A Collection is a product
The craft that sells the core product.
Spring/Summer Collection 2020 for Thom Browne
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CROSS-FUNCTIONAL COLLABORATION
Summary
PREMISE
Before product design, I designed runway collections at Thom Browne. It was product work in a different medium.
THE PROBLEM
Runway pieces don't pay the bills; the core tailoring does. A collection's job is to make the brand desirable enough that the everyday product sells. This one had to build that halo.
MY ROLE
In-house designer at Thom Browne. Took the collection from concept and source research through specs, fittings, and final build with pattern makers, cutters, and sewers.
CONTEXT
A Thom Browne runway collection. The idea: the excess of the 18th-century French court, rebuilt in seersucker, the house's humblest fabric.
OUTCOME
Recognized in major fashion press and few patterns (design components) repeated for celebrity dressing.
PROJECT LENGTH
3 months.
Setup
THE PROBLEM
Desire is the deliverable.
The runway collection is not where the money is. Core tailoring is. The collection exists to create the desire that sells it.
So the brief never changes: add a new idea bold enough to get noticed, without breaking the identity people already know.
Images here show the inspiration for the Spring/Summer 2020 collection: Lionel Messi in a core tailoring suit and 18th-century Marie Antoinette court fashion. A clever mix of these two themes for a runway show in Paris.
THE USERS
One buys, one amplifies.
The customer who buys the product. The collection has to make the brand worth wanting.
The audience that builds the halo. Press, stylists, and whoever puts a piece on someone famous. They see the boldest version first and decide if it travels.
Both are served by a real body. A garment is used by someone who moves and sits, so fit is usability and the fitting is the test.
THE TEAM
The pattern makers and sewers are the engineers.
A collection ships like a product, with the same kind of team.
Designer. Pattern makers, who turn a drawing into a buildable pattern. Cutters and sewers, who build the garment. They are the engineers. Production managers run the calendar like a PM.
My job was to make the design easy to build: clear specs, references, samples they could measure against. A vague spec became a flawed garment; a precise one built clean. Same skill as a good engineering handoff, learned on a deadline in physical form.
Features
Pannier
The pannier is the most impactful design component in the collection.
It was delivering the 18th-century theme while staying true to the exaggerated silhouettes that define Thom Browne’s runway design DNA.
The wide-hipped court silhouette anchors the collection. It was developed as a full skirt, pants and a structural version, with the inner cage exposed and wrapped in seersucker.
To create familiarity through a more literal translation, we found classical panniers in the Metropolitan Museum’s archive and photographed them during the research trip.
Corset
The corset is a design component that created a systemic change.
Thom Browne is known for gender-neutral suit jackets and pants. Introducing a new corset pattern, along with other undergarments and underpinning, required a new way of dressing and introduced a new vertical of feminine silhouette to the company.
The corset undergarment is worn on top of the shirt. It conceptually aligns with the experimental designs of Thom Browne runway collections. We A/B tested exaggerated and regular scales and decided to present both to highlight the structure.
Embroidery
The embroidery underscored the craftsmanship.
Embroidered products start at $15000. They may not be consumer products, but they are a marketing opportunity that shows customers how serious we are about craft. They give consumers confidence that what they can afford is rooted in the same attention to detail.
Trompe l'oeil
Embroidery with pixel-perfect precision.
The trompe l’oeil was executed with exceptional technical precision. Traditionally, it is a visual illusion: one garment constructed to look like several layered pieces. For Thom Browne, each detail was cut and sewn from different fabrics. It took many rounds of testing to stabilize it before the atelier could build it to a high standard. The hardest problems were solved before the final build, much like testing a flow before engineering commits.
Drape
One design, multiple states.
Drape was inspired by the robe à la polonaise, the 18th-century skirt gathered into high swags and rebuilt in seersucker. It introduces a flexible, organic pattern within the usually structural and rigid design system of suit jackets and pants. Adjustable pulls let the same garment shift between silhouettes.
Outcome
The Spring/Summer 2020 women's collection debuted at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was well received. Few of the pieces I designed became part of the house's repertoire.
Vogue
Praised at its Paris debut for its craft and concept
Design system
The corset and pannier became components the house reused for years
Grammys
2025
Doechii wore Thom Browne court jacket and pannier to 2025 Grammys, where she won Best Rap Album
Inauguration
2021
Katy Perry wore Thom Browne corset on 2021 inauguration broadcast
