There was a wonderful tweet back on pre-X Twitter by the cultural critic Jasmine Sanders that read, basically, as follows: when white women dye their hair a certain shade, they re sending a distress signal not unlike a squid emitting ink. If that insight holds true, as, anecdotally, I ve observed that it does—brunette is meant to flag “serious,” red means “bombshell,” and bleach-blonde can but does not always mean “crisis”—then what do we make of Timothée Chalamet showing up at the New York premiere of A Complete Unknown with honey-blonde bangs?
Chalamet has flirted with blondness before, so I was skeptical at first when a Vogue colleague breathlessly informed me of the actor s newly flaxen locks via Slack. But lo and behold, the look was real (though the bangs are possibly clip-ons?)—even if only for one night: Chalamet, it soon became clear, was cosplaying as Bob Dylan at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, where the music legend was promoting Masked and Anonymous. Method-dressing is, indeed, alive and well, it seems:
I know bleached blonde-ness on men can occasionally signify inner turmoil (or, not unrelatedly, the rampant Kenergy of last summer). On Chalamet, though, this hair transformation is a relatively low-effort and painless way to shift the vibe from the surly, 1960s Dylan that he plays in A Complete Unknown, while still paying canny homage.
We ll need more angles to know for sure, but is Chalamet…kind of pulling off caramel tresses? And are his army of doppelgangers ready to really commit to the bit?
