Click images to enlarge.
When it comes to going out with a bang, Thom Browne is the only designer who can see off Paris Fashion Week. Before his collection of summer suits in bright, multi-coloured gingham and sea monster prints was revealed, guests were led through the corridors of the Maison de la Chimie into a neat garden with a neat lawn where neat silver brogues had been neatly lined up side by side. It felt like the quiet before the storm, and when everyone was shushed seemingly way before showtime (there was complete silence for a good ten minutes with no action at all), it was obvious that something otherworldly was going to go down. Like so many great showmen, Mr Browne knows to let a crowd simmer. Eventually the doors opened to four silver satyrs in the shape of model/actors in furry silver goat’s legs, their torsos and faces covered in silver body-paint. They goated around for a while, gesturing at the front row and scraping in the gravel around the grass with their big hooves. For a while it was all very Narnia if Narnia met silver-clad street mime artists. Then, what seemed like a hundred slinky-like human silver cylinders emerged and walked onto the grass, and each slipped into a pair of the silver brogues that were lined up. (Yes, the cylinders did that. Sometimes words just fail.) Finally, the models dropped their cylinders and all looks were revealed in one impressive instant. It’s a good thing Mr Browne’s show is the last on the schedule. He’d be a pretty tough act to follow.
A selection of very special pieces from the SS13 collection are available to pre-order now via oki-ni’s Thom Browne Trunk Show, browse the shelves here.
Text: Anders Christian Madsen
Photography: Mitchell Sams
Click here to see our SS13 Menswear coverage in full.
