Timotheé Chalamet in an über-slim, glitter-speckled suit with a polka-dot silk scarf. Andrew Garfield going viral for his reading glasses and an unbuttoned silk shirt. Eddie Redmayne in a windowpane suit. Colman Domingo with a fringed, flamboyant bow tie. Hollywood’s leading men showed their more playful sides this past weekend at the Golden Globes — boring black tuxes be damned.
It’s the latest sign in an ongoing shift. Menswear style has been picking up steam since the pandemic, creating more buzz as the category has taken bigger swings. The men’s fashion moment is partly due, on a pop cultural level, to high-profile celebrities opting for true fashion propositions on the red carpet as opposed to the standardised suit.
The celebrity-dressing machine is nothing new. It’s been over a decade since brands saw the opportunity in celebrity dressing and formalised this relationship through stylists and brand ‘ambassadorships’. It’s a somewhat painless way of putting a collection in front of consumers, and a key marketing tool to sell entry-level items (the couture dress worth thousands of dollars on an It-actress helps sell the lipstick or fragrance at a lower price point).
With menswear, however, this used to be a straightforward, and rather boring, equation. Popular actor A wears a nice classic suit by brand B, often with a watch by brand C to match. This has changed with brands like Prada (worn by Harris Dickinson, Sebastian Stan, Adam Brody), Loewe (Ayo Edebiri riffed off of a Spring/Summer 2025 look), Gucci (worn by Paul Mescal and Garfield) and Valentino (as seen on Domingo) looking to capitalise on the new iteration of the machine, which is, in turn, helping to shift the way menswear is presented by brands in the fashion week context.
Brands and celebrities alike, it seems, are now catching onto the idea that the thirst trap can be more than internet salivation — it can also be good business. One of the biggest internet trends of 2024 was that of the so-called internet boyfriend. (For the uninitiated and not chronically online: attractive celebrities who become main characters on our newsfeeds and FYPs for their on-screen charisma and face-value hotness. See, currently: Cooper Koch, Dickinson and Garfield.) It currently pays for actors to lean in, which is why you see a bigger effort from men across the board to play up their fashion game — like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in a silky Dolce Gabbana shirt and Jeff Goldblum in sparkly Amiri — or lean into their thirstiness. Just look to Adrien Brody posing shirtless on the cover of New York Magazine.
Consequently, it’s good business for brands to embrace the thirst. Dressing the It-boy of the month is an easy way to stand out — a more immediate one than staging a runway show, which, unless viral, often serves an industry and insider base first. The upcoming autumn/winter menswear season is shaping up to be one of the slowest in recent memory. Fendi, Gucci, JW Anderson, Loewe, Tom Ford, Givenchy and Valentino are all absent from the schedule, but remain staples on the red carpet.
At first glance, it seems like the currently introverted industry side of menswear — fashion week, collection rollouts, etc — somewhat negates its louder consumer-facing strategy. But rather, the celebrity-style machine is helping contextualise the current strategy surrounding men’s fashion, raising the question: have we outgrown men’s runway shows?
The runway-red carpet diffusion
A tantalising concept — but first, some context: Fendi is skipping the men’s season because it currently does not have a lead designer for women’s ready-to-wear and couture since the departure of Kim Jones late last year. Despite incessant rumours that the label had signed on Pierpaolo Piccioli to take over ahead of this year’s centennial celebration, there has been little news from Fendi other than it missing the men’s season in favour of a larger anniversary show in March in the hands of Silvia Venturini Fendi.
Valentino had been an itinerant presence on the menswear schedule under Piccioli, and now, under Alessandro Michele, it has returned to a co-ed strategy during the women’s season, in line with the designer’s previous approach at Gucci.
While Sabato De Sarno had steered Gucci back onto the menswear schedule in Milan, starting this season, it is returning to a co-ed presentation cadence during ready-to-wear. Jonathan Anderson is sitting out the men’s season for both Loewe and JW, reinforcing the rumours that he might be gearing up for a change just as he celebrates 10 years at the Spanish label. Sarah Burton will be debuting her vision for Givenchy in March — it’s worth remembering that, while at McQueen, she had stopped doing men’s shows in favour of a seasonal lookbook launch. Tom Ford had long been absent from the menswear shows, and Haider Ackermann is not seemingly shifting that strategy. He will be presenting his first collection in March, too.
Whew.
Consider, now, that Ackermann has outfitted his famous celebrity bestie, Chalamet, for the Golden Globes, giving everyone a first look at his Tom Ford. In fact, some of the buzziest looks of the evening — the official kick-off to the 2025 awards season — came from labels skipping the men’s shows.
Garfield’s viral moment was a play on a Gucci Notte look by De Sarno, who also dressed Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst, while Redmayne and Domingo were outfitted by Valentino. Best Actor winner Adrien Brody wore Thom Browne — the closest thing to a trad suit, though not at all when paired with an XXL brooch. Ditto of Andrew Scott’s monochromatic Vivienne Westwood ensemble.
In fact, the only high-profile actor in attendance at the Golden Globes wearing a classic black suit was Cooper Koch of Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story — and internet boyfriendship — fame. Koch wore Armani, though this was a somewhat subverting statement of its own as an out gay man who attended hand in hand with his partner. It’s a bit tired to write based on the assumption that queer folk always dress the most flamboyant, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a recurring stereotype ripe for deposing, particularly from an actor who has spoken out about how he was once told his voice was “too gay” to book roles.
It would be remiss to point out that this comes with a shift in culture surrounding the conversations we have around men, which have in turn impacted the way men’s fashion operates. It’s not only acceptable to publicly fawn over men today — just check any attractive man’s TikTok comments section for expressions I dare not quote in this piece — but a fully fledged marketing strategy (see Dickinson doing a “milk taste test” for A24 in promotion of Babygirl, in which he stars alongside Nicole Kidman). At a time in which luxury brands are looking to cut costs to navigate a luxury slowdown — stay tuned for more on this topic — it only makes sense for them to fold less buzzy menswear shows into more extravagant co-ed shows and lean into celebrity to allow the internet to work its magic.
As a final aside, consider this: today, everyone is a critic. Every red carpet prompts an abundance of pseudo fashion police (remember Joan Rivers?) content, from Instagram stories to floating-head TikToks or Instagram Reels. The call is, of course, coming from inside the house. I can first-hand attest to how well this kind of content performs online — and how much brands love to be mentioned, for better or for worse. People are watching, and they care too much, and so men — and the industry — are following suit. Is this the beginning of a menswear revolution for 2025?
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