Thom Browne: The Man Who Tailors Dreams

Reiner Holzemer’s captivating Thom Browne: The Man Who Tailors Dreams (a highlight of the 15th edition of DOC NYC) presents the designer as a sartorial caster of spells who changed the proportions of one ubiquitous garment, the gray suit, and thus shifted persuasively ideas of masculinity, femininity, and power in a puckish way. Suddenly the length of trousers that seemed stately not so long ago, feels gangly and sloppy, and while associations with Gregory Peck in Nunnally Johnson’s 1956 post-war drama The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit still match, so do the short pants of children of an earlier era, with the demands of adulthood suspended.

Browne’s partner, Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, comments in connection with the February 2022 fashion show centered on The Little Prince, how the work is “poised on the bridge between childhood and adulthood, poised on the brink of innocence and experience.” It is not quite clear at first if Bolton’s perceptions refer to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s beloved novella or Brown’s work as designer and storyteller.

The documentary opens with a curtain. A theatre start is always smart, as Holzemer knows. In his recent revealing portrait of the actor Lars Eidinger, (Lars Eidinger: To Be Or Not To Be), we see the thespian pace around the auditorium in heels and red underwear during the rehearsals for his Jedermann in Salzburg. The classic platform shoes, the Cothurnus, worn by actors in Ancient Greece are not far from Browne’s bold creations, that include children’s building blocks with letters on them forming the heels.

There is plenty to see here of the details that make the garments so extraordinary. Both craft and the formidable ideas behind it are celebrated here and praised by fans like Anna Wintour, Janet Jackson, or Whoopi Goldberg. Jewelry designer Jane Wilde compares her friend to David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, a comparison that may have inspired the rhythm of the title. Bowie himself turns out to have been another fan, one that Browne is particularly fond of.

“I always have been a dreamer” the designer says, as we get a glimpse into his tie closet while he buttons his vest. It is personal for him, it is what he likes to wear. The dachshund shape of bags and hats, or woven in the fabric of a skirt, is inspired by Hector, Bolton and Browne’s adorable wire-haired Dachshund, whom we see gamboling out of their Sutton Place home, all ready and excited to be an observer of the goings-on at the next fitting.

The embrace of playfulness runs in the household - Bolton’s costume exhibitions, from China: Through The Looking Glass, to Camp: Notes on Fashion, to Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion (with smells on the walls!) celebrate the might of stories the same way Browne’s collections and fashion shows do, be it American Prom Cinderella or an army of teddybears seated each in a little gray suit, or a Kafkaesque office with uniforms and desks and apples for the invisible teacher at Pitti Uomo in 2009 Florence. “Never too literally,” though, Browne insists, the references work their magic, as the old is condensed and reflected and catapulted into the fresh and new.

From the designer and his collaborators, we learn about 'the rules,' the way of dressing that visually unites the staff: The shirts aren’t ironed, just washed and dried. The buttons of the button-downs remain unbuttoned. The tie bar is positioned just so to be seen above the cardigan. Vice president of sales, Jay Sternstein, adds the must-have pocket square, the sleeves with working button holes and two buttons undone to the mandate. Robert Childs, women’s design director, explains how for the three-button sports coat, only the middle one is buttoned and, of course, “grey, it’s got to be grey.”

Back in time we travel via photographs and home movies to Allentown, Pennsylvania in the late ’60s with baby Thom and his family. His sister Jeanmarie Wolf describes in an on-camera interview how their father, a lawyer - the parents met in law school - always wore a suit and encouraged sports in the family of seven. Swimming was Thom’s sport of choice, which he continued to practice while in business school at Notre Dame. After a stint in Hollywood in the Nineties, the fact that his acting career did not flourish, drove him back east to New York City to try his hand at fashion.

“American stereotypes come across in his work a lot,” says Bolton, and points out how Browne subverts the Upper East Side lady and the WASP, the preppy, the jock, and the businessman alike. And, of course, he had to have a (very unconventional) cowboy in his first couture show in Paris. Anna Wintour remarks on Browne’s routines and likens his need for structure and control to that of Tom Ford and Calvin Klein.

Hopping back in time, we visit Long Island and Rocco Ciccarelli, the custom tailor Browne worked with at the beginning of his career, who remembers still a little puzzled, but fondly the pant with three legs. “We did it,” he says with a grin.

Thom Browne runway shows are performances and the brand videos have the hallmarks of clever dreamscapes with enchanting music from the golden age of Hollywood. The man who dressed First Lady Michelle Obama for her husband’s inauguration in 2013 and made a whole men’s collection in women’s clothes, who designed Cardi B’s headline-making red dress for the Met Gala and won the lawsuit Adidas launched against him about his use of four stripes is not slowing down.

Anna Wintour calls the Bolton/Brown team “this incredible couple,” who are “very happy living in their own world they have created.” What we see confirms that notion. It is their creativity and thoughtfulness, their humor and respect for all kinds of beauty that spreads and enriches our lives.

Knowing the sartorial rules by the man who transformed menswear in considerable ways and says he “hates rules,” poses an amusing challenge to viewers of the film, who may not usually pay attention to such specifics of dress. You might notice that Maisie Williams, in tie and with open collar, has her button-downs buttoned, or that Diane Keaton, though button-downs open, has the buttons on her sleeves done up.

This is how it works. Your senses once awakened, announce change. “The shrunken gray suit will be a legacy that will go on forever,” Bolton knows, and that it is “very rare to find a designer who is able to marry a sort of technical virtuosity with a very refined level of concept.”