Article By Suzy Menkes
Published: January 15, 2009
FLORENCE: Everything was so pin-sharp - the taut tailored suits, the metallic clatter of typewriters and the modernist Mussolini architecture - that Thom Browne's Florentine excursion was a pure and powerful distillation of his message.
Just two outfits - suits and knits - appeared at the American designer's first European show during the Pitti Uomo menswear fair in Florence. But the essence of Browne's sartorial style does not begin to describe the atmospheric sense of pent-up masculinity and menace.
A line-up of models, with identical slicked hair and exactly the same camel coats and brief cases, walked into the "office" space created at the Istituto di Scienze Militari Aeronatiche. The brick edifice was built in 1938 and has kept everything from its streamlined squares of the parquet floor to aeroplane-shaped door handles intact.
A "boss" figure pinged a bell as the models took off their short coats and snug suit jackets, both with striped linings, to sit at 1950s desks, where they tapped away. Although nothing broke through the rigid façade, you knew that there was a Clark Kent Superman under the prim gray cardigans, trimmed with buttons at the side and short pants (with more buttons at the back to strike a faint fetishistic note). The boss's minions, wearing suits with shorts, the better to reveal the red/white/blue tabs at the shoe heels, then strode the room to collect wads of typed sheets.
"Just very simple," Browne said about a show that could best be described as "simply" perfect. Having used his irony in a heavy-handed way in his recent New York shows, offering weird variations on formal dress, the designer reduced his fantasies, as if making a good sauce: The same ingredients of taut, even tortured, manhood were there but presented in a subtle way.
A more surreal effect was the face-off between the air force cadets and officers in their smart service uniforms with the provocative fashion version. It made for a memorable show and an example of how the Pitti Immagine focus can bring out the best in a designer.
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