Backstage after Thom Browne’s Spring 2027 show at Milan’s Palazzo Serbelloni, there was a gathering of journalists and VIPs (including Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow) To escape the scorching heat, I asked the designer what inspired the nature-themed apparel she just introduced. “Well, it started here a bug’s Life,” he replied, referring to the 1998 Pixar classic.
That esoteric influence was immediately apparent on the runway. The jackets were embroidered with beaded marching ants, oversized dragonflies and grasshoppers (unlike the movie, thankfully, there were none). Voiced by Kevin Spacey). The initial look was styled with a beekeeping veil wrapped around a boater hat. The models carried water containers cut from seersucker fabric and gold honeycomb patterns dripped from their shoulders.
However, the bee motif was not borrowed from any animated film. “Napoleon actually stayed here (in the palazzo) for three months,” Brown told me, pointing to the gilded doors and marble columns. “So (I) was using the bee, which was the motif of that, as well as a little bit of the bug reference.”
But it wasn’t all insects and gardening tools. The 58-look collection — Brown’s first dedicated menswear show since spring 2023 — was filled with TB signatures. Most bottoms were shorts, as well as some suit trousers and slim pants – some in lemon yellow, some with floral embroidery reaching up to the thighs. For the spring collection, the looks were aggressively layered — one (possibly overheating) model wore a shirt under a sweater vest under a blazer under a jacket — with colors, patterns, and textures all clashing.
There were some sporty pieces, too: an icy madras-print sleeveless windbreaker, as well as a split-tone engineer jacket. Brown’s familiar pleated lehengas still reign supreme — Jamie Campbell Bower and Trammell Tillman both wore her lehengas in the front row — but new twists on skirts with long columns and pencil shapes also appeared on the runway. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the guest wearing the dazzling alien mask of Spring 2026, who was definitely at risk of some kind of heat stroke.
