Thom Browne Reimagines 'The Little Prince'

The Fall 2023 debut wasn’t so much a fashion show as it was a theatrical production — as Browne is wont to do.

Thom Browne doesn’t so much host fashion shows as it stages performance pieces. Take last season’s Paris show, which starred Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Cinderella and Gwendoline Christie as her Fairy Godmother in a reinterpreted fairy tale with pastel trenches, sports jersey gowns and punky print clashing. For Fall 2023, the designer and new chairman of the CFDA turned to another familiar story of our youth — that of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince” — to meditate on the passage of time, the ways we trap ourselves in our routines and the freedom that comes with breaking out of those cycles.

In lieu of a runway, Thom Browne arranged three rows of foldout chairs around a circle, which was covered in sand (and being meticulously manicured by staff as guests moved around trying to find their seats) and big numbers, evoking an hourglass and a clock. In the middle was a white plane — a reference to the crash that sends the narrator into the Sahara and leads him to encounter the titular Little Prince in Saint-Exupéry’s story.

When the lights went out and narration began, out came our pilot (in a quilted, curvaceous Thom Browne-ified flight suit, styled off the shoulders to reveal a textured blue-and-green turtleneck underneath) and our Little Prince (in a gold-printed pencil dress, gray waistcoat and matching blazer), followed by seven alien-like models in ivory, strong-shouldered turtleneck gowns, each adorned with drawings that call back to the planets the Little Prince visits in the book.

These nine characters remained on the set for the duration of the 30-minute-long presentation that introduced the Fall 2023 collection, which could be divided into three acts. The first features a suite of tweed overcoats with comically oversized shoulders over suits and ties, with the models wearing them walking clockwise, to the beat of a ticking clock — almost like they were corporate zombies, going into work, with their clock-adorned briefcases or dog top-handle bags. The second goes in a more playful direction, with purposefully mismatched prints, bustles made of handkerchiefs and two-piece looks broken up by paisley waistbands. The third appears to be almost a breakdown of the first and a clash with the second, the corporate grey suiting deconstructed and collaged together, revealing more playful elements underneath.

The Little Prince reminds us to not lose that sense of childlike wonder, to not let adulthood make us forget what really matters in life. With his always-imaginative, storytelling-first approach to fashion, Thom Browne does the same.

See the Thom Browne Fall 2023 collection below.

Thom Browne Fall 2023. Photo: Imaxtree