Inside Thom Browne’s immersive Fall Ready-to-wear 2024 show

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To be invited to a Thom Browne show is to be invited inside a contemporary world, bound by animated sets that feel supernatural though genuine in existence. You sit for a presentation of finely tailored avant-garde garments and exaggerated, seductive footwear, but you also sit for a performance reminiscent of such at a theatre. Every guest – an opportune group of celebrities, close friends, and fashion lovers – is sent inside the fictitious pages of a seasonal storybook, subtly signed with the brand’s marker blue, white, and red stripe.

Browne’s Fall 2024 show on 14 February was no different. In its entirety – set, makeup, hair, and clothing included – the show was a chilling interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s dark tale, The Raven (a whimsical juxtaposition to the warm underbelly of Valentine’s Day). The 58-year-old designer and his team crafted a raw collection of long overcoats with enlarged lapels, spliced tweed, and fashioned shoes and bags made from dusted, jelly-like plastic. Organic accents in the shape of ravens and roses were intarsia’d into fabrics and detailed on sheer stockings.

Upon entry, an eerieness loomed above the faux snow-coated space within Manhattan’s The Shed. Bare-boned trees lined the corners of the centre room, which, at its midpoint, displayed a stilted man wrapped in a dramatised puffer with skinny branches sneaking through his sleeves and perched on top of his head. Titillation poured through the buzzing room as Anna Wintour, Janet Jackson, and Queen Latifah (the final three) took their seats, and the performance could begin.

At approximately 5.38pm, a flood of white light rushed in and an ominous cadence shot through the speakers. Browne’s first character stepped out from behind a purposefully broken, iced-over four-panelled window. This was our “antagonist” – the raven who visits a heartbroken student who’s desperate to know if he will see his lost love, Lenore, ever again, but only answers him with a, “nevermore.”

Brought to life by Anna Cleveland, Browne’s raven was dressed in a sleeveless tuxedo suit, a square shoulder dress, a double-layered tailcoat with a split train, platform front-zipper heels, and a top hat with spiked netting. She was the first to grace the floor, and the last to walk off. Her ensemble, embellished with pleated grosgrain and decorated in silk ribbon needlework, epitomised the brand’s prisee structuring and affinity for recherche silhouettes, as did the rest of the collection.

Much like The Nutcracker’s Mother Ginger and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Ghost of Christmas Present, four children emerged from the center tree’s coat, skulking between the models throughout the 19-minute show. While Dickens story features two children – Ignorance, a boy, and Want, a girl – awakening from a giant garment in raggy clothes, the four kids in this show were costumed in head-to-toe Thom Browne suiting and handed a mini Hector bag.

The voice of Carrie Coon, The Guilded Age’s beloved Mrs Russell, boomed when the children settled before Cleveland under the winding branches of the back left sapling. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” she read.

Of course, Coon’s reciting on its own was an example of runway nuanced as a performance art – utilising theatrical elements with models assuming personas and interacting with audiences. But a simple satisfaction stemmed from the fact that the actresses’ on-screen husband, Morgan Spector, was sat front row next to his actual wife and subjected to Coon’s screams about a tragic love loss.

“On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!” Coon squealed, Poe’s words echoing.

When asked if he was personally motivated by the devastation of Poe’s main character, Browne only admitted he was a fan of the writer and preferred when people recognised him as an “American designer.” And while I can’t imagine the individual that doesn’t know this fact, it’s safe to say Browne has solidified himself as an unrivalled player in the industry.

A collection of gothic businesswear, including quilted shirts, tie-around trenches, silk moire coats, collared jackets reimagined as full-length bodysuits, and bodycon skirts with layered waistbands, appeared on models with abstract makeup and stiffly teased hair. Some, like the iconic Alex Consani, donned braids cemented up and to the side. Ballooned dresses with big bows along the necklines and bottom trims, drop-down ribbonry, and two-toned tweed added to the line’s overall playful nature.

The shoes, a facet Browne is majorly celebrated for, combined sportwear codes with radical eccentricity for the upscale fashion-forward consumers. They were skintight, just below the knee boots, ankle boots, galoshes, and longwing loafers and heels. Each pair, covered in a plastic barrier, promised wearability “through the snow,” as Browne phrased it in his tease beforehand. Totes and crossbodies were made to come out of treacherous conditions unscathed, shielded by the same protective material.

Consani closed the show, with flakes of gold topping her upside-down braids. She stopped in the bottom left corner of the floor to undress, handing her swollen gold shawl to the children and turning away from them as they hurried off with it. Underneath, a matching gold cardigan and bustier skirt with rose and raven-adorned panniers was exposed.

Moments before the lights went out, “Nevermore, nevermore, neverrrrmoreeeee,” blared, leading our antagonist out behind the window. But the final walk went to Thom Browne himself. Set to the soundtrack of Etta James’ “At Last,” Browne made his way over to his valentine, Andrew Bolton, handing him a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a quick kiss – the perfect seal to an alluring display of antiquated melancholy.