‘Thom Browne: The Man Who Tailors Dreams’ Review: Slick Fashion Doc Has Sartorial Splendor to Burn but Little Texture Beyond That

In Thom Browne: The Man Who Tailors Dreams, German documentarian Reiner Holzemer, whose recent work has included films on the fashion houses of Dries Van Noten and Martin Margiela, tackles a designer with an instantly recognizable aesthetic but an aversion to introspection. That makes Browne a somewhat distant subject, an enigma, as one friend and colleague describes him. He prefers to keep the creative spark tucked away inside his head and let his garments speak for themselves.

But wow, can those clothes talk. In workrooms and especially in extensive footage of runway shows that freely mix the oneiric with the whimsical — all of it coordinated down to the most minute detail — this great-looking doc spotlights collections that fuse impeccable construction with eccentricity and cheeky humor to beguiling effect.

Holzemer seems aware of the potential imbalance between personal and professional access, which makes it a smart strategy to begin by blitzing our eyes with an image of startling dramatic impact. To the sound of swelling strings, a proscenium safety curtain slowly rises to reveal the ornate gilded auditorium of the Palais Garnier in Paris, where each of the almost 2,000 seats is occupied by a cardboard cutout in a signature Thom Browne gray suit and sunglasses. The effect is surreal.

Two male “porters” sporting the dapper suit and pleated skirt combo that is the cornerstone of Browne’s gender-fluid approach — worn by stars including Oscar Isaac, Lee Pace and David Harbour — step onto the stage and deposit a cluster of matching luggage.

A model in vertiginous platforms and a more multi-layered version of the same outfit then enters and takes a seat on her suitcase, as if waiting for a train. The show that unfolds (with fashion journalists, buyers and celebrity clients seated along the stage perimeters) represents what she observes. That includes fellow passengers, railway personnel, a gargoyle and chic pigeons in sculptural headpieces (by the British milliner Stephen Jones, a regular Browne collaborator).

That July 2023 show was Browne’s Haute Couture Week debut, making him one of the relatively few American designers to present their work alongside such storied names as Dior, Chanel, Schiaparelli and Valentino. But if Browne is nervous, it doesn’t show while he’s backstage making last-minute adjustments on the models and watching the monitors with satisfaction. He’s not at all like the self-dramatizing designers seen in many fashion docs dashing around in an agitated state, barking instructions and then collapsing in an exhausted heap once the collection has been sent out into the world.

Having such a mild-mannered, seemingly always calm and kind subject is both a distinction and a drawback in Holzemer’s film. Not that every fashion luminary has to be juggling constant crises to be interesting, but the doc is so light on conflict, drama and personal details that can’t be gleaned from past profiles or even a Wikipedia page that at times it feels almost like a promotional video — albeit a deluxe one. It’s gorgeous, but it has no edge.

There’s the briefest mention of almost having had to shut down operations in early 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, but the company weathered that storm and bounced back. Commenting on the unsuccessful attempt by Adidas to sue Browne for violating its three-stripe trademark, the designer’s partner, Andrew Bolton, who heads the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, says that having his integrity questioned so publicly during the 2023 trial was difficult for Browne. But we hear nothing to that effect from the man himself.

The closest the movie comes to capturing actual drama is when MJ Rodriguez steps out onto the runway in a 2023 show and a staffer watching on the monitor gasps, “She doesn’t have a jacket on!” But that slip is quickly laughed off after the show with the acknowledgement that while Rodriguez walked in an incomplete outfit, she made it work.

The doc is extremely cozy. Almost every talking head is identified with “and friend” after their profession. Interviewees laud Browne’s tailoring skills or his boundless imagination, his technical virtuosity or his conceptual daring, his uniqueness despite always starting from the baseline of gray-suit uniformity.

It’s all a bit too chummy. Pace is coyly tagged as “Actor,” with no mention of him being married to Browne’s vp of Marketing and Communications, Matthew Foley. Anna Wintour works closely with Bolton each year on the Met Gala, where Browne’s custom designs invariably make a splash. Even the celebrity clients can seem like spokespeople (though Cardi B is a riot). This makes the doc seem rigorously controlled, always a risk in an authorized nonfiction film on a living subject.

What’s missing is an outside perspective, a critical voice. Bolton talks about the early exposure of Browne’s Pee-Wee Herman-style shrunken suits in London, where the haughty Savile Row tailors were appalled at the radically modified proportions. But the talking heads range only from admiring to fawning.

That’s somewhat understandable, given that the film’s subject is a genuine American success story. But it makes for an anemic narrative when there’s little here that anyone with an interest in luxury fashion doesn’t already know. It’s like a coffee table book — heavy on illustrations, light on text.

It’s refreshing when Bolton recalls how they met and fell in love, and Browne goes through their evening routine of meeting after work for a drink, ordering in for dinner and usually watching a movie at home. Finally, a glimmer of more intimate access. Home, by the way, is a red brick mansion on Manhattan’s East Side originally built around 1920 for Anne Vanderbilt, which they share with Browne’s dachshund Hector — the dog that inspired the homonymous handbag.

For those unfamiliar with Browne’s story, the movie works through the basics engagingly enough: the Allentown, PA, origins; the competitive swimming years at Notre Dame; the brief stab at breaking into acting in Los Angeles; and the humble start of his fashion line in 2003, doing made-to-measure business out of a one-room New York apartment, based on a collection of five sample suits that he wore around town, initially being jeered at on the street and raising eyebrows even among his friends.

Gradually, Browne’s bold reinvention of the most conventional outfit in any well-dressed mid-century American man’s closet, the gray suit, became influential. Snug jackets, cropped pants and an inch or two of bare ankle started turning up everywhere. As the business grew, so did the scale and theatricality of the runway shows. Expansion into women’s wear cemented the refusal to be constrained by gender. “There really is no differentiation between who wears what,” says Wintour.

A breakthrough moment was the Spring 2018 collection, when Browne sent male models down the runway in modified versions of his women’s collection. Turned out that men in skirts could look powerful and masculine. That same year, Browne sold a majority stake in the company to Italy’s Ermenegildo Zegna group for a cool $500 million.

Browne doesn’t discuss influences — something Wintour heads off early in the film by noting that he has never concerned himself with what anyone else is doing, remaining 100 percent focused on his own point of view. But he returns often to the core principle of uniformity, of building on quintessentially American looks — sportsman, jock, businessman, cowboy, prom couple, Upper East Side WASP — and subverting them. Think billowing outsize coats with football jersey numbers on the back; tweedy plaid skirt suits embroidered with lobsters.

Regardless of the doc’s shortcomings in terms of insights, analysis or even the craft that goes into making the clothes, the visual retrospective of Browne’s 20 years in business is consistently eye-popping and will delight the fashion faithful.

The models bring the drama, while the shows bring the fantasia. Runway presentations that draw from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Little Prince support Bolton’s observation that his partner’s work is poised on the brink of childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience. He points out that while Browne is a generally happy, optimistic person, a vein of melancholia runs through his shows.

One funeral-themed presentation starts with models rising from coffins, weaving a story around two women with broken hearts. The doctors unable to fix them turn into angels that accompany them to heaven as their fabulously attired friends arrive to mourn. Another takes place in a huge typing pool furnished with identical desks; men arrive for work, hang up their identical trench coats and sit down to work in identical suits, each of them placing an apple on the boss’ desk at the end of their shift. The show is regimented, minimalist and yet also playful.

Wearability is not always a paramount concern, evidenced perhaps most obviously in a Paris show that pays homage to French tweeds while pairing them with an iconic male sports item. Men wear crop tops (or a tiny crochet bikini top in one case) with low-riding micro-minis or shorts, giving ample exposure to Thom Browne jockstraps and a good two inches of bum cleavage. The final runway look, traditionally the bridal spot, goes to a cowboy sporting a curlicued blue sequined phallus.

Even if Browne himself emerges from the film as a less-than-open book, his designs speak volumes, from the basics to the extravagant couture fantasies. One interviewee nails a key contradiction that gives the designer’s work its sense of fun: “He celebrates uniformity in the most sort of profligate way.” The space for self-expression within that uniformity is what makes Browne’s clothes so covetable and this documentary, despite its frustrations, so watchable.