THOM BROWNE SPRING 2021 READY-TO-WEAR
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Thom Browne’s “first and only” family trip growing up was to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He would have been 11 years old at the time, but he remembers Caitlyn Jenner winning the gold medal in the decathlon and Nadia Comaneci scoring the first perfect 10 in gymnastics. It doesn’t take a lot of mental gymnastics to understand the imprint that these moments of athletic perfection must have left on Browne. Yes, there are the many references to sports in his clothing, but there is also the fact that fastening oneself into his suits requires the mental focus—and often the attenuated calf muscles—of an athlete.
For spring 2021 Browne has gone sporting at the 2132 Olympics, an event he imagines happening 239,000 miles from Earth on the moon. In a wry video he wrote that accompanies the collection, comedian Jordan Firstman and model Grace Mahary banter like sports commentators as models and flag bearers descend the stadium steps of the Los Angeles Coliseum. (The video is as wacky as any live Browne performance: transfixing, imaginative, maybe a little long.) The venue was chosen both for its Art Deco architecture and its hosting of the 1932 Olympics. The silhouettes of the ’20s and ’30s inform the clothing, from the drop-waist dresses to the slim skirts, some pleated, others as straight as your back must be to pull them off.
The entire collection is rendered in shades of white: ivory, eggshell, the palest yellow, the faintest gray. Browne chose the color as a symbol of hopefulness. Here it’s hard to divorce his creativity from that of his partner, Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Andrew Bolton. (They have, after all, spent about four to five months working from home together with their dog, Hector, who receives his own tribute as a handbag and as a spaceship in the film.) The Met’s Costume Institute exhibition “About Time: Fashion and Duration,” opening on October 29 because of COVID-19 delays, features only black clothes save its closing look: a white Viktor & Rolf upcycled couture dress, a gesture of stepping into a new, hopeful future.
Source: VogueRunway
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