Now You Can Live Like Thom Browne, Too

Courtesy of Thom Browne

On a sunny Tuesday morning in Milan, Thom Browne dropped by his menswear store in the city’s historic shopping district. In one of the terrazzo-floored rooms sat a tiny twin bed designed by the French modernist Jacques Adnet in the 1950s, the bedspread so taut it could have been folded by a drill sergeant. The crisp white linens were made by Frette as part of the new Thom Browne home line the designer was set to unveil with a special performance at Salone del Mobile, the international furniture fair that’s kind of like fashion week for couches. Towels, pillows, and blankets—all adorned with the brand’s four-bar stripe motif—sat nearby. After inspecting the bed, Browne appeared satisfied. “I like a firm mattress,” he said.

The fashion designer was wearing a leather jacket and jeans—just kidding. Browne is a man of habit par excellence, whose rigid aesthetic preferences complement his precise daily routines. As sure as the sun rises in the east, Browne starts his day with a breakfast of white toast (ordered well-done) and black coffee, and wears a small gray short suit, white oxford button-down, narrow tie, gray cardigan, and black brogues.

Browne built his growing fashion empire on this neo-salaryman uniform (the brand’s sales hit a new high of $400 million last year), and used it to establish himself as one of the most prominent American designers working today. His exacting vision is so compelling it has inspired legions of Thom Browne fans to dress just like him. And now they can live like Thom Browne, too.

“Like so many things we do, I thought, why not?” Browne told me of introducing home goods. It was, he explained over coffee and toast at the nearby Four Seasons, a natural move. “I’ve used Frette sheets forever,” Browne said. Frette, a luxury Italian linen brand founded in 1860, has never collaborated with a designer before, but Browne said the partnership developed seamlessly. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do,” he said, which was to issue the exact same crisp white 300-thread count cotton sateen bedding Browne himself sleeps on.

The line also includes Browne’s favorite crystal coupes and tumblers by Baccarat, silver ice buckets by Christofle, and porcelain tea sets by Haviland, all of which also figure into his daily routines. “I looked under my cups at the Ritz and they used Haviland,” he said, referencing his home-away-from-home in Paris. “I thought, if it's good enough for the Ritz, it’s good enough for me.”

The home has always been a fascinating part of Thom Browne’s world. The designer selects the furniture in his brand’s retail stores, which are designed without fixtures so that he can fill them with Nakashima benches and Paul McCobb bar carts. But his homes reveal an even more personal sense of interior discipline. A 2016 Architectural Digest spread of his Greenwich Village bachelor pad is somewhat legendary in part because it was the first time many realized just how thoroughly Browne embodied his brand. The place included no fewer than four antique bar carts, but the centerpiece was his Adnet bed that looked no bigger than an army cot. It was interpreted as a sign of Browne’s radical devotion to his vision of reimagined mid-century luxury.

At breakfast, Browne laughed about the bed, admitting to a small degree of interior design stubbornness from an early age. “I was the worst growing up,” Browne said. “When I had no money, if I couldn't afford the sofa I wanted, I wouldn't have a sofa.” At one point, he admitted, he and his partner Andrew Bolton shared the small bed for some three months. When you basically only buy furniture from the 1950s, Browne said, “getting beds that are actually suitable for two people is really hard.”

Fittingly, the collection launched on Tuesday evening with a Thom Browne bedtime fantasy. Guests filed into a salon in the neoclassical Palazzina Appiani to find six cots made, like at the store, with barracks-like precision. Models in Thom Browne underwear filed into a sort of techno-lullabye soundtrack and got dressed, slowly, in their meticulous gray suits. “I love drawing things out and making people sit and think that a very singular, somewhat boring idea can be very interesting,” said Browne.

Browne’s runway shows are elaborate and theatrical—and often quite long—meditations on the idea of uniformity, but the surprise here was that Browne was referencing one of his watershed moments as a designer and an artist: his very first show in Europe back in January 2009. “If I'm going to introduce something new, I want to feel true to where it all started,” he said. That season, Browne was the guest designer at Pitti Uomo in Florence. Rather than show a new collection he staged a piece of performance art featuring 40 identically dressed models acting out a synchronized work day at 40 identical desks topped with typewriters. It was a crystal clear introduction to the classic Thom Browne uniform, and to the way he could make us rethink the mundane.

Earlier, Browne let me in on what would happen next at his Salone debut: “Nothing!” Once the models were dressed for work (“the work of their dreams” said the press release) they laid down on the Frette sheets and slept. Maybe literally—the whole thing took nearly two hours, by which point the models had awoken, dressed back down to their skivvies, and marched out. Guests sipped champagne on an adjacent terrace while the models snoozed, but the effect still landed. Like at Pitti in 2009, “You see the same type of rigorous, almost militaristic approach to a very singular, steady, drawn out idea,” Browne said.

At breakfast, I asked the designer what was coming next for Thom Browne home. Was he considering developing furniture of his own? “Not really,” he said, “because I don’t like new furniture.” But you can get the next best thing. All of the antiques Browne puts in his stores are for sale—firm mattress not included.

Originally Appeared on GQ