There was a fundamental problem with Thom Browne’s line of shrunken tailoring in the beginning: The gray flannel suits — narrow with high, tight armholes and cropped trousers, as if run through a commercial dryer — were expensive, and the people who could afford them couldn’t fit into them. “It wasn’t the best business model,” he says. “But if I had listened to too many people, I don’t think I would be around.”
Twenty-five years later, it’s not Browne’s schoolboyish silhouette that has changed but the customers, whose obsession with body optimization has intensified in the era of GLP-1’s and peptides. In his uniform of black wingtips, a white oxford button-down, and tailored shorts, Browne himself is noticeably thinner. It is a steamy Saturday afternoon in Milan, where the initial leg of the spring men’s collections suggests the fashion industry is starting to embrace trimmer fits after several seasons of oversize, drapey comfort.
