Stripes, stripes, stripes — hardly any silhouette in Thom Browne’s 53-look-strong spring collection for Moncler Gamme Bleu did without them.
Two superbly crafted wooden sculls set the scene for Browne’s collegial collection, essentially divided into four squads of Ivy League athletes: Moncler’s red, white and blue; a preppy group of baby pink, grass-green and lemon; gray and white, and a more formal team of evening numbers.
In case you thought it wasn’t possible to render each in a fleet of roughly 160 styles in different stripes, think again. Browne reached deep into his bag of fabric tricks, conjuring Chesterfields, trenches, cardigans, polos, blazers and anoraks in a flurry of outstanding fabrications.
He created striped patterns from black and white astrakhan, used grosgrain ribbon appliqués on cashmere, embroidered stripes with sequins, pulled off terry cloth with an inlay of sequins and seam-taped traditional men’s suiting fabrics for a fun and detail-oriented — yet repetitive — collection.
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The tops were often layered — and guaranteed wrinkle-free, as demonstrated by Browne’s college boys who had crammed them into their gym bags, before changing to the sounds of a men’s choir energetically chanting “Off to the sea.”
Browne referred to the collection as universal. “The boats are from France, the collection, made in Italy, the guys are from all over, and I’m from America,” he grinned backstage after the show.