Getting dressed has never been more filled with possibility. We are all still regaining our muscle memory—remembering which pants goes with which shirt, etcetera—or maybe just revamping a wardrobe overrun by sweatpants. Luckily, two Cannes red carpet events for the upcoming Wes Anderson film The French Dispatch offer templates for every type of guy (and Tilda Swinton) worth aspiring to in 2021. Both the premiere and screening trotted out A-listers like mannequins to graze from in the attempt to perfect your own personal style.
Starting in the casual section: Timothée Chalamet came dressed as the Gallery Bro, a man of impeccable taste who won’t let you forget that fact. Slouchy pants were tucked into big, clopping Bottega Veneta Chelsea boots. He wore a T-shirt—always-sold-out merch from film producer Elara Pictures—to a red carpet. But Chalamet, as always, is proof that we contain multitudes. Just a day earlier, at the film’s screening, the actor’s silver Tom Ford suit was full glam, a large helping of the decadent ‘80s spooned onto the 2021 red carpet. In the span of just two days, Chalamet alone can show you how to do formal and casual.
And we’re not done there. The French Dispatch premiere was full of signposts for the different directions menswear might go this year. The vibes were bountiful: Wes Anderson in his seersucker suit, knit tie, and white penny loafers gave us perfect Southern Gentleman. It was hard to reconcile the fact he was getting dressed in the same universe as Adrien Brody, who wore the sleekest all-black double-breasted peak-lapel suit a day earlier to the screening, the sharpened debonair playboy to Anderson’s down-home gent.
At this point, I would believe you if you told me The French Dispatch was merely a branding exercise paid for by a panicked suit lobby. Between the two events, the full breadth of what a suit can be was on display. After double-breasting at the screening, Brody cosplayed as the sexy substitute professor wearing a sweater over a collared shirt all bundled under a navy suit. Meanwhile, Swinton showed us the outer limits of suiting in 2021. Her electric-blue Haider Ackermann number made her look, as she often does, like an alien beamed down to earth to show us the future of style.
But no one truly showed the ways menswear has refracted in 2021 quite like Bill Murray. He wore an elaborately patterned shirt, two watches, and light blue chino shorts. If you slipped most dads a couple Benjamins and told them to scour the mall for an outfit to wear at the Cannes Film Festival how many of them end up wearing Murray’s exact outfit? 95%? 100%?! Those who’ve watched the new season of I Think You Should Leave will immediately recognize Murray’s shirt as peak Dan Flashes-core. This is the shirt with a pattern so complex it costs $2,000.
Red carpet events tend to grind men into homogeneity, a parade of black and navy suits that make their wearers look perfectly nice. But style feels different now: suits can be firmly rooted in the tradition of the American south... or sent here from the future. In our exciting present, acceptable red-carpet clothes include T-shirts and chino shorts. Now that we’ve all had some time to let it simmer over the course of a locked-down year, personal style is finally winning out.
