“I designed everything that we couldn’t give away,” Browne told WWD. “I wanted to bring tailored clothing into the world of Club Monaco, which was really the precursor to my first collection. And it was not successful.”

But through Club Monaco, Browne met the lauded Queens-based tailor Rocco Ciccarelli, who served as an instrumental mentor when Thom Browne launched his eponymous label in 2001. “I pretty much learned everything through my tailor Rocco,” Browne told Business of Fashion. “I always knew that tailoring was going to be something that, if I was going to be in fashion, [my collection] was going to center around. The most important thing for me is to make interesting clothes that are really well-made. That will always be fashionable.” In collaboration with Ciccarelli, Browne created his first collection of five gray suits in 2001, which he presented in his Upper East Side, Manhattan apartment-turned-showroom-alteir. He garnered his first customers by just walking around New York City in the suits he made. Browne saw that in a world where business casual dress codes were the norm, he could fill in a gap and redefine tailoring for a younger generation. Despite how untraditional his silhouettes were, Browne stuck to his guns because he knew his suits had to be different from tailoring of the past.“Back then, all tailored clothing was very businesslike, very much like what young guys’ fathers were wearing—and they didn’t want to be like their fathers,” he told Business of Fashion. “I wanted to reintroduce tailored clothing to them so they felt they could dress in it and feel as comfortable and as young as they did in jeans and T-shirts.”Browne then went on to open his first made-to-measure storefront in 2003 and then presented for the first time at New York Fashion Week in 2004. Two years later, he won his first CFDA award for menswear designer of the year. From handwriting the labels on his clothes to being stocked in department stores like Bergdorf Goodman and trendy boutiques like Colette, Browne soon became the New York City fashion designer of the moment. The major labels started calling. In 2007, Browne signed a deal with Brooks Brothers to design a collaborative line dubbed “Black Fleece,” a partnership which lasted for eight years. In 2009, the luxury skiwear brand Moncler tapped Browne to design their Gamme Bleu line of outerwear, a collaboration which lasted for eight years as well. Supreme was even compelled enough to reach out to Thom Browne for a collaboration in 2010, which consisted of a run of chambray oxford shirts with Thom Browne’s iconic underline labeling.But what makes Thom Browne a designer so revered by both streetwear brands like Supreme and luxury brands like Moncler is the world he has built as a designer. What lies at the core of that is Thom Browne’s unique “uniform” aesthetic, which is exemplified by his revered Fall 2009 menswear presentation at Pitti Uomo. Browne’s first show in Europe featured 40 models eerily clacking on typewriters, eating sandwiches out of briefcases, and putting on jackets in unison inside a space designed to look like an office from the Mad Men-era. Each model wore the brand’s most iconic motifs. A shrunken gray suit, a cardigan with four stripes on the left sleeve, heavy wing-tip shoes, and a camel overcoat. Browne’s garments have referenced the uniforms of businessmen, school children and even military officers. But with every collection, Browne takes these core uniforms and reimagines them. Take his Fall 2012 menswear collection for instance, which was centered on a “jocks versus punks” theme. The “punks” wore pieces with some of Browne’s skinniest tailoring that were embellished with safety pins, studs, and more. Meanwhile, the “jocks” wore oversized suits that made them look cartoonishly muscular. But at the end of the day, they are both wearing looks that were just different interpretations of the same uniform. This encapsulates Browne’s approach as a designer who has mastered taking just one design, or uniform rather, and making hundreds of unique iterations of it. For example, his recent Fall 2021 collection was centered on traditional black-tie clothing with looks that are anything but conventional. The collection included a ​​ball skirt constructed out of layered puffers that took more than 100 pattern pieces to make, pleated trench coats, shrunken down jackets layered over wool piqué, and more. But despite how avant garde the looks in this collection were, it was still rooted in a uniform that is familiar to almost anyone. Even those who aren’t viscerally aware of the high fashion space Thom Browne occupies as a designer today.Granted, Thom Browne hasn’t captured the same cultural cachet as a streetwear brand like Supreme, his garments have become a part of the mainstream zeitgeist thanks to many celebrity co-signs and front-facing collaborations. He’s released two collaborations with Samsung centered on the Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold, two smartphones Browne admired for how they folded shut like cellphones of the past. Yes, those Thom Browne Samsung phones even came with four-stripes branding and a keyboard that made vintage typewriter sounds as you texted. Browne’s shrunken down suits have even permeated the world of sports. In 2018, Browne dressed LeBron James and the entire Cleveland Cavaliers team in his suits for the 2018 NBA playoff away games. Within that same year, Browne also signed a three-year deal with the Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona to become the team’s official provider of off-field tailored fits and formalwear uniforms until the 2021-2022 season. From Odell Beckham Jr. to Cardi B, Browne has strategically styled celebs from all walks of life to push his unique vision for tailoring. At the Met Gala, for example, he dressed celebrities ranging from Erykah Badu, Lil Uzi Vert, and comedian Pete Davidson to actresses like Sharon Stone and Amandla Stenberg.