, and anchors are also seen on the runway. Along with embroidered coat dresses encased in trompe l’oeil body silk drapes and a full-length mixed tweed trench with hand embroidered grey and gold bullion thread and an oversized collar and epaulets, there were also dresses covered in sequins, molded jacket skirts, and brogue platforms.
Most models wore broken-doll-like meets hospital head wrappings with off-kilter supersized bun hairpieces and sky-high heels, giving the show a slightly gloomy and macabre vibe. Little skirts and uniform-like separates predominated. Overall, it was a peculiar and depressing presentation with many signatures of Browne humor.
Accessories include oversized Mr. Thom and Hector bags, new Bermuda bags, and tortoiseshell platform heels.
The collection’s incredibly elaborate and meticulous work on the runway may have yet to be apparent. Still, up close, it revealed evidence of several elements that were quite extraordinary and peculiar to the Browne universe. Because the railway station serves as the collection’s setting rather than an exotic location, the story it wishes to tell is a summer journey from the past. This desire never comes true or is realized in a different fantasy. When the entire variety of a symbolic world passes us by as we wait to get where we need to go, Browne seems to be telling us that the journey and not the destination matters.