Thom Browne closes out NY Fashion Week

NEW YORK

Thom Browne, ever the master showman of American fashion, closed out New York Fashion Week on a blustery day with his own wintry landscape, blanketing the floor with fake snow and presenting his latest inventive designs to the words of Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling “The Raven.”

With celebrities like Janet Jackson and Queen Latifah in the front row on Feb. 14 evening at a theater space on the far west side of Manhattan, Browne did what he does best, displaying feats of intricate tailoring and taking his time to weave a tale. His soundtrack narrator was Carrie Coon, star of “The Gilded Age,” who recited Poe’s bleak story of a lover mourning his lost love, Lenore, when he is visited by the black, thick-necked bird who constantly repeats, “Nevermore! Nevermore!”

As the audience filed in, one of those “trees,” a man on stilts in a huge puffer coat, or gown, stood silently. Once the drama began, four young children emerged from that coat — as if he were a darker version of Mother Ginger from “The Nutcracker” — eventually sitting in the snow as the poem began.

The Poe theme was everpresent. In the first look, an imposing black headpiece made it seem like a raven was perched on the model's head. In the second, black birds emblazoned a white coat that itself covered a black jacket and skirt.

It was a hugely inventive array of coats and jackets and skirts and trousers — and sometimes no trousers at all. There were solids and checks and prints. Some ensembles were fully formed and others had a deconstructed feel that is a longtime design theme of Browne’s. Each ensemble was a work of layered and intricate tailoring, the hallmark of a designer who recently was invited to show haute couture in Paris.

Some silhouettes were long and sleek, others boxy or cinched tightly at the waist. Bags included a number of variations of the Hector — a dog-shaped bag in honor of Browne’s pet of the same name. The bags were covered, said the label, by a removable layer of waterproof vinyl, also used on the shoes.