You couldn’t show a spectacular show without a spectacular venue and American designer Thom Browne encapsulated his Spring 2011 men’s collection by its interior staging within Brazilian architect Oscar Neimeyer’s Sede do Partido Comunista Francês or the French Communist Party Headquarters. The seating assembly arranged in a curvlinear fashion facing towards the front members’ table felt like NASA’s control room or the interior film design of 2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick. This is where the editors and journalists would seat and look from afar how Browne would contrast and recontextualise his formal shrunken suit. A series of walking astronauts appearing as The Stig’s space cousins, walked calmly in full procession and stripping off their astronautic white suits to reveal the familiar silhouette of Browne’s. These were grown-up versions of school uniforms with their calf-length woolen socks and short-suits in variegated fabrics from gingham, striped, patchwork and check. Whilst these patterns may violate formal suiting conventions and the feeling of being nonplussed, in many ways through self-confidence some ensembles produced by Browne could well work in day to day wearability. What he proposed is what one might consider to be spring suits, shorten for more mobility and lightness yet still confirming a formality in for example, the pairing of a lavender striped shirt and tie and the seasonal familiarity of his lighter grey jackets that were also differentiated by horizontal and grey matching stripes. The key stance from Thom Browne remits finding a new understanding for men to command a wardrobe co-ordination – why not spice it up?
