Thom Browne and Michael Glover

The codpiece—a fashion curio, yes, but one whose padded cup runneth over as a conversation piece. The designer Thom Browne, whose collections have featured codpieces over the years, and the writer Michael Glover, who just published an unlikely and hilarious history of the codpiece in art, talk male vanity, gender fluidity, camp, Catholicism, tailoring, and more—all revolving around this little flap of cloth about the midsection. 

Michael Glover’s Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial History of the Codpiece in Art is available now from David Zwirner Books.

Image: Thom Browne and Michael Glover at Browne’s office, New York, August 2019