| The designer’s eccentric tailoring has long had a cult following. Now it’s filtering into the mainstream.  Photography by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari When the actor Paul Reubens died, in July, there was much made of the funny little too-small suit that he always wore when performing as his signature character, Pee-wee Herman. But, looking at old pictures, the suit didn’t look particularly funny or little anymore. In fact, with its cropped pants and slim shoulders, Pee-wee’s suit seemed to fit just about right—it’s a look you see everywhere these days. That, as Rachel Syme writes in this week’s Fall Style & Design Issue, owes in large part to the designer Thom Browne, who, for twenty years, has been spreading the gospel of the ever-shrinking suit, while relentlessly pursuing a single goal: “to make the gray suit look interesting.” Browne’s tailoring works as well on the frame of LeBron James as it does on that of Janelle Monáe—and his influence has now gone fully mainstream. But, as Syme notes, Browne’s vision was a hard sell at first. In the early two-thousands, he served as his own model, wearing his suits around town. His friends were skeptical. “Why would we want to buy something that doesn’t even seem to fit you?” he recalls them asking. These days, as Browne’s clout has grown, the hemlines keep getting shorter—at least in his own wardrobe. “Five years ago,” Syme writes, “he stopped wearing long pants altogether.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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