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This story is part of Image’s October Pleasure issue, which luxuriates in the personal pleasures of stylists, buyers, poets, designers and more.
Fresh off the heels of Thom Browne’s New York Fashion Week presentation, where models and dancers embodied bugs and butterflies, the designer exchanged emails with Tyler Matthew Oyer about his creative process. The conversation is paired with photographs that Oyer has taken over the years at Browne’s shows, from Paris to New York, and collectively embody how the designer’s work often sits at the intersection between the functional and fantastical, where familiar garments and precise tailoring can become surreal, exaggerated and even grotesque.
Tyler Matthew Oyer: After working with your team for several years, I always say “every age, gender, and body type looks good in Thom Browne.” When you’re dreaming up a runway collection, do you have a specific cast of people in mind who influence the designs — real people, imagined characters or figures from your own life and imagination?
Thom Browne: I gravitate towards people who are truly themselves and true individuals … the most important thing to me is that everyone approaches what they do in a way that makes the most sense for them … you see that in the people I dress and there’s a real mutual appreciation for each other …
TMO: The suit and the uniform are often associated with discipline, restraint and even the denial of pleasure. Yet tailoring is also one of fashion’s great luxuries — an intimate, almost obsessive process of shaping cloth around the body. What is it about tailoring itself that continues to fascinate you, and do you see pleasure in the discipline and restraint of a perfectly constructed garment?
TB: Everything for me starts with tailoring and that idea of the original gray suit … the idea that I can take something so traditional and continue to evolve it every season … but you still are reminded where it all started … and within that uniform, it allowing anyone who interacts with it to be their true self …
Together with the Performance Art Museum, six artists staged their covers in honor of the magazine, which ran from 1978 to 1997.
TMO: Your work has long played with pleasure, kink and the tension between what is proper and what is provocative — from your infamous jockstraps to the recent patent leather groom who closed the recent men’s show in Milan. What draws you to these codes of desire and fetish, and how do you use them to challenge our ideas about masculinity, vulnerability and the body?
TB: It’s completely instinctual … always inspired by moments happening in my life and the world revolving around me … But nothing is ever overthought for the purpose of provoking an idea or a group of people … it is something that feels authentic to me in the moment and the stories I’m trying to tell …
TMO: We are both rural Pennsylvania boys who played sports, dabbled in acting, and now work in art and fashion. My great-aunt showed me fashion magazines growing up, introducing me to the world of fashion, culture, parties and luxury. How did you access or learn elements of luxury growing up?
TB: I first understood the world of fashion in college reading issues of GQ at Notre Dame … when I moved to L.A. and started acting, I found myself surrounded by creatives and becoming further immersed into fashion, design and art … From there I really started to look at creating something I was looking for at the moment … and the rest is history …
TMO: What do you wear when you’re not in the Thom Browne uniform?
TB: I’m never out of uniform …
TMO: You lived in Los Angeles from 1992 to 1997. What is a place or memory you always return to when you come back to visit?
TB: Always the [Griffith] Observatory … I used to run to the observatory when I lived there and it was one of my favorite views going through the canyons and seeing the city below me …
TMO: Is there a Hollywood star from another era you wish you could have dressed? If so, who would it be?
TB: Joan Crawford …
TMO: You’ve now shown at many fashion weeks around the world. What is it about New York Fashion Week that feels unique?
New York Fashion Week’s spring/summer 2027 season was, to say the very least, eventful. Here’s everything we saw, everywhere we went and everything we thought throughout the week.
TB: New York is home… and it’s always good to be home … New York is filled with so much inspiration … from the people, to the streets, to the way people are approaching life … and that will always be so important to what I do …
TMO: Your runway shows feel less like presentations of clothes and more like fully realized theatrical worlds, complete with characters, sets and a beginning, middle and end. For spring 2027, you created this fantastical garden populated by insects, beginning with a chrysalis and ending with the emergence of butterflies. Where did the narrative for this particular world begin for you?
TB: Everything comes from everyday life … watching movies … driving through the city … the daily interactions that I experience as I move through my day … For spring 2027, it evolved from watching “A Bug’s Life” on a recent flight … and taking inspiration from the messages and visuals … evolving it in my way …
TMO: Speaking of pleasure, how do you treat yourself after you premiere a collection on the runway?
TB: By spending time with [my partner] Andrew and [my dog] Hector …
