For all his thespian accolades, Daniel Day-Lewis made a name for himself around these parts—that is, at men’s fashion publications—by way of his rugged-hipster workwear, his poetic 1990s suiting, and those dainty hoop earrings that inspired Jacob Elordi (and untold others) to pierce his own lobes in hopes of conjuring some of DDL’s leading-man charm. So it came as a surprise when, several years after announcing his retirement from Hollywood, the actor reemerged on a New York City sidewalk back in May wearing not a pair of Carhartt double-knees, work boots, and a rolled-up beanie, but instead: pastel yellow nylon skate pants, Hoka sneakers, dark aviator shades, and a Yoshimura trucker hat balanced atop his shoulder-length gray locks. Day-Lewis, ever the chameleon, had transformed again.
But that’s the thing about shape-shifters—to be is to be in flux. Like the tides, “Daniel Day Drip” ebbs and flows, its external characteristics transmuting as fluidly as the phases of the moon, or the climate, or the overall cultural tenor. Change is the only constant. And yet, earlier this month, when Day-Lewis reappeared again to support his wife, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, at the premiere of her upcoming film She Came to Me, which stars Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Hathaway, he’d seemed to have returned to his old sartorial ways. Sporting a fresh buzz cut, he had on dark jeans, black work boots, a “Westerner” denim jacket from the cult Japanese brand Kapital (with a teensy SAG-AFTRA pin wedged into one of its buttonholes), and a turquoise double-whammy: a turquoise-pendant bolo tie and a turquoise-studded belt buckle that could rival J. Robert Oppenheimer’s. In the chameleonic expanse of Daniel Day-Lewis’s style oeuvre, things had swung back around.
A few days later, Day-Lewis wore a more toned-down version of this retro Western look—a Howler Brothers snap-button work shirt, hardy blue jeans, rust-orange neckerchief, and brown Nicks boots—out to lunch in Manhattan with Bradley Cooper, who, in contrast, looked deeply regular in his usual famous-guy uniform of tapered cargo pants, a plain navy tee, and yellow Adidas Sambas designed by his rumored girlfriend, Gigi Hadid. Not unlike those kooky Biebers, the actor pals looked like they had gotten dressed in two different centuries. Two homies, riding different waves but still building. Tale as old as time.
