Thom Browne’s latest couture showing is a sporty spectacle

Editor’s Note: CNN Style is one of the official media partners of Paris Fashion Week and Haute Couture Week. See all coverage here.

True to his theatrical form, Thom Browne’s fall 2024 couture show opened with spectacle. Men grasping a rope battled for supremacy in a staged game of tug of war at the hallowed “Musée des Arts Décoratifs” gallery in Paris, where the American designer riffed off the upcoming Olympic Games to tell a story about sports, old-world couture and camp.

Quoting both antiquity and American myths, models replicated stereotypical poses of athletes throughout time — from archers and disc throwers to weightlifters — playfully deconstructing both gender roles and classical tailoring.

The latter molded bodies into exaggerated shoulder lines and tiny waists reminiscent of vintage sport iconography. Tennis skirts and dramatic heel-less track boots, complete with laurel wreath headdresses paved the way for playful homages to France: dresses adorned with hand-painted blue swimming briefs or red bikinis (the two-piece was invented in France in 1946) and beaded ‘tricolore’ lapels on jackets and overcoats.

Browne launched his label in 2001 in New York’s West Village, first operating by appointment only, and has since won the CFDA Menswear Designer Award in 2006, 2012, and again in 2016. His collections have been coveted by celebrities, collectors and museums.

Thom Browne (which has, since 2018, been part of Zegna group who own a 90% stake) is also a ready-to-wear business currently offered in over 300 department-stores and boutiques across 40 countries, as well as in 110 Thom Browne retail stores. “I have a very successful commercial side of my business,” Browne explained in an interview with CNN backstage. “(Couture) balances the other side of what I do.”

As is the way with Browne, the show was an entertaining and playful vehicle to exhibit traditional couture techniques. “I like to tell a story,” he explained. “I like to entertain and to ground it in beautifully made clothes.”

Perhaps surprisingly for a couture collection, it was muslin — the simple, lightweight cotton used to create initial mock-ups of clothes (called “toiles”) at ateliers — that comprised much of Browne’s finished pieces. To quote the show-notes: “The toile as the source text… The toile as the finale garment… The work-in-progress becomes the final work… Couture.”

Using exposed stitching as well as ancient techniques including hand-basting (an intricate and ancient method used by artisans when working with delicate fabric or to create precise alignments), the designer’s aim, he said, was to play with tailoring and proportions.

Jared Ellner, a celebrity stylist who dressed influencer Emma Chamberlain and actor Molly Gordon for the show and regularly works with singer Sabrina Carpenter said of Thom Browne: “It’s so easily and instantly recognizable, yet pushes barriers aesthetically… Never making everyone look the same but allowing each person to add their own style to it… (Sabrina and Emma) like to dress up like a character… really pushing their own individuality.”

And at a time when most discreet details are lost on camera, perhaps that could be the ultimate luxury.

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