Balenciaga's Star-Studded Summer Campaign

Intimately set on the opera house stage, 300 guests were surrounded by diaphanous grey debris netting (the mesh you see passing by a construction site) topped with microfiber pigeons. (The pigeons would appear again, alongside the loudspeakers cooing and grunting between songs). The guests were both audience and actors and then the curtain was raised, revealing thousands of Browne-suited cardboard character boards which cheered and clapped at the excited audience (us). There was also a giant bell above us, trimmed by Thom Browne grosgrain, motionless. A little slip of paper was rolled up on the guests' chairs. It said a ‘bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ Ironic since I’d ditch most of my clothes and risk a lot for some of these looks. 

The scene was set like grey stone. The spatially deceitful background turned heads as models paraded down the aisles and suddenly emerged from behind the rows of guests. Browne’s classic tailoring appeared with his ubiquitous suit, opening and closing the show in homage and scattered in hints throughout the collection. There was no one place to look. All you could do was focus on the clothes in front of you. Bell helmets and animal headsets topped some models' heads as others were bandaged up, their faces wrapped by silk gauze and hair detached, sitting next to their walking heads. The classic seersucker appeared in varying cuts of the grey uniform jacket. And then came the tweed, and lots of it. A beaked, netted headpiece hovers above a face. Grey feathers sprinkle over a hyper-cinched Mao suit. Another jacket bursts out at the waist, structuring the silhouette like a naked cage crinoline and shaping the model into a very opulent, very human pigeon.

There is a beauty to garments when they are viewed in a pure state of topography. There is an avalanche of line and stitch, of concave padded jackets and rippling stitches, of articulated toile silk cropped blazers and the squiggling tweed that forms a museum of checked options for one’s wardrobe. There is a complexity to all this variety, but then again, an abundance of options doesn’t hurt, right? Think about the unmediated lines and protruding shapes creating off-the-body action with many coats and sleeves. They ballooned out with fusings similar to the bone inserts that ran along the arms of Browne’s F/W2011 collection. They bulged but were far from turgid. They explore structure, a form without boast. The Browne dog, Hector, also made an appearance in some bags, and there can never be too much of Hector.

The looks varied in material, fluttering with a lightness of seersucker and suddenly propelling down in a chenille tweed overcoat. There were also variations in images that formed from the patchwork, embroidery, embellishments and mesh applique of various looks: one coat had thick nautical connotations, with an embroidered 3-strand rope looping across the woolen back; the conventional jacket was patched with flowing multicolored horsehair brushes; another look had starfish applique; another had embellished coral streaks; another had patched lighthouse and palm trees over a white and grey pinstripe jacket (sleeveless); and another had printed sailing boats and seadragons. Yes, some coats and jackets were sleeveless, resembling either a straight jacket, a sleeveless sleeping bag jacket, or the Lucretia jacket from 2018.

The patterns in this show had a silk-smooth cohesiveness that disregarded the preternatural pronounced sleeves and waists. As the hair grew away like a fungus, golden threads of coral flushed down hyper-long jackets and stopped at the hem, afraid (I think) of the gargantuan heels. The reinterpreted stiletto-esque wedge heel struck past in their tall, statuesque grandeur. They were shaped like porpoises predisposed to brogues. They, of course, also made a scene, clacking like thunderous clogs with an added ring thanks to the reintroduction of spurs — they made a nautical appearance in his SS19 collection — but this time with bells.

At one moment, the music (previously classical and operatic) swerved into a bout of contemporaneity. A miniskirt just walked on a couture runway. Sure, seaside iconography patched onto a monochromatic tailored jacket is…albeit new. But the miniskirt was merely a prelude to more couture novelty: a raw hem came from a sleeve, and oversized coats were donned, grey moss shimmered on a skirt. And then there was the last look…a sheer-ish wedding gown appeared…with shoulder pads, buttons and a collar. Notched lapels. The lowest button popped as the model ascended the staircase, and suddenly, the Browne allure hit couture with the smooth strength of a long upper thigh.

Where last year’s Paris featured ball gowns and three-tier taffeta swallowing the human form, this year’s couture collection let the models walk with an equally luxurious composure without the chaos of five-meter trains. This year, there were fewer than 5 ‘conventional’ gowns. That was enough to respectfully veer away from the pretensions of couture formalism and draw new lines in the visual fabric of fashion.  Tailoring for all and a breath for none was the energy inside, yet there was hardly any havoc. Thom Browne made the show beautiful and efficiently entertaining (as usual). However, the real kicker was the fact that this brand, like many of its previous shows over the years, deserved a spot on couture week. Now, it has one. Now, we wait for the next show, perched on the ledge and edging in seats, waiting for even more daring applications, cooing at the thought of the next.

See the runway looks below.