Thom Browne will conclude New York Fashion Week with a fall 2024 show scheduled for 5 p.m. on February 14. The designer and CFDA chairman was last on the catwalk in his hometown a year ago; between then and now he presented a debut couture collection in Paris. Browne’s NYFW show – themed around Little Prince, but with a happy ending – also took place on Valentine’s Day last year, and as he took his bow, he presented his partner Andrew Bolton with a box of chocolates, a rare tender moment of love. The season.
Personal connections also motivate his new pre-fall collection for women. Like the men’s equivalent, released in mid-December, it nods to the couple’s new home upstate, a Germantown estate built around 1773 and now on the National Register of Historic Places. The simulacrum of the Georgian-Federalist mansion-in-handbag form that appears in look 14 gives a good idea of the house’s appeal to Browne – all those lovely symmetries. It is also embroidered in cheerful colors on the sleeve of the black topcoat in look 34.
Elsewhere, the floral wallpapers of tailcoats and hacking jackets, worn with matching skirts with pockets, seem to allude to country life, while the shiny navy material of a down jacket puts a polished twist on what is otherwise a sporty garment. The designer said it was modeled after the swim parka he wore when he competed in school. Hector (Browne’s most popular bag) has a new friend in a raven, based on Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem. Together with red roses, the black birds also adorn tweedy gray tailoring. Multicolored checked tweeds, whose overcoat is decorated with the brand’s signature red, white and blue grosgrain ribbon, are the collection’s most striking pieces.
Drawing on another childhood memory, Browne designed his own version of the classic Bermuda bag, swapping the wooden handles of the popular ’80s style for faux tortoiseshell and the cotton madras covers for leather.
