The mourning period is over, at least temporarily, for Thom Browne, who departed from the exquisitely dark Victoriana of his fall collection in favor of something downright cheerful for resort. He revived his twisted, plucky prepster in classic pastel button-down shirts but also beefed up in hefty Cambridge Oxford cloth for multicolored takes on Browne’s fun suit. Essentially he made a preppy basic directional, showing it on head-to-toe tailored ensembles layered with bright polo knits and flexing his fabric development prowess all the way.
“It’s such a very simple idea, but the group of them together is really strong,” he said of the Oxford group. “It feels very much like good American sportswear. It’s grounded in something that’s so understandable to people.”
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Slightly more exotic were the silk jacquards and prints that riffed on Japanese scarves and screens. Browne was inspired by his partner Andrew Bolton’s work on the “China: Through the Looking Glass” exhibition at the Met, but opted to take the Asian influence in a specifically Japanese direction, yielding a bright scarf skirt cut out of two perfect squares of fabric, as well as embroideries on the collars of tweed jackets and the silk jacquard pattern on a graceful, lean gown layered over an Oxford shirt.