The Coolest Fashion Designer of the Moment: Thom Browne?

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We’re in the thick of awards season, which means that brands are at their most desperate to get their clothes on VIPs in the hopes of creating viral marketing moments. With unprecedented levels of attention trained on celebrities and what they wear, the styling landscape is increasingly competitive—when Kendrick Lamar wore flare jeans at the Super Bowl, more than one brand claimed credit in my inbox. (As you probably know, the jeans were Celine.) In our new reality, where an A-lister wearing something can dominate days of conversation on social media, no occasion is off limits for a fashion credit. Case in point: Saint Laurent has been sending out regular PR blasts highlighting A$AP Rocky’s outfits as he attends court in Los Angeles to face two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

Sitting astride this wacky system (in thigh-baring tailored gray shorts) is Thom Browne, the grand poobah of American fashion design—he is the reigning chairman of the CFDA—and the unexpected king of celebrity dressing in 2025. On Tuesday afternoon, Browne was backstage at The Shed about an hour before his Fall 2025 runway show would officially drop the curtains on New York Fashion Week. Male models with shiny hair licked to their heads were slipping into bright gingham shirts and heavy tweed coats. But the performance everyone was talking about was from a couple weeks before, when Doechii brought the house down at the Grammys with a spectacular performance that served as an ode to Browne’s twisted vision of American menswear.

Backstage at Thom Browne Fall 2025 Courtesy of Corey Tenold / Thom Browne

On a night stacked with talent, the Tampa rapper dominated the stage. Her outfit was key: in a shrunken Thom Browne shorts-suit, she was the boss. Her 30 backup dancers, also kitted out in identical versions of Thom Browne’s iconic wool flannel tailored uniform, elevated the performance to an indelible spectacle. In an unforgettable denouement that could only work in Browne’s aesthetic universe, the dancers ripped off Doechii’s suit to reveal her stark white Thom Browne undergarments.

Doechii took home the Grammy for best rap album (wearing a different Thom Browne suit, with gray bell-shaped pannier trousers), but this was her true superstar turn, an artist in total command of her craft who also understands the radical creative possibility of high fashion.

Backstage in New York, the ever-understated Browne raised his eyebrows as he recalled the Grammys performance. “It was amazing,” he remarked.

Alton Mason at the Thom Browne Fall 2025 runway show Courtesy of Thom Browne

Peso Pluma Courtesy of Thom Browne

Browne is no stranger to high profile stages. Michelle Obama wore one of his dresses to her husband’s second inauguration, and in 2018 LeBron James led his Cleveland Cavaliers squad to playoff games wearing matching Thom Browne suits. Unlike many big fashion houses, Browne doesn’t pay celebrities to wear his clothing—James actually bought the playoff outfits himself.

Which makes it all the more surprising that Thom Browne’s tricolor grosgrain is inescapable anywhere a celebrity is working a camera. “It's not imposed,” Browne told me of his genre-spanning celebrity relationships. “It's very real.” I’ve seen firsthand how hard the brand’s VIP team courts genuinely interesting stars who appreciate the brand’s freaky sensibility, the Doechiis of the world who might not yet have been noticed by the European luxury establishment (the brand started dressing the rapper early in her breakout career). “It's really great to work with someone who has supported you from early on, who doesn't just come on board when you have a moment,” Doechii’s stylist Sam Woolf said in an interview while discussing Browne. More established names tend to come calling because they want some of the buzz thrown off by a Met Gala table consisting of Jenna Ortega, Olivia Rodrigo, Teyana Taylor, Daniel Ricciardo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Sora Choi.

In fact, Doechii could assemble an entire backup dance crew with the diverse array of Thom Browne-obsessed VIPs who have worn the brand in recent months: Addison Rae, Erykah Badu, Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Ayo Edibiri, Troye Sivan, Cole Escola, Martha Stewart, Travis Kelce, and Anna Wintour among them.

Not since Alessandro Michele unleashed his gothic-glam Gucci tribe on step-and-repeats around the world has there been so much energy around one designer on the red carpet. Funnily enough, many of the starlets now embracing his work weren’t even born when Browne first introduced his signature silhouette. He is not exactly the cool new designer on the block.

Courtesy of Corey Tenold / Thom Browne

And yet it is practically a rite of passage for celebrities of any age with good taste to get laced out in Thom Browne. At last Friday’s Critics Choice Awards, a photographer informed Kate Hudson that a tag was coming out of the back of her pleated black dress. “It’s supposed to do that!” she replied, flashing a knowing smile before dropping the ne plus ultra of red carpet flexes: “It’s Thom Browne.” On Thursday, Lady Gaga appeared on Hot Ones wearing an elaborate Thom Browne couture creation that took thousands of hours to execute.

What’s his secret? You might point to the aesthetic credibility of a designer who has been pushing a punk version of insurance salesman attire for over two decades. “You know, that 25-year-old idea still looks good,” Browne said of the original gray suit that graced the Grammy stage. “And that's very satisfying for me, because I always feel like that gray suit never gets old.”

Browne’s first red carpet credit came in 2003, when Ed Norton showed up to the Academy Awards dressed kind of like a schoolboy. His dark suit jacket was short, as were his trousers. Rather than a tuxedo shirt, he wore a rumpled white oxford button-down. Back then, Browne’s idea was brand new, and he landed the opportunity because he was friends with Norton’s agent. “I tied his tie myself,” Browne recalled. The initial reviews were mixed. “The proportion was so odd to people,” he said. Critics described Norton’s look as “junior prom.” Browne shrugged it off. “It was so classic and so good looking.”

Courtesy of Corey Tenold / Thom Browne

Browne’s long legacy of suiting was on his mind as he designed the Fall collection. After firmly establishing his runway shows as operas of elaborate sartorial fantasy, Browne devoted Tuesday’s pared-back production entirely to tailoring, a parade of overcoats and blazers in 30 different styles of heritage tweeds, layered over (mostly mismatched) trousers and shorts and skirts and preppy gingham shirts. There was just as much variation in the silhouettes—no two hemlines were the same. “I'm retelling people why to come to me, and that is tailoring,” Browne said. Red carpets aside, this was one of Browne’s most persuasive arguments in years that the traditional and classic can (and should) be redefined as totally contemporary.

Courtesy of Thom Browne

One man in the room who needed no convincing? Adrien Brody. At the 2003 Academy Awards, Brody accepted the best actor prize for The Pianist (and smooched presenter Halle Berry) looking like he was still stuck in the ’90s in a long, boxy black blazer, his tie knot fat enough to plug a dam. In his front row seat on Tuesday, his slim navy overcoat grazed the hem of his high-water trousers, a familiar sight to anyone who has been following the actor’s Brutalist Oscar campaign, where Brody has been looking downright Norton-esque—thanks, of course, to Thom Browne.

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