Thom Browne wanted to make sure that his debut at Milan's prestigious Salone del Mobile was a snooze. Because there, you see, he was set to debut his exquisite bedding collaboration with Frette, one of the world's leading producers of luxury bed and bath linens.
So, Browne did what he always does: he created a holistic showcase indicative of the inimitable worldview that's established him as one of fashion's perpetual avant-garde ideators.
"Time to Sleep," Browne's first-ever presentation in Milan, was captured as a brief short film, wherein a handful of lightly-dressed models walk with painstaking purpose to their Jacques Adnet beds, slip on their crisp grey Thom Browne suits, and lay down for some brief shuteye. They then jolt awake, undress, and hit the road.
Talk about sleeping on the job! It's sharp, sartorial, and slightly surreal. It's Thom Browne.
"I wanted to showcase my partnership with Frette in a way that felt personal to me; to take a simple idea and elevate it through my storytelling and allow people to see this partnership through a different perspective," Browne tells Highsnobiety.
The uncanniness of his unsleepwalking drones purposely recalls Browne's Fall 2009 presentation, his first in Europe.
It reflects Browne's typical approach to both referencing and reframing 20th-century menswear tropes, which in his hands become not tropes at all, but tangible dreams epitomized by unruffled sheets, blazers delicately hung from coatracks, and urbane base layers striped with Browne's signature quadruple-bar.
But, wait. One of Browne's consistent touchpoints is mid-century American business dress and, yet here he's staging a showcase in Italy partially furnished with vintage French beds. Isn't that a stretch? How does he make it feel so cohesive?
In his sleep, really. "It’s the easiest," he says. "I know exactly what I want and how it relates to the world i’ve created."
Because that's the thing about Thom Browne. Yes, he has designers and creatives who execute and flesh out his vision but, at the core of it all, is Thom Browne. The man himself.
Hence why his homeware partners are all the world's most illustrious, the most established. It doesn't matter that, while Browne is American, his homeware makers all French: Frette, Baccarat, Haviland, Christofle. It matters solely that these brands are masters of their craft because, like Browne, they are.
Like the presentation, Thom Browne's homeware homogenously blends crosscontinental ideals of elegance.
And, most importantly, Browne himself uses it all.
"It made perfect sense to partner with these brands: I live with all of [them]," he explains.
"They are all the best at what they do and have become known for the beautifully executed products they create. Beautifully created products that I want my customers to experience the same way I do."
