by For the first time ever, this year’s awards season’s best-dressed were almost exclusively men. And that’s not to say that recent red carpets have been so dull or full of misfires that we’ve all started trying to make a missionary grab for a plain black tux.
It was awards season; the looks are delectable across the board. We had Ayo Edebiri in a leather dress, ballooning with Louis Vuitton, Aubrey Plaza in Post It-esque Loewe and Taylor Swift in shimmering green Gucci, on top of stunning Schiaparelli creations.
There’s viral moment after viral moment, all the cinched waists and sculpted bodices and niche Barbie references you might expect, but still the most memorable looks have come from a select group of well-dressed men.
Pedro Pascal in his strange polka dot turtleneck, like the chic version of socks from the inside, his right arm placed in a vague sling. Barry Keoghan with his Tiffany & Co. pearls. and his hands are permanently exposed. Jeremy Allen White opting for a bare shirt under his all-black Calvin Klein suit. Colman Domingo in layers and layers of Valentino luxury, an open shirt, a mustard suit as crisp as possible, a gold lamé coat over his shoulders. You have your four horsemen, so now you have no choice but to ask: will men overtake women in red carpet attire?
“I definitely feel that men are becoming more confident in what they wear,” says celebrity stylist Jay Hines, who styles Barry Keoghan, Mads Mikkelsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh O’Connor, Willem Dafoe, Matt Smith and Daniel Caesar. “A lot of men are just diving into a silhouette that may have previously been feminine. But with a bit of gender fluidity with clients they are not used to, they are introduced to a world of different styles and silhouettes. I think when a lot of people see the clothes on, the confidence starts to brew from there.”
The new fun androgyny goes both ways for men on the red carpet: many women have been seen wearing a suit or toy with more masculine attire at recent awards shows, from Boygenius in the triple Thom Browne at the Grammys to Ayo Edebiri in style Talking Heads. oversized suit by The Row.
It feels like something is changing. Men are pulling out all the stops that women usually want – dressing up, showing a bit of skin, wearing jewelery or pops of color – while women, at points, are comfortably taking the backseat. “Men are playing the game more,” says celebrity stylist Rudy Betty, who works primarily in womenswear but feels a fresh pull toward men because of the increasingly unrestricted opportunities. “There’s this heightened sense of looking, of being bolder.”
Betty, who includes Lashana Lynch, Indiya Moore, Damson Idris and Dina Asher Smith, says male celebrities are now pulling out all the stops that women’s styling teams would employ if they wanted to “make them a star”. . “Previously, it was kind of expected that female talents would have a whole clan working on their looks and trying to make a sartorial moment. There are male talents [those] teams now and they are more ready and willing to play around with it.
“The visual and aesthetic image for these men [Allen White, Keoghan etc] very strong. People are looking forward to what they wear, it’s going to be an event, but before it was limited to women.”
He takes the recent Dunne press tour, with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh and Austin Butler all in tow, for example. “You look forward to what they all wear, but the women who were there before,” he says, adding: “I saw somewhere they were called the Fab Four, because they all looked so distinctive anyone. .”
Hines agrees: “I think a lot of actors are embracing that sense of stardom. They’re thinking, ‘I must look like a star with the look I’m wearing.’ It doesn’t mean they have to be loud or wear feathers on their heads, but now [they want] to stand out and be at the forefront of men’s fashion.”
Betty credits increasingly gender-fluid fashion shows with helping usher in this wave of experimentation on the red carpet. “Alessandro Michele’s Gucci almost pioneered this – Helmut Lang, of course, did it in the early 2000s. But in recent years, the fact that women’s and men’s silhouettes have been shown in the same fashion show has helped open up the optics.”
As each award ceremony goes by, we’re putting on a beaming audience. Now that anyone and everyone has a stylist, it’s harder to stand out as a woman on the red carpet. You don’t get as many car crashes, so the winners and losers become blurred. The leading ladies of the moment are just as likely to be the red carpet crowd as a random online influencer. But the leading men are standing clear and defined. “Womenswear always feels like the elevator, but when menswear is done right, it can be a little bit different than what people are used to,” Hines explains of our renewed appetite for menswear. .
Choosing even the most stunning dresses can be overwhelming, but the bar has been so low for men for so long, we welcome this new wave of innovation. And with the BAFTAs around the corner, it’s the boys we’ll be looking for when we get there. Here’s hoping they pull off all the stops.
