“If Browne has always been determinedly, even defiantly, sui generis in his work, the outside world was tapping at his window today.” This statement from Tim Blanks’ enjoyable writeup on Thom Browne’s Fall 2013 show got me thinking about authors of their own reality. In fashion, this means folks like Diana Vreeland, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. They are storytellers (were, in the case of Vreeland and McQueen, but I get sloppy with tenses when someone’s legacy is still so vivid. The internet keeps everything alive.) and aspire to archetypes. Their stories elevate us above the mundane, and they are often controversial figures. In the case of Vreeland’s authorship, she never let facts get in the way because that would be boring. “There’s only one very good life and that’s the life you know you want and you make it yourself.”

Browne’s theatrics gave context to the clothes. In themselves, they don’t seem to be all that consumer friendly, and we have come to understand this as the whole point of the exercise. Processes and elements of design have been distilled into a commercial formula because fashion is an industry and industry demands pragmatism. After all, in the real world, you have to make money to survive. Right?

In the examples below, I love that the framework underneath the fabric gives the appearance of the model being put together by parts tumbling down an assembly line:

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In a world where we obsess over fact vs. fiction it’s a relief to think that folks like McQueen, Vreeland, Galliano and Browne live in their own world; they live their own dream, where the uncreated simply isn’t real.