At his womenswear show today, the customary weirdness of Thom Browne s presentations took on a macabre note, like a brittle murder-mystery weekend in a country house sealed off from the real world, where all manner of naughtiness was free to let fly. Even the soundtrack encouraged it. "Let s Misbehave," peeped a Betty Boop soundalike. Browne claimed inspiration from Paris in the twenties, when he imagined a first taste of social liberation leading to all-female salons. "Girlfriends getting together," he suggested innocently, in a doomed attempt to diffuse the obvious sapphic subtext. Too late. When "I Hate Men," from Kiss Me, Kate, sailed into the ether, it set off a mini-tsunami of knowing smirks.
Browne insisted his vision was shaped by old movies, twisted by surreality. So the ambisextrous martinet who acted as the hostess for his all-gal get-together was blessed/cursed with a linebacker silhouette. Exaggeration for effect was the keynote. It wasn t just the shoulders that were bigger. Lengths were longer, volumes more voluminous, showpieces showier, fringes fringier. Some of them were so patently ridonkulous, they brought to mind the climber s response when asked why he scaled Everest: "Because it was there." Why did Browne suspend a pair of boxer shorts at floor level from a short skirt, or bless another model with sleeves that fell to the ground, where they ended in red lobster-claw oven mitts, rendering the appendages entirely useless? Because he could.
The designer claimed the guiding principle in his womenswear was a transmogrification of menswear dress codes. Whatever subversion that implies was more than aired in this tableau vivant. But, because the show s the thing with Browne, his efforts to entertain and amuse always take precedence over the more conventional goals of a fashion show. Which meant that in today s grand design, the mermaid marooned at center stage or the floor-length necklace of little rubber duckies sported by one model meant as much as the most elaborately fringed, layered ensemble.
Still, here s the thing with Browne: Women who really dress, like Michelle Harper, fetching at today s show in a vintage Balenciaga hat, find plenty to ravish the eye. She was very taken with a yellow and black plaid top matched to a striped skirt in the same colors, both lavished with sequins. She also favored the pleated A-line smock over a matching skirt with scalloped hem. It had the plain purity of a priest s vestments. And a navy jacket that cinched over a skirt flaring to mid-calf would look great swinging past the public library on Fifth Avenue, where Browne staged his spectacle—perhaps in one of those parallel universes we experienced on the sci-fi TV series Fringe.
