Thom Browne will close 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 runway in his hometown a year ago; in between then and now he presented a debut couture collection in Paris. Browne’s NYFW show—Little Prince-themed, but with a happy ending—took place on Valentine’s Day last year, too, and when he came out for his bow he presented his partner Andrew Bolton with a box of chocolates, a rare tender moment of the season.
Personal connections also motivate his new women’s pre-fall collection. Like the men’s equivalent, which was released mid-December, it nods to the couple’s new home upstate, a Germantown estate built circa 1773 that’s now on the National Register of Historic Places. The simulacrum of the Georgian-Federalist manse-in-handbag-form that appears in look 14 gives a good sense of the house’s appeal for Browne—all those neat symmetries. It’s also embroidered in cheery colors on the sleeve of the black top coat in look 34.
Elsewhere, the wallpaper florals of skirt suits and hacking jackets worn with matching pocketed skirts seem to allude to country living, while the glossy navy material of a down coat put a polished spin on what’s otherwise a sporty piece. The designer said it was modeled on the swimming parka he wore when he competed in school. Hector (Browne’s most popular bag) has a new friend in a raven, after Edgar Allen Poe’s famous poem. Joined by red roses, the black birds also adorn tweedy gray tailoring. Multicolor plaid tweeds, the overcoat of which is tipped in the brand’s signature red, white, and blue grosgrain ribbon, are the collection’s most striking pieces.
Tapping into another youthful memory, Browne designed his own version of the classic Bermuda bag, swapping the wooden handles of the popular 1980s style for faux tortoiseshell, and the cotton madras covers for leather.
