Introducing HommeGirls, the New “Passion Project” of Designer Thakoon Panichgul

Nicole Phelps

June 3, 2019 at 12:00 AM

It’s been two years since fashion has heard from Thakoon Panichgul. He quietly hit the pause button on his Silas Chou–backed see-now-buy-now eponymous collection in March 2017—but he’s hardly been idle. This fall, he has plans to relaunch Thakoon, and this week, he’s jumping back into the fray with an entirely separate project. It’s going to surprise people.

HommeGirls is a multimedia initiative—part zine, part Instagram account, part website—dedicated to women who shop the men’s department. The launch issue clocks in at 40 advertising-free, large-format pages, and includes a manifesto that names Katharine Hepburn the “patron saint” of HommeGirls, as well as fashion portfolios by Vanina Sorrenti, Cass Bird, and the sole male contributor, Ben Grieme. On Instagram, @HommeGirls is a mix of current street-style snaps, vintage celebrity inspo, and iconic fashion editorials—all very tomboyish in spirit. The website will soon feature an e-commerce component powered by rewardStyle, making the zine’s editorials shoppable. And eventually under the HommeGirls label, Panichgul will sell limited runs of repurposed men’s blazers, as well as collaborations with established brands. “This is where I can have some fun, and be experimental,” he says, “but the clothes will still be usable and wearable.”

The move to zine publishing and online content creation isn’t necessarily the leap of faith for Panichgul that it seems. Before he launched his eponymous collection circa 2004 he was an editor at Harper’s Bazaar. This venture is a good deal more grassroots than that magazine; Panichgul is self-funding HommeGirls. “It’s a passion project,” he declares. “Thinking about fashion, where I want to be, and what my interests are during my sabbatical, I kept on going back to cool, stylish women like [stylists] Brana Wolf [with whom he worked at Bazaar] and Grace Coddington. I asked myself, ‘Why do I like these women?’ And it came down to the fact that they wear simple clothes.”

That may be news to fans of Panichgul, who’s been known more as a dressmaker than for simple tailoring. Michelle Obama wore a lot of his colorful printed frocks during her husband Barack’s first presidential campaign. “I’ve realized,” Panichgul says, “that there are many facets to being a creative. It’s about being able to bucket these different interests. [In the past,] if I tried to introduce a simple blazer or shirt, those things got lost amid the other, louder pieces. With HommeGirls, now I have the bucket to express that creativity. To be able to toggle back and forth is feeling really good right now.”

Having stepped away from the roller coaster of fashion, Panichgul is determined to come back differently. “What I’ve observed is...it’s a circus out there,” he begins. To borrow a line from his HommeGirls manifesto: “Fashion is on the verge of becoming just another form of entertainment, one more thing to distract us from the realities of daily life. We are dressing to have our pictures taken—something we all learned from the red carpet—only now, thanks to social media, we are both photographer and subject. And lest our followers get bored, we are swiping through our closets with reckless abandon.” Panichgul continues: “There’s a lot of loudness, and what I want to get back to is instinct. The way to do that is to stay grounded to what I feel excited by. Putting blinders on and staying focused might be a quieter way to work, but it’s also more powerful, because it comes from within, it’s authentic. And that’s what resonates with people.”

The debut issue of HommeGirls will be distributed by Iconic Magazines, Casa Magazines, McNally Jackson, and Kith (New York and Los Angeles). Panichgul plans to publish the zine four times a year.