Thom Browne is a designer fascinated by American iconography. He has become known for his campy, theatrical fashion shows, in which, rather than strut, models perform as a cast of characters fallen out of a storybook. Browne lives with his partner, curator Andrew Bolton, in a redbrick home on the East Side of Manhattan. The home was built in the 1920s by architect Mott Schmidt for none other than Anne Vanderbilt. She was the second wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt. The first? Alva Vanderbilt, who has been most recently fictionalized and brought to our screens by the American actor Carrie Coon in The Gilded Age.
Today at Browne’s fall 2024 show, Coon’s latest role was revealed. The actor lent her voice to soundtrack Browne’s presentation, which revolved around Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. The American poet has been a recurrent inspiration of Browne’s, most recently figuring in his pre-fall lineups. Browne nodded at Poe with rose and raven embroideries and appliqués, and with a new raven-shaped bag to accompany his famous Hector Browne-shaped accessories, after his pet dachshund. This fall show sees Browne explore the world of Poe further, taking the audience on a deep dive of The Raven guided by Coon’s spellbinding reading of the poem.
The designer, who has already welcomed Coon’s costars Morgan Spector and Christine Baranski into his label’s universe, said that he couldn’t think of a more perfect person to reinterpret a retelling of The Raven. “Carrie is the best at what she does,” he said. “When she gets behind the mic or in front of the camera, she completely transforms into the character she’s playing. It’s a true privilege to be able to watch someone so devoted to their craft, loving what they do so much, and showing the world new stories through her immense talent.”
Coon is away filming on location and was not able to attend the show, but Vogue caught up with her prior to her travels to chat about her starring role at the Thom Browne fall 2024 show.
Voice is such an important part of developing a character—what is your usual approach when you’re first figuring out what a character may be? Did you think of this as you considered The Raven?
I used to approach character from a very cerebral place, but the longer I’ve been doing this, the more my approach has moved from the inside out. What a character wears often dictates how they walk or speak, so their voice flows organically from the way the body is shaped, or the dialect required. As for The Raven, the character is on the page. My focus was on telling the story as clearly as possible within the parameters required by Thom’s rich creative design.
How would you describe your personal relationship to fashion? And what about lending your voice to a show soundtrack attracted you?
Nascent! There is so much to learn about fashion outside of one’s aesthetic values. Designers are always innovating from and reacting against what came before, and new visionaries are cropping up all the time and fighting for a place in the canon. It’s quite thrilling, actually! It’s a lush and complicated subject and that’s why I have a stylist. It feels like a secret society that influences our daily choices in myriad unfathomable ways.
Thom Browne, the brand, has attracted a cohort of New York theater folk, including your costars Christine Baranski and Morgan Spector. Why do you think that is? Did you feel a particular affinity with the brand prior to this project?
Thom’s designs reimagine men’s suiting—an icon of American capitalism, a symbol of one’s desire to rise above one’s station. In the American imagination, the number of suits a person owns is proportionate to their wealth and influence. Thom has both embraced and subverted that lineage with humor and playfulness, but also gravitas. I love that the show parallels that attitude by embracing a dark and iconic piece of American literature. Poe was mysterious and macabre, but equally witty and wry. And I’m a lit major, so I’m a sucker for a good poem. What I love about wearing Thom Browne is that it speaks to a level of androgyny I respond to in clothes; I have never felt completely safe and whole or even sexy in the utterly feminine. I suspect that it gives all of us the power that comes with uniting both sides of our nature, expressed in a way that is at once universal and entirely individual.
Had you ever read The Raven before? If yes, what was it like to revisit it in this context, and if not, what did you feel when reading it for the first time? Do you have a favorite line from it?
Oh, yes. I majored in English (and Spanish) literature at the University of Mount Union. What I loved most about revisiting the poem was the challenge of speaking aloud Poe’s very specific punctuation, which both encourages the rhythm and breaks it. It’s a very witty poem—horror, with the twinkle of deftness—and we recognize its cadence immediately. I love the assonance of the line, “And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.” It’s very satisfying to speak aloud.
Last but not least, inquiring minds need to know: What’s more comfortable, a Thom Browne corset or a The Gilded Age one?
Thom Browne’s! If you want to cinch up that waist, go for it. But it has all the elegance of a garment on display—you don’t have a bunch of layers slapped on top.
