fatchin

Thom Browne’s shows always come with a narrative: This one was Tom Brown’s Schooldays as set in a midwinter, sylvan Narnia (with pigtails, and without the violence). The scene was a snow-floored forest scattered with saplings and divided by a long line of camp beds, upon each of which was a rolled-up sleeping bag. Two tall fairy godfathers/alfresco dorm monitors in full-skirted white dresses worn under fur vests and netted balaclavas emerged. They idly wandered, sometimes picking up the snow and letting it fall through their fingers.

This was when the collection proper started coming out. Around halfway through it a young man wearing a backflap-less gray union suit, gray socks, and a long pom-pom-peaked gray beanie joined the floor, clutching a teddy bear. Like all the models wearing the collection, he sported a pair of long pigtails. The first of about 30 others who would follow, he made his way to his allotted camp bed, unrolled his bag, slipped in, and pulled on a gray leather sleeping mask. The full-dressed dorm monitors came along to brush off the snow and tuck him (and teddy) in.

At the end of the show, when all the beds were filled and all the looks had come and gone, the dorm monitors receded to the back of the room and mimed switching off the lights. The lights went off.