Thom Browne closes out NY Fashion Week with a black-and-white flourish and a nod to Edgar Allan Poe

Thom Browne, ever the master showman of American fashion, closed out New York Fashion Week on a blustery Wednesday with his own wintry landscape

NEW YORK -- Thom Browne, ever the master showman of American fashion, closed out New York Fashion Week on a blustery day with his own wintry landscape, blanketing the floor with fake snow and presenting his latest inventive designs to the words of Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling “The Raven.”

With celebrities like Janet Jackson and Queen Latifah in the front row Wednesday evening at a theater space on the far west side of Manhattan, Browne did what he does best, displaying feats of intricate tailoring and taking his time to weave a tale. His soundtrack narrator was Carrie Coon, star of “The Gilded Age,” who recited Poe’s bleak story of a lover mourning his lost love, Lenore, when he is visited by the black, thick-necked bird who constantly repeats, “Nevermore! Nevermore!”

Nobody in fashion is a better storyteller than Browne, now chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, who over the years has placed his shows in mock cathedrals, magical gardens, even on faraway planets. As always, Browne’s models did not strut a runway but instead were players in his fantasy, walking deliberately and serenely around a wintry wasteland filled with snow and bare trees.

As the audience filed in, one of those “trees,” a man on stilts in a huge puffer coat, or gown, stood silently. Once the drama began, four young children emerged from that coat — as if he were a darker version of Mother Ginger from “The Nutcracker” — eventually sitting in the snow as the poem began.

“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,” Poe's words went, “as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.” The procession began. Of nearly 50 looks, everything was in black-and-white — typical of Browne's color discipline — with a little gold at the end.