At the recent Met Gala, Rihanna wore what could easily be mistaken as a Thom Browne

The blazer-as-skirt: Left, Rihanna wearing Marc Jacobs and, right, Thom Browne from the couture 2023 season. Photos: Getty Images and Thom Browne respectively

We admit that we made a mistake. In our post yesterday about the action on the red carpet that lead to the Met Gala, we misidentified the many-part outfit Rihanna wore to be by Thom Browne. It turned out to be from Marc Jacobs, as confirmed by industry publications, such as WWD, and popular titles, such as Vogue. It is our bad for not checking the information more carefully, but it is perhaps understandable why that mistake could be quite easily made. Rihanna is pregnant, but unlike most expectant women; she does not wear your average maternity dress. For her Met Gala appearance, she agreed to a skirt that looked like a long blazer (or a coat) repurposed. And to us the blazer-as-skirt is a Thom Browne idea.

For Mr Browne’s couture 2023 season, he created two skirts (look 4, above right, and look 54) that were blazers designed to be worn on the waist rather than the shoulders. The blazer styles were akin to boating blazers, and their neck opening sat snugly on the waist, with the shoulders protruding to give the impression of hip padding, but the effect is not like what the pannier offers. Mr has explored this idea before, but it had been part of a blazer deconstructed to form a section of the skirt (as seen in the fall 2022 season), all with the distinct tailoring elements intact. It is his way of expressing playful subversion of traditional menswear codes. And Mr Browne is well-loved for that.

And then came the current “custom” design for Rihanna. To be certain, we’re not saying they are exactly the same. Mr Jacobs used a pinstriped coat (it looked like a reefer) on the singer and rather than let the sleeves of the outer hang by the wearer’s side, he tied it to the back into a knot so that the bulky shoulders and the snarled sleeves made Rihanna look like she was pregnant, front and back. Some observers thought the skirt idea to be an “aesthetic overlap”, rather than obvious referencing. It does not help that the line between the two is often blurry. Marc Jacobs is known to take advantage of this smudge. And tweak his outputs sufficiently so that they are not an outright borrowing of a distinctive design idea. Master of the remix.