An invitation to show at Pitti Uomo in Florence seems to inspire designers to particularly conceptual heights. Anyone who saw them won't soon forget Raf Simons' gladiatorial spectacle in the Boboli Gardens, or Rick Owens' staggeringly lifelike urinating simulacrum in the Stazione Leopolda. This year's invitee was Thom Browne, and from the outset, he knew he didn't want to do a "fashion show." Instead, he staged "an introduction to what my sensibility is."
The location—the Istituto di Scienze Militari Aeronautiche—was an oblique clue, the set itself more of a giveaway. An impressively high-ceilinged space in the International Style was filled with serried ranks of desks, each topped by a manual typewriter and accompanied by a coat stand from which hung Browne's signature gray cardigan. Something uniform was promised, and duly delivered by the militarily precise arrival of 40 models identically dressed in shrunken gray suits paired with camel coats and chunky wingtips.
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