Thursday, September 11, 2014

the eccentric showman: thom browne



Thom Browne finds his way onto these pages more often than not.


Life is about evolving. It's about change, about shifting thoughts and opinions and favourite, somewhat ridiculous, pastimes. The old days of carefully perusing every show, saving favourites and collecting trends (that would be the somewhat ridiculous pastime) are behind me. Now, I prefer to focus my attention in a few directions, following a handful of designers whose style I appreciate, and, naturally, checking in with Susie at Style Bubble for everything else. Perhaps I miss all the nitty gritty details. Perhaps I fail to see the overarching trends or the styles everyone will be wearing. But I'm ok with that. You can't know everything all the time, you can barely know half of anything even some of the time. So if a few collections fall by the wayside, a trend or two has its day before I get involved, I'm ok with that. What I'm not ok with, is missing Thom Browne.

Thom Browne finds his way onto these pages more often than not. And with good reason. I'm drawn to his inordinate wilfulness in creating the collections he wants, not ones that follow trends or intentionally appeal to the mass market. Browne is the eccentric showman personified. Fashion writer, Tim Blanks, described this latest show as 'the stuff of a sci-fi fashion fairy tale', but underneath  all the flamboyance, the marvellous Stephen Jones hats, the faux green grass and the seeming irreverence of it all, was some remarkably wearable garments. Perhaps we mere mortals on the street have finally met Browne halfway; finally embraced the colour and the quirk and the theatrical undercurrent of Browne's work and now we can see beyond it all to shapes and silhouettes and prints and colours that are inherently wearable. And not just wearable, but desirable beyond just an appreciation of an aesthetic. Or maybe I'm intellectualising this way too much. Regardless, it was, and is, a phenomenal collection.









































You can see the rest of the collection right here.

kb xx