A/W 2024 New York Fashion Week: Thom Browne to Tory Burch
The best of New York Fashion Week A/W 2024, from a Thom Browne event inspired by Edgar Allan Poe to a Tory Burch exploration of silhouetteFashion month began with New York Fashion Week A/W 2024 and will continue with stops in London, Milan, and Paris in the upcoming weeks. It was quite the opening act: Willy Chavarria, who was included in the Wallpaper* USA 300 last year, concluded the opening day with a collection that solidified his status as one of the city’s most intriguing talents. Peter Do’s sophomore collection for Helmut Lang started things off with a collection that pondered on the dichotomy between armour and adornment.
Though Thom Browne’s latest show took place on Valentine’s Day – the holiday nodded to in the enormous heart-shaped box of flowers the designer grasped for his post-show bow – the inspiration for the collection itself was altogether darker, with Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting 1845 poem The Raven providing the season’s starting point. The poem tells the story of a man who after the death of his lover is visited by a talking raven, provoking a slow descent into madness; here, an altered version – with nods to Chesterfield puffers and silk moiré – was narrated by The Gilded Age actress Carrie Coon.
It made for fertile ground for the theatrical Browne, whose towering cast of characters had a gleefully creepy air, their ruffled hair shaped into enormous sculptural plaits or adorned with delicate black mourning veils. The palette was largely black and white, like a series of plays on the tweed blazer – whether checkered, or deconstructed and patchworked – or white coats over which a flock of black ravens were appliquéd. Ravens also appeared across the dramatic closing look, which comprised an enormous gold brocade cape, removed at the end of the show like a ‘beguiling golden bug’, as the notes described. Watching over it all was a tree-like figure clad in a 30-foot-high version of the brand’s Chesterfield puffer – another dramatic flourish from the designer, who can always be relied upon to put on a show. JM
