As he’s opened stores up-and-down and across America over the last couple of years, Thom Browne has emphasized the depth and range of his offerings. With this collection, he says, he set out to do something different. “I want to make sure that I’m reintroducing the reason why people come to me, and it’s really the proportional tailoring. So it really starts from there,” he explained.
Browne’s signature cuts and fit are as distinctive as they come, of course. You can see a neatly dressed man or woman in Browne’s clothes from a mile away. It’s the details that that keep refreshing. This season, he pulled those details from the painter Grandma Moses. “What’s really interesting is how she started so late,” 78, in fact. “And the simplicity of her life and the quintessential American feeling of her paintings, I think, is really beautiful.”
Anna Mary Robertson Moses lived and worked past the age of 100 but her art retained a childlike, naive quality. One of her folksy scenes was woven into the fabric of a car coat that matched the fully printed skirt suit underneath. It was faithful to the original, but the craftsmanship required was of the most sophisticated variety. Other special pieces featured oversize intarsias of lobsters, a crustacean Browne chose for its New England-y connotations.
Also New England-ish, the prep school references and the sturdy military weave cashmeres he developed for the tailoring. “It has a very compact weave, and it’s not as soft as sometimes cashmere can be,” Browne said, explaining, “the snob appeal is in the wear, it gets better and better. It’s almost like you won’t appreciate the fabric. The person who’s the second owner will appreciate it more.” Grandma Moses could get with that.
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