Actor David Harbour keeps his wardrobe so limited that there’s a running joke on social media that he only has three T-shirts. So he is perhaps an unexpected star to appear
in a high-concept Thom Browne photography project with artist Anh Duong (!), wearing a skirt (!!), shot by Tina Barney (!!!). But Harbour figured, “Go big or go home!” he said in a FaceTime from the Manhattan streets earlier this week. “Let’s not fuck around! If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it at the highest level.”
As a designer, Browne has eccentric taste in celebrities. He outfitted Phoebe Bridgers in a sequin skeleton gown for 2021 Grammys; has put Lebron James, Lil Uzi Vert, and Dan Levy in skirts; and was one of the first designers to dress playwright Jeremy O. Harris. He saw something unexpected in Harbour: “There’s something very interestingly real and authentic about him,” said Browne. “David is not simply an actor wanting to be famous—he’s wanting to be a good actor.” Plus, his severe features lend themselves naturally to the role of a gray flannel suit villain (like the one he recently played in Steven Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move)—or a man in a gray flannel skirt suit.
The skirt has evolved into something of a menswear staple this past year (“Thom Browne pleated skirt” was one of the year’s most searched men’s fashion terms, the shopping app Lyst revealed in July), though Harbour’s embrace of the garment has actually been a long time coming. In early 2020, when he was preparing for the Black Widow press tour that was eventually kiboshed by the pandemic, he told his stylist that he wanted to wear a kilt. “I just really like the skirt idea on a man,” he said, “and with gender fluidity being what it is, I think really what we’re reexamining is gender roles in a societal structure. It’s very serious, but it’s also very fun.” Harbour grew up in a big Texan family that made him a traditionally “masculine-man-type guy” in some ways, he said, but he also has “a certain sensitivity—a love of theatre, a love of these worlds that are full of gay men. I’ve always wanted to mesh those worlds.”
Browne, who takes a sort of John Cheever-flavored approach to his film and photography projects (and does something more Lewis Caroll-esque for his runway shows), wanted to portray a couple that has “been in this house for generations, and their relationship has evolved into one of those beautiful, solid relationships in which words aren’t always necessary.” Harbour and Duong pose in matching short suits a la Grant Wood’s “Southern Gothic,” then embody the ultimate wealthy couple dining in solitude at opposite ends of the table, their coordinating skirt suits fanning out graciously. In another photo, Harbour plays the muse, reclined on the sofa, as Duong paints him like one of her French girls. (“I’m Rose in Titanic,” Harbour joked. “She’s Leo. We should have done that thing where she’s holding me at the front of the house!”) Duong’s face looks like Picasso sculpted it out of Provencal clay; Harbour’s looks like it’s carved from an ancient mountainside.