A New Documentary Explores Designer Thom Browne’s Life and Career
Think you know everything there is to know about Thom Browne? Think again.
Reiner Holzemer, a documentary filmmaker who has created other highly respected films on fashion figures including Dries Van Noten and Martin Margiela, has now tackled the life story of Browne.
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Titled “The Man Who Tailors Dream,” the 95-minute film explores how a middle-class kid from Allentown, Pa., created a shrunken gray suit that ultimately spawned a multimillion-dollar business and changed the menswear landscape.
Browne said Holzemer approached him back in 2021 with the idea of creating a film about his life, and his initial response was surprise.
“I always thought a documentary was something you did at the end of your life, and I’m not at the end of my life,” Browne said with a smile. But because of the respect the designer had for Holzemer’s works on Van Noten and Margiela, he agreed.
“Reiner is a really good storyteller and his films are very compelling,” Browne said.
So he provided full access for the filmmaker and his crew to his business as well as his personal life. While that could easily have been intrusive, what impressed the designer the most was how inconspicuous Holzemer’s team was.
“He was with us for almost three years,” Browne said, “but I loved how gentle he was. He was a really good listener and observer and was really a fly on the wall.”
The film, which debuted to a select audience at DocNYC on Friday night, begins with a clip from one of his shows and as well as a peek backstage at the process. The film follows the designer through the creation of five collections, beginning with the first one released following the COVID-19 pandemic and continuing through his women’s couture show in Paris in May of 2023.
Over the course of the 90-plus minutes, Holzemer interviews a wide range of people — from Browne’s sister Jeanmarie Wolf and Janet Jackson to Anna Wintour, Whoopi Goldberg, Lindsey Vonn and his life partner, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Andrew Bolton. Hector, Browne’s dachshund, is also in a few scenes but didn’t sit for an interview.
In the film, viewers see Browne as a child — in grainy black-and-white home movies wearing a tailored coat and knee socks, of course — and it relates how he attended Notre Dame and swam on the university’s team, where he learned firsthand about hard work, and obtained a degree in economics. But he hated the consulting job he got after college and instead, headed to Los Angeles to try his hand at acting.
As Johnson Hartig, designer of Libertine and another wannabe actor who became friends with Browne in those early years in California, said: “It didn’t work out very well” for either of them.
“I liked doing it, but I probably wasn’t very good because I never got any work,” Browne says in the film.
That realization brought him back to New York, where he finally found his calling in fashion. But Browne had to sell his car to afford to return to the East Coast in 1997.
As is well-known by now, Browne started off by creating five suits for himself and gauging the reaction. While the tailoring was classic menswear, the proportions were anything but. “The reaction was not very positive at the beginning,” he admitted.
“He took the most traditional item in a man’s wardrobe, the gray suit, and subverted it by playing with the proportions — and people were horrified, absolutely horrified,” Bolton added.
But eventually, those suits gained a following and their influence was felt in other men’s collections as pants got shorter and tighter.
The film doesn’t completely sugarcoat Browne’s journey though, and also tackles the challenges he’s faced since starting his company 21 years ago. That includes almost calling it quits in 2009, when he admits he was “days away” from having to close down, and facing off against the German behemoth Adidas over his use of stripes on his clothes.
But in court and on the financial ledger, he persevered and continues to make an impact in the world of fashion.
Overall, the film is upbeat, fast-paced and engaging with its celebrity interviews and backstage shenanigans. But it also offers a more personal look at the designer’s life, particularly his love story with Bolton, that not everyone might know.
That was important to include, Browne believed, as was the interview with his sister. “We grew up together, we swam together, she knows me better than anyone,” he said. “I grew up with really strong women in my life, with my mother and sisters, and her version was important to show what the family sees.”
He admitted that watching all the people in the film talking about him though was a bit disconcerting. “It was like an out-of-body experience,” he said. But the fact that it shined a spotlight on his career is what he cherishes the most. “I always wanted people to see Thom Browne — not the person but the work. I’m so proud of the work, and the work looks so good [in the film.]”
And that work is not close to being done. “Thanks to my partnership with Zegna, there’s still so much I’m able to do,” he said. “My men’s can grow as more men understand what we do beyond the gray suit. And I still see women’s as a new business.”
Prior to Friday’s premiere of the documentary, which will be distributed and shown globally in 2025, Brown, described the day a majority stake was sold to Zegna [for an estimated $500 million] “didn’t stink.”
That was one of the many insights he shared during a public talk with Alina Cho at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There was a nearly sold-out audience at what was the 10-year anniversary of “The Atelier with Alina Cho” series. “For the record, I knew you when you didn’t have any money and you are still the same person all these years later,” Cho said to Browne.
Browne’s label is offered in about 300 specialty and department stores, and the company has 107 retail stores and concept shops and two more boutiques are in development — a Madison Avenue and East 72nd Street outpost that is slated to bow in March and a Melrose Place location in Los Angeles.
Accustomed to doing at least eight collections a year, Browne said he will “definitely” show during New York Fashion Week in February. If there are too many good reviews after a fashion show, he wonders if he pushed it far enough.
Asked about his role as chairman of the CFDA, Browne said, “I’ve been given so much from the industry, especially here in New York, that I wanted to give back. I have been through it and I can lead and mentor through that experience. It’s important that everybody realize that we all live almost parallel lives. We all have a moment, where it seems that it may not work out. The most important thing I wanted to prove was that, if you really love it more than anybody else, it will work out. But also, you have to create beautiful things that are more than just clothes.”
As for Peter Do’s recent departure from Helmut Lang after only two runway shows and the other musical chairs among designers in Europe, Browne said fashion houses aren’t giving designers enough time and sometimes the way they are treated “by these big companies is really challenging.”
Despite dressing celebrities for key global photo-ops, like Ariana Grande, who has 376 million Instagram followers — more than the U.S. population, Cho noted — Browne said he doesn’t really focus on the impact of that. “I really focus on the project and being able to work with people that I really love working with. I do have people on my team who do think about that [social media reach] a lot more,” he said. “For me, it’s really that they love what it is, appreciate the moment and I make them feel as special as the moment warrants.”
He spoke with Cho about how a visit by David Bowie to his West Village store in 2005 was career-changing and reaffirming. But retailers were still skeptical early on. The designer said, “It was really hard to sell. They didn’t know the name. They didn’t understand the proportion. It was subtly suggested, ‘Oh Thom, can you make it a little bit more affordable or that it could fit maybe a couple of people.’ I knew if I started watering it down that early that we wouldn’t be sitting here today.”
His limited acting, if a Motrin commercial and an audition for a Hot Pockets qualify, resulted in his name change to “Thom.” Unable to secure a SAG card due to a similarly-named actor, he made the switch. During lighter moments with Cho, the Notre Dame alum blushed when a photo of his Speedo-wearing swim team days flashed on the screen. That was also the case when she asked if he occasionally pinched glasses from the Ritz in Paris.
But Browne attested that he is true to his routines and he likes a schedule, as in a morning treadmill run, a coffee and croissant breakfast from Sant Ambroeus, and a glass or two of Champagne at 6 p.m. The designer was running on the treadmill in Paris when Michelle Obama stepped out at President Barack Obama’s inaugural wearing an ensemble made of fabric that was in development for men’s neckties. Although that didn’t directly affect his business, it signaled to people that he also designed women’s clothing and his intention to make them look “beautiful and strong.”
His new hires are issued “a starter uniform” and an 11-page manual, with such dictums as top buttons undone, shirts not to be ironed, navy-only Fridays and sneakers only on weekends, but only one kind of sneakers. (Browne runs wearing his own apparel, too.)
Why so many rules? “It’s really important that we represent a very focused image to people,” he said, adding that the best designers in the world with strong signatures are recognizable the second that you hear their names. More than that, Browne said he set out to create something that transcended fashion. “When we’re all together, it almost looks like a living piece of art. You don’t really see the clothes. You see the whole idea together.”
After 20 years in business and with his 60th birthday approaching, Browne said, “The thing I am most happy about is my life with Andrew [Bolton]. As for the business, I want to make sure that it grows in the best way and the biggest way without compromising and sacrificing what people have seen in the first 20 years. I want my life to be as quiet as it now. That sounds so boring,” he said, laughing.
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