Martha Stewart, Addison Rae, Cole Escola and more – Welcome to Thom Browne’s island of mismatched toys

Cole Escola, Martha Stewart, Addison Rae and Thom Browne walk into a bar… This isn't the beginning of a joke that would have become legendary if I had a punchline faster, but that's how my evening began last night at the Commerce Inn in the West Village at Thom Browne's super-secret, no-press, VIP-only, not-Fashion Week (but definitely Fashion Week) surprise dinner featuring Mary Todd Lincoln herself in the body of an Escola with blue hair and blue eyeliner.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a label hosts a NYFW party and we (the press or fashionwhen we congratulate ourselves) is not there to tell you all about it, does it make a fuss? Well, no, that is why my GQ Fellow host Sam Hine and I were given special permission to be the underdogs in the room. And so there we were, in a room full of very intimidating—and sometimes surprisingly funny—guests, all legendary or rising stars, including the aforementioned Stewart and Rae, as well as Patti LuPone, Issa Rae, Ella Emhoff, Morgan Spector, Christine Baranski, Havana Rose Liu, Alton Mason, Fred Hechinger, Ib Kamara, and many more, and we were Sam and I, hanging out with a voice-memo recording app in hand, ready to tell you all about it.

The crux of the matter is that Browne, who presented the best collection of his career at Couture Week in Paris in June, was sitting on his unreleased spring 2025 collection. Instead of a runway show or releasing a lookbook, he thought of putting together a room full of “people who represent excellence” and dressing them in pieces from the collection. The idea was for people to wear the collection the way they would, not the way Browne & Co. would wear it at a show. Browne said: “I didn't want anything to detract from the couture show, and I wanted this to be a moment, but the collection wasn't the main thing. I wanted people to see that Thom Browne's clothes are actually wearable and real and that you can see them on different types of people, but what I wanted from that evening was to see Martha, to see Patti, to see you [yes, dear reader, I shed a tear here]and experience an evening with people who, in my eyes, embody true excellence, people who are the best at what they do.”

The decision to do this in New York was a no-brainer. It's Browne's hometown, the birthplace of his label, and as chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the designer said he felt compelled to get involved in the city during Fashion Week.

But the real goal, and the real charmer of the evening, was to tap into the craziness that has made Browne's world one that people want to be in. “I'm inspired by people who are true to themselves, no matter who that is, and the confidence that comes with that,” the designer said in a moment of well-earned seriousness after dessert, “as my business grows, I want people to see that. I want everything at Thom Browne to be the best it can be, but never lose that special thing that we all stand for, and that's just…not easy.” In the American fashion landscape, Browne has become a shining example of what a designer can accomplish when they remain committed to being the best version of themselves, not someone else's. “I've always felt like I'm on my own, and I respond to people who just do their own thing and present exactly what they want people to see from them,” he continued. “It may be strange to say this, but I have done shows based on this idea of ​​the island of mismatched toys (see his fall 2022 collection).”

Except that in the room last night, outsidership was the biggest compliment. Take it from Escola, the evening's co-host, who Browne met and fell in love with after dressing her for the 2024 Met Gala: “It's the biggest compliment,” she said, adding that the evening was “a Birthday-wedding-first kiss.” And again, in a moment of seriousness after the desert, in the last moment of the night: “I still can't understand why people want me to wear their clothes. It means a lot to me that this comes from my play; I wrote this play and this character, which is very much my voice, and that other artists whose work I admire respond to it and want to include me in their world, that's all.”

But as is the way with Browne and certainly with Escola, the evening was not only “chic as hell,” as the latter put it, but also hilarious. At some point between the salad and the main course, one of the people at my table, the kids’ table (free), decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Then came the next, and the next, and the next. Those of us non-smokers felt left out and joined us. Since we were in the presence of Rae, the budding pop star and undeniable queen of TikTok, we thought to document our group with a 15-second clip of her latest single, “Diet Pepsi.” The result was messy, weird, funny, and once again chic as hell. I showed it to Browne before we said our final goodbyes, who put on his reading glasses, looked at my phone, and said, “I just love that we’re all here, we’re all different ages, we’re all doing our thing, but together.”