Thom Browne
ESTABLISHED
2001
HQ
New York, USA
FOUNDER
Thom Browne
WHAT DO THE SIGNATURE THOM BROWNE STRIPES STAND FOR?
There are two types of stripes. There are the four evenly-spaced horizontal white stripes (it used to be three until adidas sued him) on the left sleeve or leg of his button-downs and bottoms. On suits and on some other pieces, he uses a tri-color red, white, and blue grosgrain as a branding identifier. There’s no specific meaning or story behind the usage of the stripes besides its aesthetic utility. The stripes provide a uniform American look that’s at the heart of every Browne collection, and most importantly, with many fashion houses going for more cropped silhouettes in their own collections, the stripes act as a branding tool for Browne—if you couldn’t tell it was a Thom Browne piece by just looking at the cut, you can definitely tell by what stripes are used on the piece and where they’re placed.
HOW WAS THE THOM BROWNE SUIT DESIGN PROTOTYPED?
Early on in his life, while living in Los Angeles trying to become an actor, Browne lived with the designer Johnson Hartig, who’d later found the clothing brand Libertine. Inspired by Hartig’s experiments on vintage clothing, Browne decided to put old suits into a dryer to shrink them—just to see how’d they’d turn out. The results were promising and potentially boundary-breaking, and they acted as the prototypes for today’s signature Thom Browne shrunken suits.
NET WORTH
40 million dollars
PERSONAL LIFE
Browne lives with Andrew Bolton, who is curator at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.
BIO
There isn’t another fashion house around that can say they own a certain look, but when it comes to cropped silhouettes, Thom Browne and his signature line of grey suits is its master. Inspired by his father, who wore a grey suit to work everyday, Browne’s leans heavily on just two colors—grey and navy—to put together masterful collections of suits, shirts, sweaters, bottoms, and more. The brand has no logo, but the distinguished cropped silhouette of a piece, combined with visual identifiers like his four white horizontal stripes or the red, white, and blue grosgrain, is what makes a Thom Browne piece so unique. A CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award winner three times over, Browne and his label have come to define what a modern “uniform” looks like for not only the white collar worker, but for anyone invested in an Americana aesthetic.
