Gray Suits, Loose Ties, and Lots of Dachshunds—Thom Browne Celebrates His 20th Anniversary in New York

“Thom Browne is turning 20…the brand, not the person.”

So said Keith Fox, CEO of Phaidon Press, Monday night at The Grill, the American steakhouse located in the Seagram Building. The occasion of Fox’s toast was to welcome guests to a celebratory dinner marking both the 20th anniversary of the Thom Browne brand, which launched in 2003 with five suit designs and a made-to-measure by-appointment shop in the West Village of New York City, and the release of a monograph on the brand published by Phaidon. The tome is authored by none other than Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu curator in charge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and Browne’s partner.

The dinner was part of a world tour that saw Browne take this celebration to London, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Milan. But as any good New Yorker, Browne knows that there’s nothing like home: “I feel like this is my family, that has seen me through the last 20 years,” said the designer as he shouted out both the city and the cast of characters that inhabit it, the very same that welcomed Browne with open arms 20 years ago and has continued to be both witness and muse to his designs since. Amongst the guests were New Yorkers and style glitterati Christine Baranski, Jordan Roth, Jenna Lyons, Jeremy O. Harris, Morgan Spector, Rebecca Hall, David Harbour, Christopher Briney, Lola Tung, and more.

The Seagram is a mid-century skyscraper that was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and built in 1958 with Philip Johnson as co-architect. It happens to be a Thom Browne favorite—the person, not the brand. This should come as no surprise; with its utilitarian style, stylized lack of color, and repetitive use of modular forms and straight, flat lines and surfaces, the building is a prime example of the International Style of architecture that was characterized by unequivocally modern and streamlined design—there is a severity to the Seagram, one that is never absent in Browne’s work. That the high-rise is also a corporate office building nested within Midtown in Manhattan should be considered no coincidence either. Browne’s stores are all modeled as grayed-out mid-century offices, and his gray suits are, essentially, a perverse iteration of the New York corporate uniform.

The Thom Browne brand, after all, is all about discipline. The Grill was filled with an abundance of gray suiting, whether that be guests dressed by the brand or those who dared not to draw too far outside the lines with Thom Browne-esque outfits pulled out of their own closets. This parade of Browne’s biggest hits fit right at home at the Seagram, equal parts corporate convention and fashion celebration. But Browne is in on the joke; that’s the point. The Thom Browne brand, after all, is also about fun, and about not taking oneself too seriously. “It’s nearly impossible to close this top button,” said my seatmate of his Thom Browne shirt. His answer when I told him that it was by design, as Browne prefers the top button undone under a slightly unfastened tie: “Oh, so that’s why no one ever has their ties done up. It all makes sense now.” Here’s to 20 more years of perfectly precise—and methodically shrunken—tailoring paired with ties loose enough to let you have a good time.