The collection's key jacket shape was derived from the Norfolk, originally a 19th-century hunting style, here shrunken and exaggerated till it had an almost Empire line. The same ambiguously transformative impulse married tunic and parka (“tunka” should be an appropriate porte-manteau word for it) in a silvery, stiffened a-line poncho that the model doffed to reveal a fitted 3-piece suit in the same fabric. Dangling suspenders only served to emphasize the droog-y subtext. It's this interplay of outré associations that gives Browne's work its power. Watching old movies on a trip to Japan got him thinking about male geishas (he originally wanted his models to be completely hobbled when they moved). And this is the designer who is now working in the belly of the Brooks Brothers beast. It's simply not possible for menswear to ever be the same again.
