A Journey Through a Personal Virtual Thom Browne Archive
The Homogenous, The Little Boy, and Homogeneity
As of now, the Metropolitan Museum in New York has three gray Thom Browne suits on display. Two are twins, a set of identical models that let prim, gray coats drape elegantly before thin brogue boots. The other is in a softer gray than the other and composed more simply of a long jacket, the suit adorned with dark gray plush branches. The two suits could not be presented differently, and in theme, they reflect completely distinct cultures and ideas. Yet all three imagine the conservative three piece suit in traditional grays and formal patterns. They are different, yet somehow the same as well.
Looking at Browne’s work with my parents, my Dad remarked that wearing one of his suits would make him look like “a little boy”. At over six feet tall and in his mid 50’s, this was no light statement. I nodded my head at his criticism, smiling. “Exactly”!
Somehow, throughout Thom Browne’s career of rotating pastels and grays, three-piece ensembles, and animal-shaped bags, there is a consistency in what his tailoring is able to do: deconstruct and reimagine the suit as an object of emasculation, humor, and outright theatrics. Browne’s suits have this ability - to confuse the traditional powers a suit should emenate, and draw out the hidden associations and contradictions possible in a suit. What my Dad was talking about in his criticism speaks to the tailoring tactics he employs to do this: a smaller fit, a high cropped trouser, and his use of clashing prep checks, stripes, and plaids. This was not a connection I made immediately.
The unspoken connotation of my Dad’s comment was that while making you look like a little, little boy, Browne’s clothes are exorbitantly expensive. Therefore, when introduced to Browne I knew him as a man of early 2010’s fame who churned out near-identical gray striped suits, man skirts, and handbags shaped like his dachshund on a seasonal basis. Why follow a man whose newest trick was a slightly longer coat or a slightly larger dachshund? Slowly though, I began taking note that in one season, alongside his pastel suits, he had dressed a model up as a lobster in a green coat. The next season, a cozier and more abstract lobster, alongside gargantuan suits and knitted masks that bulged over the model’s bodies strode next to conservative long three-piece suits in black. It was 1996 Comme Des Garcons deconstruction enacted in the world of American prep.
The next season was what hooked me: a collection that combined the punk, the businessman, the sailor, and inexplicably, the cowboy. Spiked hair met short shorts and oversized blazers, golden anchors swooped around blue plaid coats, and all but three models wore a small anchor that dangled in front of their faces. It was a show that toyed with masculinity, Americana, and uniform in the way he always had, but with a wholly new aesthetic and storytelling vision. In my mind, Browne was transformed from savvy peddler of Americana to an obsessive deconstructionist; a New England Rei Kuwakubo.
There was something deliriously attractive about Browne’s devotion to repetition amidst his fixation with these themes. How many different contexts could a gray suit exist? How many ways could one reconstruct a wingtip brogue? How many ways could one be made to look like a little boy? I decided to approach Browne’s ethic with an obsessiveness of my own: to dive into the Thom Browne archive on Vogue, 76 shows from 2006 to late last month. I wanted to understand how long sameness could really last, and how much Browne could vary. Would I find hundreds of gray suits or a cacophony of warped yet suited shellfish?
The fashion archive can be a strange place. For the esoteric outfit or the missing show, it can inspire a Derridian madness involving blind dives into the endless waters of Pinterest and Tumblr, other times yielding an endless scroll of shows and looks and details on antiseptic white backgrounds. Since few are allowed the privilege of viewing a fashion show in person, the fashion archive often asks the viewer to imply more than can be communicated. We see images of a show and are asked to envision it as if a picture of a theatrical performance could imbue the emotion of the whole play. We crane our necks at poor-quality images, scrutinizing a pair of blurry boots or faded patterns once bold and bright. I never saw a Thom Browne suit before visiting the Met, and it was that moment that allowed me to question my perception of Browne’s repetitions. The museum exhibition is one of the only places old fashions can become available in their physical forms, and even then there is a coldness in blank inhuman models and thick glass barriers. The Browne pieces at the Met are perfect examples of this; the twin suits devoid of humanity and encased in a white, neutral box, while the other is displayed with such poor lighting and attention to the suit’s detail that I didn’t even include it. What we are left with is a reliance on the imagination, on implication, and the power of a static image to transport the viewer into an authentic new world, ideal, and philosophy.
Thom Browne does not do this immediately, at least for me. He takes time to hone his craft, to one-up his showmanship again and again. But first, framed in Vogue’s clean tight screen, the years and months of black suits collapse together. You see a million suits of various checks, materials, and lengths. Some have arm braces, others have short sleeves or shorts, and others are composed of hundreds of gray felt flowers. Suddenly, you find yourself remembering the flowers and the white oxfords that went with them.
You see two million shoes, with technical buckles, straps, and tassels, black boots with two ice skating blades, brogues of a hundred materials, patterns, and heels of every variety. Something’s changing, improving, discerning the jackets and looks and hairstyles and faces from the rest. Magic emerges from the repetition, not all unique, not all noticeable. A 2008 show presents a magician in a suit that wraps around him, while another sticks in my memory for a look with knee-high trousers, a head scarf, and a shining briefcase.
As if settled in the library or a pro with a microfilm, I devour Browne’s work as if binging it. Browne’s staples transform indefinitely and incredibly, into collections thematizing astronauts, European aristocracy, Easter, the Military, birds, sharks, and the three-piece suit itself. As I previously mentioned Thom Browne showed his latest collection in July, just as I was wrapping up his work from the 2010s. It was composed of gray suits, plaids, pastels, and dog bags, yes, but my eyes were opened to all of Browne’s minute details, patterns, and tweaks. The paneling and coloration of the heels he constructed, the trompe l'oeil patterns in unexpected materials, and the billowing blazers all felt perfect. This was my validation for my dive into the archive: an appreciation not just for consistence or innovation alone, but for understanding the rules an artist plays by in their work. In other words, the ability to accept Browne’s work on his own terms.
Now when it comes to Browne, I pick favorites. I dream of briefcases that look like tight collars and white chinos with comical shark bite holes in the side. These are more for the imagination though. I also think about Browne’s pleated skirts, his pop-y oxfords, his makeup, that which can be reproduced. I have found Browne’s work to have a profound impact on me, changing the way I think, want to dress, want to imagine, in the way any great artist can and should. The greatest hope from an archive can be to discover a piece of yourself in the shelves and to connect with the records in a way that the historical and recordable feels alive. Browne’s suits no longer feel identical, they now seem evolutionary and specific and humorous and in on the joke. This is why now, a joke at Browne’s suspense is no less delightful. Sameness and difference become arbitrary perspectives with which to judge Browne, or fashion in general. To love Thom Browne seems to simply be a matter of being in on the joke.
