![]() “What he did with the suit was really very subversive,” says architect and designer Tim Campbell, who estimates he owns up to 300 Browne pieces. It’s a contradiction that gives a Thom Browne suit its tension, why it gets under so many people’s skin. It’s there that you can see the unifying, poetic force of it all – an item that acts as a means of connection, of community – while remaining a safe space for quirks to be exercised. The employees outside Browne’s own office door, clacking away at their computers, or pushing clothing rails gorged with samples are all wearing his grey suit, some with cut-off hems or the jacket tied around their waist. Have you ever spotted a person wearing Thom Browne out on the street or tucked into a crowded train carriage? It’s a startling thing. You have to do something that is so real to you – whatever it is.” “I think that’s really important for young designers to know, too. But through the sheer force of that belief, he has converted the rest of the world not just to his vision, but to his idea of sexy. He wears a version of the suit every day and requires his employees to do the same. “People understood it because they knew it was very real to me, I wasn’t trying to force something that I didn’t believe myself.” This belief, at times, borders on obsession. “It really was so easy to create the first grey suit because I was basically just making it for myself,” he says. “It was very easy,” he says with a twinkle. Especially considering he was trying to sell us a suit – a freaky one at that – just as Silicon Valley, Casual Fridays and the pandemic put an ostensible expiry date on that very thing. ![]() But even when we think we’re doing something classic, we have to be reminded, sometimes, that we’re pushing it.”īut how did this American rebel in a compressed suit push it? How did such a friendly-looking guy, who says you’ll find him home most nights with his partner and dog eating a takeaway and drinking champagne, strong-arm his way into the fashion enclave? To be the chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, no less. “I do feel like I am making… just very well-made, classic clothes. “Someone who’s been in fashion for 50, 60 years, one of those iconic people in fashion,” – (no, he won’t say who) – “and I told her, ‘You know, I just do really classic things.’ And she said, ‘Thom, this is not classic.’” He laughs. “I was with someone the other day,” he says. But even when we think we’re doing something classic, we have to be reminded, sometimes, that we’re pushing it.” ![]() (It’s safe to say that Browne’s prices, hovering at around 10 times Adidas’s, certainly wouldn’t confuse them.) The court ruled in Browne’s favour. They claimed Browne’s motif of four stripes on sweatsuits would confuse customers familiar with Adidas’s three. How serious is Thom Browne? Serious enough that Adidas took him to court over… stripes. How seriously should we take the grand maker of suits so truncated that they were once mentioned in the same breath as that of Pee-Wee Herman’s? Maybe ask Gildo Zegna, who oversees his family’s illustrious and very traditional fashion conglomerate, the Zegna Group, why he snapped up 85% of the brand back in 2018, valuing the company at a decidedly not-shrunken price of £400 million. ![]() New things, too, not merely slapping a logo on a hoodie and cashing in. Fewer still have the finesse or training that would make les petit mains in any French couture atelier green with envy. Few designers are looking at the clothes with split vision: one eye on the comic, the other on the intellectual. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |