A giant chrysalis stood at the centre of Thom Browne’s show at the Shed, with green tendrils and leaves shooting out in all four directions. Browne went back to nature for spring. These weren’t clothes for mucking through the woods searching for bugs—he’s still New York’s most preeminent and particular tailor—but he did settle on insects as a motif. Butterflies, bees, and other buzzing creatures alighted on the well-shaped shoulders of his tweed jackets or were intarsia’d into the design of others so that their patterned wings spread from front to back.

The show started with an army of caterpillars—that’s the technical term, though more literarily inclined entomologists might call them constituencies—dancing around the chrysalis. When one special caterpillar was nudged into the cocoon, and the rest moved off stage, Browne’s spring collection emerged.

To start, the references were subtle. A long-stemmed daisy was embroidered onto a jacket front, with a single bumblebee sipping nectar from its flowerhead; dragonflies were woven into the pattern of a tone-on-tone checked coat. More conceptual pieces followed. They incorporated Brown’s couture-like patchwork technique onto three-dimensional carapaces: ladybug spots and beetle patterns stretched across bulbous skirts, while the insects’ eyes and mandibles decorated fitted bodices worn over halter-cut button-downs accompanied by skinny ties. On the flip side, there were ultra-fitted corset tops and narrow skirts origami’d into mind-bending geometric patterns reminiscent of a caterpillar’s spiracles.

Naturally, at the end the model in the cocoon returned as a colorful butterfly. Is Browne worried about the bees? Inspired by his ongoing upstate house renovation? Neither. He said the animated Pixar movie A Bug’s Life was a reference point, as it was for his spring collection for men, shown in June in Milan. “I wanted to play, so it didn’t become too serious,” he said. But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. The most exquisite look in the collection was a fitted top, corset, and floor-scraping skirt made using those remarkable spiracle-like tucks and folds, hundreds of them. Above the model’s pelvis was the signature red marking of a black widow spider.