Being there (Thom Browne)

Monday’s Thom Browne presentation was in the cavernous Exit Art Gallery on 36^th and 10^th. Standing outside the striped circus tent, and sipping champagne old-style flat glasses served by Browne-sweatered young men, I spotted one guy I remembered from the Oak Bond St party on Friday.(Oak is a Williamsburg idea now exported to Manhattan, and as a Williamsburger, I’m rooting for it.). The man was unmistakable because he had been wearing the Harmon mudcloth D/B coat (see below) and pants. As a suit, they pull one back to places I have never been, like just outside the frame of a Grace Jones cover shoot for one of her Dunbar/Shakespeare albums. Back in the present, I was asking the Harmon Mudcloth Suit Man, what is the point of being here? Isn’t it all online?

He was a stylist – no wonder he had looked so happy in that suit. Why were we here? He repeated, looking at the champagne (Henriot) and rolling his eyes. OK, beyond that? You can see how the clothing drapes, flows and moves. But video creep is unstoppable; now anyone can see not only stills of the looks but also their continuous motion. So what’s left? Details, which of course do count for a lot in a Thom Browne show – more on this later. But HD video will eliminate this advantage as well. So what is left is really theater, the sensation of rolling with or against the audience of which you are a part. But if you are a critic or a buyer, does this sharpen your appreciation, or dull it?

But then the curtains opened and we hurried to our seats. The Monday Browne crowd and the Sunday Y-3 crowd were wildly different. From Y-3’s day-after press release: “Guests included: Ellen Pompeo, Helena Christensen, Lupe Fiasco, Ioan Gruffuld, Vincent Gallo, The Misshapes, Damon Dash, Justin Theroux, Mark Gonzales, Stella Schnabel, Genevieve Jones, Tom Sachs, Terence Koh, Arden Wohl, Tallulah Harlech, Cho Kang Hee, Drena DeNiro, Aaron Young, Max Vadukul and Craig McDean.” Browne’s crowd was smaller and had a stronger mix of serious clothing people – Andre Leon Talley, Simon Doonan, Robert Bryan– with just a few boldface names like David Furnish, who sat in front of me. Flashbulbs were minimal. In his row were Stefano Tonch of the Times and Tim Blanks, who covers every show for men.style.com.

About the show itself, I’ll say nothing until my bit appears in the Sun tomorrow.

About being there, there are practical advantages. Although catalogue shoots now show clothing from several angles, very few runway videos show more than one. At Y-3, for instance, the photo bank was at one end of the long ice wall, so all images could be full frontal. The audience saw them in profile, revealing that the Y-3 man’s pant silhouette, baggy through the thigh and tapering sharply to the ankle, looks good on almost no one. Also since the wall was so long, and most of the models had shoulder bags, rucksacks, or wheeled luggage, they did look more like chic exporers pre-expedition in some first class Polar travel lounge. At Browne, many of his looks capitalized on male helplessness, and buttoned or tied behind the back. To achieve this, even the most yoga-flexible Browneian would require the services of a servant, or a Master. In the photos online, this cannot be seen.