Marching to the beat of Thom Browne's drum for SS14

It was never going to be ordinary. But just how madcap and brilliant it would be, and how buzzing we would feel as the show reached its climax, we couldn't have predicted as we sat in the sweltering heat of a courtyard in Paris' Ecole Militaire waiting for the show to begin. The opening music was that menacing chant sung by the Witch's army in the Wizard of Oz. And the first look was every bit as surprising. Thom Browne had decided to do uniform, but as always he had taken it to its extreme and fed it back to us as something more amazing than how it started out. Browne's army wore fetishistic red vinyl frock coats, huge petticoats of stiffened cotton, elaborate epaulettes of 3D pleated ribbon, and shorts with flairs of pleated tulle kicking out. Mirrored aviators and cod pieces, red lipstick and swinging chains -- it could have been straight out of the Torture Gardens but it was meant for the street. We interviewed Thom after the show to ask him how he intended the collection to be interpreted by his ordinary consumers, and it's clear that, like any good army general, he expects them to follow his command.