From Billy Porter to Spike Lee to Jason Momoa and his scrunchie, this was an all-time night men’s award season style. On Sunday night, the maximum splendid factor at the Oscars red carpet became…a man’s scrunchie. That appears like a nightmare. However, it becomes absolutely now not: Jason Momoa wore a purply-purple velvet in shape, designed via Silvia Venturini Fendi, that no longer handiest coordinated with the luminous Lisa Bonet’s Fendi dress, but which was styled with an identical Fendi scrunchie worn around his wrist. It changed into a loopy coup for the Aquaman megastar, whose wild dude power is an extended, stunning manner from the purple carpets of eight years ago. Momoa’s second had all of it: excessive-fashion cred, his personal simple personality, and a welcome feel of levity (black tie scrunchie, toddler!). Most importantly, though, it proved why men are the maximum interesting figures to watch on the crimson carpet now.
It’s no mistake that the main communication around crimson carpet is whether or not or now not you stan the Louis Vuitton bib. Now, guys are keen to test with our vision of “formal” at the pink carpet and our definition of masculinity—and they’re additionally doing the paintings of showing how the experimental paintings of capital-F style designers might translate to a barely more actual global.
The maximum exciting matters guys could do for a long time were tiny, risk-free (mind-numbing) tweaks: playing with lapels. Wearing military as opposed to black. Throwing on a black shirt in preference to a white one! There become lots of that Sunday night. However, there have been additionally actual, true style: Billy Porter in a velvet tuxedo robe with a voluminous skirt, designed by ladies’ pink carpet savior Christian Siriano, changed into daring; however, additionally seems to were the maximum celebrated appearance of the night. Yeah, Spike Lee has been a style legend from the soar. However, the cause behind his outfit—designed with tailoring divinity Ozwald Boateng, red in honor of Prince, a massive Prince-formed Amedeo Scognamiglio chain around his neck, custom gold Jordans on his toes—became wealthy with codes worth of a Renaissance portrait. The quieter dressers have been equally affecting: Stephan James in a plum-pink Etro velvet 3-piece with iceberg-cold white Giuseppe Zanotti boots, or Mark Ronson with pajama piping.
Why this menswear shift? In component, this is due to the Oscars’ increasing diversity. For many years, “red carpet style” intended a particular, heavily constrained sort of white-guy gentlemanly machismo. Actors like Mahershala Ali, Michael B. Jordan, and Momoa are doing what they’ve continually accomplished—and now the worlds of style and celebrity have all started paying closer interest.
But it’s additionally due to the fact fashion homes are there to fulfill them. For instance, Givenchy’s innovative director Clare Waight Keller has publicly been credited with designing Meghan Markle’s wedding ceremony to get dressed. Still, she’s additionally making enormously sensuous, thoughtful menswear, like Chadwick Boseman’s densely-beaded tailcoat and long silk headscarf in the region of a tie. At Dior Men’s Fall-Winter show in January, Kim Jones brought a sash-lapel, genuinely with an attitude to give Hollywood guys something bold (something bib-worthy) to do on the purple carpet. There has been Nicholas Hoult pulling it off Sunday love; it turned into no massive danger—due to the fact for guys, it not is.
Finally: real guys’ style comes to Hollywood. The bits and bobs at style houses can appear like palace intrigue to the average follower of pop culture. But the red carpet is an area in which obstacles are pushed, and perceptions shifted approximately what kinds of clothing a man can pull off—with the wider, runway-show-ignoring public lapping it up. In the extensive galaxy of male celebrities, an actor is greater relatable to the commoner than a version on a Paris runway, in the end. And now, with rock celebrity-level designers like Virgil Abloh on the European megalith manufacturers, many people are getting as conscious of fashion as they may be with the Best Picture nominees.
