viz.

This past Sunday at Paris Fashion Week, New York designer Thom Browne showcased a menswear collection in a manner that evoked performance art more than a conventional fashion show.  Male models strutted down the catwalk in creations inspired by the Founding Fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson's trip to Paris and the Thanksgiving tradition.  Wearing 18th century sillouettes, top hats, canes, and knit caps that suggested powerded wigs, the models carried turkeys down the cat walk before sitting down at an elaborate table and "eating" a traditional Thanksgiving meal. 

I personally find the entire thing delightful.  First of all, menswear collections are usually just so boring, and this one, well, isn't.  Fashion from the fashion-as-art school is about making an argument about where society is at a given time and place and avant-garde fashion done well reshapes our notions about what is beautiful and what is socially acceptable.  I won't use the word "subversive" to describe fashion, since as a marketing technique for a luxury consumable accessible only to the extremely wealthy, fashion shows remain inextricably embedded in the status quo.  Yet fashion does have the ability to alienate you from things you thought you knew and understood, and there is something fascinating and compelling about evoking Thomas Jefferson and Thanksgiving dinner in such a weird way given the manner in which political groups lay claim to the Founding Fathers with such frequency.  There's a bit of a play on class signifiers with the "hobo-chic" (sliding perhaps a little too close to Zoolander derelicte territory) of the layered tartan coats contrasting the opulence of the dinner table.  The makeup and use of skirts create an androgynous effect on some of the models.  It also seems to be pretty clearly referencing the French Revolution, which, of course, Jefferson wholeheartedly supported.  In fact, Jefferson's francophilia was so infamous in the new Republic that the Federalists printed the following critique, showing Jefferson about to burn the U.S. Constitution on a Satanic altar dedicated to the French Revolution:

No, not many men are going to rushing out to buy floor length wool skirts, jumpers, and puffy-sleeved coats, but that's not the point.