“I want to give them the experience that fashion is so much more than just clothes,” said Thom Browne shortly before a show that transmitted precisely that. Presented in partnership with Vogue’s dapper relative GQ as a warm-up event for this year’s Super Bowl, Browne’s GQ Bowl runway featured NFL stars Marcus Allen, Justin Jefferson, and DeAndre Hopkins. The Browne-clad crowd watching them walk was populated with cultural players including Teyana Taylor and Francois Arnaud. Given the circumstances, Browne could have delivered a gridiron-themed show that was all fireworks, pigskin, and cheerleaders. Instead, he took his audience to the gates of hell.
The show was held in San Francisco’s Legion of Honor on a runway overlooked by Rodin’s The Three Shades, a sculpture the artist had originally conceived as part of his rendering of Dante’s description of hell’s front door. It was prefaced by a video of Vinnie Hacker, Browne-besuited, walking the saturated landscapes of the host city in a manner reminiscent of Michael Douglas in Falling Down. And it was narrated by the actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen, who followed Hacker and settled himself behind a typical Browne-style, office-hell desk beneath Rodin’s statue as his sonorous reading from Dante’s masterwork was broadcast to the room. Said Browne: “He’s thinking ‘what is life?’ And he’s thinking ‘what is it to be a good person?’ It’s a universal theme, and it’s beautiful.”
Dante’s narrator is surveying his life and weighing up the prospects for what comes after. A little less poetically, Browne was engaged on a survey here too. Perhaps mindful of the atypical audience in the room and beyond it, he stayed true to his proportionally-tailored origin story and presented a Browne 101 of precisely fitted sack jackets on a varied podium of short-shorts, bermuda shorts, kilts, and more. “I like things to evolve rather than change: I veer towards seasonless and timelessness,” he said.
This core message was garnished with Browne-flavored accessories that included five-striped headphones and a soon-to-drop, proprietorially sartorial take on the Asics Gel-Kayano 14 sneaker. It was further burnished with looks that showcased the craft that has evolved from Browne’s original tailoring revelation. These included a womenswear cricket sweater, tangled at its hem, that was embroidered into the fabric of the navy dress beneath it. A coat in woozily sized Prince of Wales houndstooth check was crafted in woven leather. Jessica Stam wore a scenic intarsia snapshot of Browne’s imagined Nantucket winter wonderland that featured Jaws, a romantic ski lift ride, and the traditional cameo from Hector. A perfecto jacket was elongated and refined into a leather trench, and two closing looks—a tulle trench and a cape—featured an infinity of hand embroidered embellishment applied by Browne’s atelier.
