Can a fashion show be tragic? Not tragic as in pitiful, and not the more traditional kind of tragedy that leaves people keening weeping. As he made his Pitti Immagine Uomo debut today, designer Thom Browne summoned a subtler, more sophisticated kind of tragedy. His presentation was Kafka-esque, or Gogolian, perhaps.

The hot Pitti ticket this week, Browne’s show was held on the grounds of the Istituto di Scienze Militari Aeronautiche, off the Cascine Park. A little history is helpful: The Cascine was once the Medici hunting ground; the Istituto was established during Mussolini’s reign, and until recently it was known as the Air War School. These details are salient because a certain serf-y feeling pervades the location, and Browne made the most of it. Commandeering one of the Istituto’s grander rooms, he had set out forty matching ’50s-era desks in scrivener rows, with one additional desk at the head. At the start of the presentation—more a one-act play, really—a model in one of Browne’s trademark gray flannel suits entered the room, walked up the desk at the front, hung his cropped tan overcoat and fitted gray blazer on a coat rack, set his black leather briefcase on the desk, put on a short gray cashmere cardigan, and sat down to work. He then struck a bell on the desk, and immediately, forty models marched out, each wearing the same trademark gray suit and the same cropped overcoat and carrying the same black leather briefcase. In unison, they hung up their coats and jackets and sat down at their desks. After another strike of the bell, and they began typing on the antique typewriters on their desks. (It would be interesting to see what they actually typed.) After a while, four models in gray suits—short pants this time—enterered, picked up the typewritten sheets off each desk, and delivered them to the model seated at the desk up front. Another strike of the bell marked lunch. With grave simultaneity, each model opened his briefcase, produced an apple and a sandwich from a Ziplock bag, and began to eat. Then another bell, and work resumed.

And so on. While the models “worked,” one could observe that Browne’s overcoats sported red, white, and blue interior trim, and that his fitted trousers buckled in the back, and that three white intarsia stripes crossed the left bicep of each gray cashmere cardigan. One could also wonder, while listening to the din of clacking typewriters, if Browne was making a comment on the financial crisis—all these diligent employees, working, working, working, and making nothing. It was comic, but also, as previously noted, tragic. After a while, the eye began looking for differences—the model struggling with the ribbon on his typewriter and the one who, when the time came to close up shop, briefly allowed the collar of his coat to pop up.

And that, it turns out, was Browne’s point. Speaking after the presentation, Pitti’s special guest designer declined to impart any meaning to his installation beyond noting that human idiosyncrasy is perhaps easiest to appreciate in a sea of uniformity. “This was an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while,” he explained. “I mean, I’ve always been very inspired by, that ’50s man-in-a-gray-flannel-suit aesthetic, and the visual of those men heading off to their trains. But I think that what you wind up paying attention to when everyone looks the same is all the ways those people are actually quite different. You gravitate to the differences.”

Browne also noted that there his presentation was motivated by practical considerations. “This is my first time at Pitti,” he said. “And, rather than show a bunch of looks, which I’ve got at my stand here anyway, I thought it would be better to introduce myself with one look, pretty much. That gray flannel suit is where I start, every season. This way, I think it made an impression.”

Photography Giovanni Giannoni

KEYWORDS: clothing, fashion, Pitti, Thom Browne