To Celebrate His Womenswear Arrival at Bergdorf Goodman, Thom Browne Unleashed an Army of Uniformed Models on Fifth Avenue

In Thom Browne’s fantasy, everyone walks in a synchronized marching motion with the X-Acto knife precision of an army brigade. Everyone has very clear skin like beautiful, genetically engineered characters plucked from the film Gattaca. Everyone wears their socks pulled up to their perfectly sculpted shins.

The designer’s make-believe world came to life yesterday when it plopped itself into the hectic tourist-crawling spot outside of Bergdorf Goodman that hugs Central Park. The performance, titled “The Officepeople,” was to celebrate the label’s womenswear release with Bergdorf Goodman. (The department store had previously only carried its menswear.) Models pulled up in a yellow school bus, trotted out in two-by-twos from East 59th to West 60th, eventually taking seats by the Pulitzer Fountain to eat sandwiches and read books. At the end, a trombonist arrived, fully dressed in Thom Browne, and threw his instrument muter into the fountain water. The models later ascended to the third floor of Bergdorf Goodman and typed on Thom Browne typewriters that, in fact, did not work or type anything at all.

The merge of the worlds, one chaotic—tourists, Nathan’s hot dog truck—and the other—suited, robotic Browneafiles—was jarring. Passersby lined around the entrance of Bergdorf’s where the bus pulled up, believing that a celebrity would exit. (To be fair, a few celebrities did attend, including Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams.) Thom Browne employees, dapper in their tailored garb, acted as security guards, pushing curious crowds to the edges of sidewalks to make way for the models. When these blinding avatars finally exited, Instagram mania ensued and TB-lovers and onlookers alike whipped out their phones to snap a photo.

The idea was thought up by Browne, who wanted to inject the eerie into the mundane by way of a fashion-show-meets-art-performance. And why not? It’s not groundbreaking news that almost every day, a label is newly carried by a department store, so why not make this moment entertaining? “How could you take the idea of something as mundane as a gray suit and show it interestingly, and even the idea of uniformity and show that in an interesting way?” said Browne. “It is taking those everyday activities but presenting them in a way that is somehow weird and in a way that there is a tension.”

The guerilla-style concept was indeed provoking, especially for those not familiar with the label. As the models stoically posed outside of Bergdorf’s, one young child in the crowd loudly asked his mother: “Why are they wearing skirts? Half of them are men.” Well, welcome to the Thom Browne universe. Welcome to the world, baby! It’s like nothing you’ve seen before.