And just like that, Thom Browne is doing couture!
If, like us (and almost anyone else), when you think of Thom Browne you envisage gray suits, lots of hoops, and a lot of gray. Well, it turns out Thom Browne couture is along the same lines, just a bit madder. Hear us out.
The designer took to the couture stage for the first time in Paris on July 3 for a special one-off show that simultaneously kicked off the label’s twentieth anniversary celebrations.
The show went ahead as planned despite the continued unrest across the city and the rest of the country and, as it stands, there has been no information to suggest that Haute Couture Week won't go ahead as planned.
As if the pressure of showing a debut couture collection in Paris wasn’t enough, the 300-strong audience – which included the likes of Anna Wintour, who sat in between a fashionably-late Cardi B and Diane Keaton – took place inside the capital's famous Opera Garnier.
The show verged on operatic itself at times, with the real audience housed housed on the stage in front of a creepy on-looking faux white cardboard audience, from where the models would later emerge.
Typically for any Thom Browne collection (RTW or Couture), everything was gray, including lots of pigeons.
The signature gray suit, the garment Browne started with when he founded his label in 2003, made an appearance with couture-esque tweaks like inflated arms and ginormous lapels, as the label's signature strips of white, red, and blue, and white hoops were scattered throughout.
From exaggerated suiting and outerwear with wide, ballooned sleeves, fitted menswear and overemphasized womenswear, bell hats with eye holes, and giant pigeons, each look took us one step further away from the TB we've gotten to know, and into a new and unseen couture world we never thought we’d enter.
Of course, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this wasn’t Thom Browne’s first foray into couture.
For Fall 2023 collection the designer deployed a signature foray of theatrical headwear reminiscent of classic couture, while in 2022 he dressed Lizzo for her 2022 Met Gala outfit, a look that took over 22,000 hours of needlework and 900 days to create.
Historically, these are two traits that would point towards couture, although TB never labeled it as such.
While Thom Browne’s official couture debut in Paris has been ear-marked as a one-off, you can easily see why the people might want more. No one really knew what to expect prior to the show (gray suits aside), but we could never have expected something as beautiful as what was witnessed.
Still, you know the funny thing about all of this? When you boil it down: Thom Browne’s couture debut was actually just peak Thom Browne. Who saw that coming?!
