Review ofThom Browne Fall 2023 Couture Fashion Show
Victory Lap
By Mark Wittmer
One of the most exacting and imaginative designers of today, Thom Browne’s signature blend of serious New England suiting, gender-fluid freedom of expression, and Kawakubo-esque avant-garde tailoring – as well as his longstanding practice of showing in the world’s couture capital – forms a ready-made jumping off point for a couture collection. Today, that dream became a reality.
In very Thom Browne fashion – classic, elite, but with a twist – the show was held in Paris’ famous Opera Garnier, but with the crowd of 300 seated backstage, the seats filled with gray suit-clad cardboard cutouts, and the models walking across the stage proper.
The brand has existed for 20 years and has been showing in Paris for 12, and today’s one-off couture collection was a well-tailored and whacky celebration of that impressive tenure.
Greeted by applause and cheers – the audience knew this was as much a celebration as a performance – iconic supermodel Alek Wek got things started in the collection’s most straightforward look, a layered suit in trademark TB gray.
From here things got expectedly unexpected as Browne dove into the farther end of his spectrum between prep school and mad hatter’s tea party with surrealist looks that used theatrical construction and hyperbolic padding to cast their wearers as pigeons and bug-like creatures – though always anchored by his distinct tailoring in some form or another. He seemed to really like this latter silhouette that featured a bell-like hat and a trompe-l’oeil suit/coat/dress hybrid with massively padded arms, as it appeared twelve times in different fabric combinations.
But most of the artisanally crafted, haute-couture identity of the collection came through in its use of fabric and surface textures and treatments, rather than these repetitive silhouettes. Unfathomable weaving techniques incorporated sequins to make shimmering degradé and wood-grain effects; patchwork and embroidery illuminate playful but elegant new twists on Browne’s perennial preppy seaside theme.
The street-style icon dog bag returns again, but because this is a couture show, the dog gets to wear his own bespoke little outfit – a very smart and cute detail.
The strict adherence to suiting is dropped only for a couple dresses that riff on a classic couture sensibility with their bunching and cascading skirts, but their structured shoulders, vestigial traces of lapel, and material palette (somehow we can tell that the silk is suit jacket interior adjacent) still point to the discipline of tailoring.
Another riff on couture traditions comes in the form of the final look, the bride – but her white dress is also more of a suit jacket.
At once unpredictable yet exactly what we might expect a Thom Browne couture collection to look like – austere yet whimsical, impeccably tailored but free-spirited – the collection is a fitting celebration for an idiosyncratic contemporary icon.
