Pity the suit. It’s been put through the existential ringer in the past few years. What, honestly, is the point in a world of trackpants for work and denim for after dark?
Not that questions of relevance bother Thom Browne. That’s nothing new, he says. ‘I started in the first introduction of casual Fridays. I’ve always fought that. I do what I do. [I did it] through the whole streetwear movement. Even though what I do can be streetwear. I don’t pay attention to all the ebbs and flows, I just keep doing it’.
‘It’ is the tailoring — a warped interpretation of mid-century suiting — off the back of which he has built a formidable fashion brand. The Thom Browne calling cards? Ties with everything. Grey, grey and more grey. Striped ribbon tabs. And most recognisably of all, the perverse preppiness of the deliberately shrunken proportions; trousers hemmed a few inches above the ankle, jackets with abbreviated sleeves. Pruned to the point of provocation, his designs are proof of what a difference an inch can make.
When Browne first started out this impish Don Draper look was ‘so not what was happening’. ‘Nobody got it. Nobody wanted to buy it. Nobody understood it,’ he says. But crucially there was enough familiarity in the designs that they invited a second look. ‘[People] recognised it so they wanted to know why. And that’s pretty great.’ It has defied trends — despite attempts on some parts to turn it into one. ‘For me it wasn’t a trend at all, it was something that has evolved and got better over time, but it’s never changed.’
He lives the look and is steadfast in his commitment to it. A self-confessed ‘creature of habit’ who heads out from his 100-year-old neo-Georgian townhouse on the banks of the East River to the Sant Ambroeus outpost on Madison Avenue where he orders a sugar cornetti (sometimes toast, presumably when he is feeling a little wild) and an espresso. Work, home by six, ‘drinks and dinner’. The fondness for routine and rigour is only shown more starkly than the clothes he wears and designs.
When I first met Browne in 2011 he was wearing a version of this same look. Now, ‘a lot of grey hairs later’ when we meet in London at the end of summer at Claridge’s, where he has been staying for the past 30 years (‘I have my hotel in each city’ — obviously!) it is the late summer take: a seer-sucker shorts suit. He is 57 and boyishly handsome with crew-cut hair and an all-American jaw. It is a look so famous that he is used to his designs being spotted long before he is. He often receives praise for his Thom Browne suits and shoes before being asked, ‘Hang on, are you Thom Browne?’
Browne’s relationship with tailoring and uniform began early. Growing up in Pennsylvania, the middle of seven children, he remembers being fitted for navy blazers and khakis. He went to Catholic school where the importance of formality was further impressed on him; being on the swim team helped hone that sense of discipline.
Browne has gone on to forge a rebellion from within. For him, uniform is expansive rather than restrictive. ‘I find it very inspiring when you see someone who has figured out [who they are] and adopted a uniform for themself. It shows such confidence, they don’t need to change every day, it’s just who they are and makes them that much more interesting. You see so much more of them as opposed to what they’re wearing.’
But for the young Browne, fashion wasn’t on the agenda. He studied economics at university and went to do a consulting job in New York, which he hated and quit, moving to Los Angles to make it as an actor. Although Hollywood stardom didn’t come calling, it was there that he began buying vintage suits and having them tailored in the nascent version of those abbreviated proportions. On returning to New York he got a gig at Giorgio Armani, followed by the then-Ralph Lauren owned Club Monaco, before striking out on his own, operating out of his apartment for the first year.
When he started out, Browne’s goal was precise and simple. ‘I just wanted to do that one thing,’ he says. ‘Memorable designers that do something important enough to outlive themselves, I think they do one really good thing.’ His influence on fashion has been immense — even if you don’t know his name, or think it is deranged for anyone over five to wear shorts, even if you’re not in the market for a new suit. You can see murmurs of it in the bare ankles of every Love Island beefcake; in the muted palette of ‘quiet luxury’. He has been one of the designers who has ushered in a more flamboyant (yes, in grey!), more nuanced masculinity. Browne was putting men in skirts long before Harry Styles started doing it. His cropped proportions seem to appeal to something primal in the beefiest and most heteronormative of men.
Browne’s design language is full of tantalising tensions. His business is the normy suit, but he makes it theatrical. He designs a uniform that invites self-expression, the industry outsider (‘I never thought of myself being in fashion or wanting to be’) who was made chairman of the CFDA this year, which means he is representing American fashion, nurturing the next generation and ‘supposed to be someone with sage advice’ for young designers. What would that be? ‘Be ready to do the work. Because it’s so much work’.
Does he care about reviews? ‘I care in that I like to know what people are thinking but I don’t care enough that it would ever change what I’m doing and how I do things.’ One opinion he does care for is that of his partner, Andrew Bolton, the British head curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute since 2006. It is Bolton who contributed an introduction to a new book chronicling Browne’s career. It’s been a ‘luxury’ looking back at his work with him.
Typically Browne doesn’t like to look back or forward — he seems happiest in the weeds, tweaking his precise proportions, flipping the script by making the grey suit not just relevant but surprising. Shocking even. ‘Five hundred million dollars in and we’re still very niche,’ he says. ‘It isn’t for everybody — but it’s for a lot more people than they realise’. ‘Thom Browne.’, with an introduction by Andrew Bolton, is out now (£125; Phaidon)
