Last week, The Met’s Atelier series featured designer Thom Browne in conversation with the eponymous journalist Alina Cho. The discussion—peppered with Cho’s sharp wit and Browne’s measured candor—offered a glimpse into the architect of modern menswear’s sharpest disruptions. In one exchange, Cho quipped about Browne’s legendary routines—his eight-mile daily run, always in his own tailored running attire—and the rigor he applies not only to his personal life but also to those at his label. New employees at Thom Browne are issued a “starter uniform” and handed an 11-page manual dictating the sartorial codes of his company. “It’s about focus,” Browne explained. “Uniformity isn’t stifling—it’s clarifying.”
This paradox has defined Browne’s career: while he enforces strict rules, his work continuously challenges the most rigid uniform of all—the American suit. A cornerstone of tradition and conformity, the suit was reimagined in Browne’s hands as both rebellion and art.
Since its inception in 1818, when Henry Sands Brooks launched Brooks Brothers in Manhattan, the American suit has been a barometer of cultural shifts. In the 1950s, it was immortalized as the “grey flannel suit,” a beacon of corporate uniformity. Jazz musicians, like Miles Davis, adopted the suit but infused it with Italian tailoring, turning conformity into subversion. The 1960s saw counterculture movements abandon the suit altogether, and by the dawn of Silicon Valley, hoodies and jeans replaced it as emblems of success.