Breakfast At Ritz, Couture Fittings with Debra Shaw, and A Champagne Toast—A Day in the Life of Thom Browne

One man on a lonely platform

One case sitting by his side

These are both the opening lyrics to Visage’s “Fade to Grey,” and a fitting description to the opening of Thom Browne’s debut couture show hosted earlier this month in Paris—except that the one man is model Alek Wek, and the case sitting by her side is a custom Thom Browne trunk. This is because the ’80s tune was Browne’s starting point as he started to envision his latest collection, which he tells us on a car ride from the Ritz Paris to his Parisian offices in the 8th arrondissement in this latest episode of “Day in the Life.”

“Andrew and I were listening to music, and this Visage song came up,” said Browne after grabbing breakfast (“something unhealthy”) at his hotel, “there was something about the collection that I wanted it to be a little bit somber and not as upbeat,” the designer explained. The narrative of this show consists of a woman waiting at a train station, watching couture-clad passersby as she ponders on whatever is taking up her mind. There’s a myriad of gray suits, and a few underwater motifs to underscore her drowning in her sorrows. “Things are not always so happy,” said Browne.

One thing that does spark joy, however, are fittings. “It’s always the most exciting time to see the clothing actually on the bodies,” says Browne as he meets up with his design director, Thi Wan, to walk through the collection and start fitting looks on models. As is rule chez Browne, his collection included a narrative, so rather than just a board with looks there is also one that outlines characters: There’s our melancholic passenger, played by Wek, a lineup of bells illustrated by models in bulbous trompe l’oeil gray suits, a couple of pigeons—one of which was played by Broadway magnate Jordan Roth—a bride, and, of course, a train conductor and a train, the latter of which wears a train headpiece. “Sometimes I like to be a little corny,” offered Browne with a grin.

The entire collection, Browne explains, was underlined by his now iconic signature gray suit, the building block of his business and uniform aesthetic. Each look offered a couture take on the intrinsically American style. Take a meticulously hand-beaded seersucker—which Browne & co. wore throughout this video (nothing is an accident here)—as an example of reinterpreting a staple of American sartorial vernacular under the lens of Parisian couture savoir faire.