Taking a breather from gray flannel, the foundation of his namesake house, Thom Browne leaned into the principle building block of couture — beige muslin — for his sophomore high-fashion collection.
Lean might not be a strong enough verb: He draped all the seats in the nave of Les Arts Décoratifs in beige muslin, dispatched personalized beige muslin smocks for all guests to wear, and paraded mostly beige muslin toiles — usually the first prototype — as the final garments.
“I thought the concept was so pure, and I wanted to really stay true to it,” the designer said during a preview.
While some looks were made strictly in various weights of plain muslin, such as a long, narrow skirt with a zillion covered buttons, Browne embellished more than a little, with the opening coat requiring roughly 20,000 hours of hand-beading to approximate a seersucker surface.
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“A work-in-progress for the whole show,” Browne said, showing off some toiles bearing beige prototype embroideries, exposed shoulder pads stacked in multiples, and hand-basting galore — providing a glimpse of what clients see when they come to the salon for a fitting, and to place orders.
The show was long and slow, but perked up once Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France” began huffing and puffing on the loudspeakers.
Browne experimented with a broader range of silhouettes, parading everything from supersized peacoats with panels of fuzzy horsehair embroideries to body-skimming dresses partially embroidered with anatomical features like abdominal muscles, or dense laurel leaves.
Those laurel leaves, and the muscular tug of war that took place on the muslin runway before the show, nodded to the 2024 Paris Olympics which kick off later this month. Browne’s sport references stretched from the discus throwers of ancient Greece, which appeared on the dazzling finale blazers in bronze, silver and gold, to modern-day running cleats tacked to the bottom of radical heels with voided-out platform soles.
This coed show saw Browne explore tailoring in a Cubist vein — many jackets and coats lopsided and only half supersized. He still needs to train his dressmaking muscles. Anh Duong did her best to sell a strangling shirt and mermaid gown composed of multiple muslin straps.
Browne said he plans to remain on the couture calendar, frequency TBD, encouraged by a strong response to his debut last July, which introduced his brand to a new audience. “People really appreciated the quality, and sometimes I think the quality is the most fashionable aspect of what I do,” he said.
The American designer said he has 60 appointments booked over five days, suggesting keen interest in what a New York-based atelier can turn out.
Designers tend to tire quickly of their last collection, Browne included. “You’ll see a lot of gray flannel in the next collection,” he promised.
