The Asylum

by Simon Doonan

  Conclusion: As insanely specific as foodie fads and disorders are within the fashion universe, there are important regional differences. Yanks are terrified of toxins. Frogs thrive on them. And Brigitte, Françoise and Solange all lit up as soon as we hit the sidewalk.

  thom browne’s hairy ankles

  A MASH-UP OF GENDER-CONFUSED fascist lesbianism. A shrunken preppy jacket with an armpit-scraping, high-waisted pant. Howdy Doody taken to his complete and utter lunatic conclusion. Visconti’s The Damned meets Pasolini’s Salo. Lacroix meets von Trapp. Liberace meets Hitler. Gilbert & George meet Ross Perot. White mink stoles, calf-length skirts, marcel-waved hair, fur-trimmed capes, cashmere stockings and Swarovski-encrusted attaché cases . . . and that’s just the men.

  The above are some random notes I took while watching a recent Thom Browne menswear show.

  How did Thom happen? How did he become the most influential menswear designer of the 2000s while simultaneously being the most unbridled and avant-garde and totally fucking crazy?

  During the eighties, and most of the nineties, men’s designer clothing was huge. And by huge, I do mean capacious, tentlike, flowing, ample. If you were a trendy dude who wandered into Maxfield, Barneys or Charivari, then you saw immediately that cocoons and capes and general bagginess were where it was at. If a guy wanted a black Yohji highwayman’s cloak, a billowing Versace scarf-print silk shirt or a black boxy boiled-wool Comme des Garçons suit—those voluminous CDG suits were Karl Lagerfeld’s preferred uniform before he dropped major poundage on that cornbread diet—he could have his pick.

  The basic assumption was as follows: Designer clothes are expensive. Rich dudes tend to be well-fed and beefy. Et voilà! Blouson is the mot du jour!

  If, on the other hand, you were freakishly undersized, or just poor and petite, then you were shit out of luck.

  I am one of those freakishly undersized personages. As a result, that baggy eighties Bananarama blousy period was, for me, a very emotionally scarring one. Being surrounded by designer clothing and not fitting into any of it was an alienating and horrific experience. Once in a while I would give it a whirl. I would try on a Montana this or an Armani that. The result? I was so swamped by fabric that I was invariably mistaken for an oven mitt. People would pick me up, stuff their hands inside me and slam me upside their pot roasts.

  My point is this: The oversized ethos only worked on dudes of average or above-average height. So what did I wear?

  Back then, back before LiLo and Kim and Perez and Al-Qaeda and Brangelina and Real Housewifery, there was no Zara or Uniqlo or H&M. There was no affordable fashion in teensy sizes. But my drive toward self-adornment was powerful. I found a way to survive: vintage clothing.

  I came to know every good second-hand store in New York City, Miami Beach and Los Angeles. I sussed out the emporiums that always carried a meaty selection of unworn dead stock or secondhand merch and came away with armfuls of well-priced trouvays. The clothing manufacturers of the fifties, sixties and seventies were fully committed, back before the arrival of all that baggy blousonerie, to a niftier, narrower silhouette.

  Before long, I became a rigorous vintage connoisseur. I could spot a moldy green armpit at fifty paces. I knew how to check seams for lice. And I would still be checking for skid marks and buying vintage if it were not for one man. His name is Thom Browne. With his shrunken ethos, Thom put the “dinky” back in designer clothing.

  If you kidnapped Thom Browne from his home in New York City and plonked him down outside a convenience store in Kentucky, people would assume that he had escaped from the local mental health facility. His personal style is so codified and perversely conservative that it would definitely freak out the locals; with his high-waisted, flat-front pants; shrunken jackets; oversize pant cuffs cropped to expose several inches of ankle and hairy shinbone; and massive, cartoonish wing tips, Thom manages to simultaneously embody and destroy every menswear convention. His vision for men combines and magnifies various twentieth-century archetypes: the sixties congressman, the prewar Ivy Leaguer, Bobby Kennedy, Mr. Rogers and more.

  Despite the objective weirdness of the TB look, it has been hugely influential. It is the influence. You cannot walk into a store today without seeing traces of Browne: ventriloquist-dummy-size jackets, a cardigan with a contrasting arm stripe, a painfully narrow tie, a center-vented gray wool jacket with a grosgrain ribbon trim.

  When I happen to see Thom sitting in a restaurant or walking down the street, all Thom’d up, I usually think, That’s either Thom Browne or it’s a very stylish and handsome Jehovah’s Witness. Thom is, in many ways, both. He creates and proselytizes the Browne look with a missionary zeal. He is a bloke with a vision and, unlike certain designers I could name who never seem to wear their own clothes—you know who you are!—he lives and breathes his own sartorial philosophy. His conviction and passion are what have propelled him into the spotlight. The courageous exaggerations of the Browne style, the polar opposite of the floppy draperie that dominated menswear for so long, have made him the most relentlessly copied menswear name to come along in years. He understood that the plump baby boomers and the eighties muscle dudes were aging out of their designer fixation, making way for a new generation of scrawny manorexics. A wave of hipster postgrunge freaks had arrived and they have no desire to look even remotely like an oven mitt. Their fashion icon was Spud from Trainspotting.

  I don’t do the supershort Thom Browne pant—my legs are short enough already—but I am nonetheless one of his acolytes. He has given me a way to look both tidy and eccentric. And—cue the trumpets and heavenly choirs—that quirky shrunken-jacket silhouette is, on my freakishly undersized body, a perfect fit. It looks normal! Praise the Lord!

  And what of the man himself? Who is the dude behind the grosgrain?

  A one-man performance troupe, Mr. Browne eats at the same restaurants at the same time every day. I have no idea why. Despite having had many conversations with Thom, I have no idea what makes him tick, what it is like to be Thom and wander the streets with chilly ankles. He is well mannered but remote. This old-school reserve has only added to the enigma. Thom Browne the unknowable.

  The depths of Thom’s unknowability are confirmed every time he stages a fashion show. These occasions are dominated by outrageously unwearable concoctions—ballooning skirts, squishy cod pieces and linebacker shoulders—which challenge all of our preconceived notions about fashion. Men in terrorist masks and quasibridal frocks wander around rooms filled with turquoise wedding cakes. Chicks with giant silver egg-shaped thingys on their heads reposition themselves like giant chess pieces. What does it all mean? No explanatory notes are provided. Whether promoting men’s clothing or women’s, these arty, protracted, incomprehensible and thoroughly enjoyable affairs never reveal anything about this particular season’s concept or about the man himself.

  I love to watch the facial expressions of the show attendees. Without the benefit of explanatory insights into Thom’s MO, the audience is suspended in a state of mild discomfort. Should we cheer? Are we allowed to laugh? Are these clothes for sale? Watching the mugs of the front-rowers at a recent show, I suddenly became aware that I had seen this particular expression somewhere before. It’s the same embarrassed-but-slightly-concerned face I have seen on my neighbor’s fluffy cat as she executes a poo in her litter box.

  Of one thing I am certain, Thom is extremely anal-retentive about the production of his shows. Rehearsals continue until everything is just so. I base this observation on the fact that Thom once kept the sobbing, bare-legged fashion pack waiting al fresco for half an hour in Arctic temperatures. Our tears were turning to icicles as we begged for mercy and pantomimed hypothermia to the PR flacks with clipboards who were observing our slow death with uncaring gazes through a frosty window. “Thom needs one more run-through,” said a gray-clad acolyte and rebolted the door.

  Last Christmas I walked into Il Cantinori, on
e of Thom’s regular New York eateries. Near the window was a long table with sixteen gray-suited look-alikes eating pasta. Yes, it was the Thom Browne corporate staff holiday outing. TB himself was at the head of the table.

  Out-of-towners were riveted.

  “What’s with the Hutterites, or whatever the fuck they are?” asked one well-lubricated diner.

  “The Branch Davidians are in the house!” slurred another.

  Thom just smiled and ate his pasta.

  the olsens vs the phoenix suns

  MOST PEOPLE, when they hear the word “Arizona,” think about golf carts and spa facials, or Alice Cooper, or horrible sweat lodges gone awry, or extremely tall sports personalities living in potentate splendor in their Sun Valley palazzos. Not me. When I visit Phoenix, I always think about Psycho.

  The images of Janet Leigh embezzling from her boss and then fleeing into the sticks, only to be hacked to death in the bathroom of a run-down motel by a troubled young man who wears his mum’s old frocks because he believes that “a boy’s best friend is his mother,” were seared into my brain in the sixties and have remained there ever since. When I fly over downtown Phoenix, I try to identify the famous building from the opening scene. Yes, I’m talking about the location of Janet Leigh’s clandestine lunchtime shag. Was it that building there?

  Fall 2009. The plane is coming in to land at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and, yes, I am thinking about Janet Leigh in her pointy white brassiere, but I am also thinking about the Olsens. One half of them is on the plane with me. Mary-Kate and I are flying in to present a trunk show and défilé at Barneys Scottsdale. Ashley arrived a couple of days earlier for a little poolside R & R, and is now hiding under a parasol, one assumes.

  Let’s talk about the mind-blowing success of the Row. Mary-Kate and Ashley Oslen are the only entertainment celebrities in the history of fashion to have achieved a Carine-Roitfeld-thinks-we’re-fabulous high-fashion cred. They even won the CFDA Designer of the Year Award. No other celebrity has accomplished this feat. Madge and Gwen may have made some dough in the tweenie zone, Jessica Simpson may have cha-ching’d at Macy’s, but the Olsens are the only People mag iconettes to see their clothing hang in stores alongside Lanvin, Dries Van Noten, Comme des Garçons and Alaia. They have achieved acceptance.

  Their designs are uncompromising. Called the Row in homage to Brit tailoring epicenter Savile Row, their collection is chic, elegant, cerebral, modern and pared down. And expensive. In 2011 they launched a handbag line that included a $39,000 croc backpack. Barneys sold three of them.

  The former Full House stars and I are staging this fashion show for the delectation of an organization named the Wives of the Phoenix Suns. The event will raise some money for their foundation while simultaneously introducing the basketball wives to a label of which they may have hitherto been unaware.

  While Mary-Kate joins Ashley in the Barneys alteration shop for last-minute fittings on their models, I twirl round the store making sure everything looks spiffy.

  At six o’clock the twins are ready, and I am all poofy and perfumed and gussied up and ready to meet the basketball wives.

  By the way, when I say perfumed, I mean perfumed!

  I am a big believer in sloshing it on. Yes, I know that’s very trashy and parvenu and seventies of me, but I enjoy being trashy and parvenu and seventies. When people complain about headaches and allergies caused by the overfragrancing of others, I just think they have a bad attitude. My fragrance role model is the Sabu character in Black Narcissus, the gorgeous Technicolor Michael Powell movie. The bejeweled and turbaned prince rides to the hilltop convent on his little white pony for his daily lessons, reeking of perfume and intoxicating the poor nuns against their will. Go Sabu.

  Suddenly, there is a colorful commotion at the front door of Barneys. It appears as if a group of exotic birds is attempting to gain entry. That, as it turns out, is exactly what is happening.

  As they approach, I can see that these birds of paradise are carrying purses—colorful, embellished handbags with inlays of fluorescent python and jangling charms. And they are wearing cocktail dresses—exotically pleated, patterned and ruched. With their explosive coiffures and bravura maquillages, the Suns basketball wives resemble gorgeous prize-winning cockatiels. And they smell delicious.

  Striking alluring attitudes and emitting wafts of Fracas and Frederic Malle, the lusciously beautiful and bejeweled ladies arrange themselves—a collage of pretzeled bare legs and brimming cleavages—in their front-row seats. The Row show begins, and a dramatic and fascinating dissonance reveals itself.

  One by one, the models emerge. They are minimalist mavens in simple shapes. Slate gray, charcoal black, and petrol blue are the dominant hues. The designs are austere and graphic.

  With their seaweedy hair and pasty pallor, the models appear to be in the middle of some kind of existentialist crisis. They are very Pina Bausch. The garments hang straight from their shoulders, reminding me of Norman Bates when he wears his mother’s frocks. Like Norman, the models have no curves.

  The basketball wives, in sharp contrast, have lots of curves, but the differences do not end there.

  The basketball wives are happy.

  The Row models are haunted and melancholy.

  The basketball wives are a redolent bouquet.

  The Row models smell of soap and water.

  The basketball wives look as if they have migrated from Costa Rica.

  The Row gals don’t fly. They live in an orphanage or an incredibly chic mental hospital.

  Never in the history of runway shows has there ever been a wider chasm between the gals on the runway and the gals staring at the runway.

  They are like two different species, a seraglio of exotic odalisques observing a conclave of überchic fashion nuns. Cher meets Mother Teresa. Carmen Miranda goes on a date with Jane Goodall. Exuberance versus earnestness. Flamboyance versus restraint.

  Sex versus fashion.

  Show a hot-blooded man a photograph of deathly pale Cate Blanchett in an exquisite varicose-vein-colored Givenchy couture creation, and the chances of him puffing up his chest and saying, “I’d like to tap that!” are, let’s face it, girls, a tad remote.

  When horny hetero hunks observe Tilda Swinton looking androgynous and otherworldly in a Haider Ackermann jimmy-jammy suit or a Raf Simons canary yellow shroud, it is difficult to imagine them popping a Viagra and saying, “Okay, Tilly! Let’s do it!”

  If a testosterone-riddled frat boy encountered the hauntingly chic Daphne Guinness lurking in the shadows at the kegger, would he try to slip her a roofie and slip a hand in her blouse . . . or would he run back to his dorm room and begin garlanding his access points with garlic while clutching a crucifix? As filled with admiration for the style of the Right Honorable Daphne as I am, I am going to go with the latter.

  What’s my point?

  My point is that high fashion is simply NOT sexy. High fashion is conceptual and strange and intriguing and startling . . . but hot? Not so much.

  Leandra Medine, a highly strung, brilliant, style-addicted Manhattaness, has always understood the intrinsic unhotness of La Mode. This is why, when she began writing her fashion blog, she wisely named it the Man Repeller.*

  Leandra is a smart girl. She recognized that esoteric fashion is, by definition, almost a denial of sex. In order to make clothing look and feel like “high fashion,” a designer needs to strip away any suggestion of man-pleasing hoochie allure.

  Back to the show.

  With the exception of the moment when I introduced the ladies as “the wives of the Phoenix Pistons”—I try to stay au courant with sports teams, but there are so bloody many!—the show went off without a hitch.

  At the après-show meet ’n’ shop, the birds of paradise and the little gray sparrows finally encountered one another in person. They hit it off surprisingly well. Each
species scrutinized the feathers and behaviors of its polar opposite and was amused and intrigued. Nobody ate anybody.

  The good-natured basketball wives cherry-picked their way through the Row offerings and, paradoxically, found the items which could be integrated into what I imagined were their vast and colorful closets. The indigo python jackets, in particular, were a big hit.

  As I observed the gals interacting after the show, I could not help but ask myself the obvious question: If I had been born a chick, would I be a man repeller? Would I dress like a flamboyant bird of paradise or an existentialist fashion missionary? Would I be able to put conceptual fashion esoterica ahead of my need to dazzle and mesmerize and tantalize? Could I turn my back on flashy, frothy sensuality and, instead, take the steep and rugged path to subtlety?

  My first impulse would be to lie and say, “Yes, bring me the Yohji burlap onesie! I will live a life of fashionable aesthetic purity.”

  Life, however, is short. As much as I love and appreciate the Row and the other designers who inhabit the codified world of nuance and sophistication, I fear I just might be a burlesque bitch at heart. I’ll take a Jeff Koons over a Richard Serra any day.

  coco was a jersey girl

  HAS YOUR DRY CLEANER ever unpicked and removed the label from your Margiela blouse—those four white signature stitches—and skillfully reattached it so that it could not be seen from the outside?

  Has your mother ever mended and patched the artfully chewed holes in your ripped-to-pieces Balmain jeans?

  Remember the Miyake shroud that came back from the cleaners sans pleats. Did you return it and whimper, “Can I have my pleats back, please? Pleats. Please?”

  Did your dad ever offer to remove the massive padlock from your Chloé Paddington bag, using his chain cutter, to prevent said bag from pulling your arm out of its socket?

  Sometimes people, non–fashion people, they just don’t get it.