Winners and losers, orgies of gratitude, generous lashings of false humility — these are the things we expect from the Oscars. Beyond that, there are truly no certainties but one. There will be tuxedos.
Durable, serviceable, flexible, the tuxedo is a time-tested form of combat gear for night owls, the epitome of uniform dressing and yet, for some reason, a form of suit that gives people the willies. It’s prom drag, they think. Or that ill-fitting rental sack with a stale Mentos in the pocket. Lately, though, the perception of how to wear evening clothes is changing, never more obviously so than on the red carpet, where in a cavalcade of penguin suits, both traditional and innovative, celebrities and their stylists have been giving us a master class in dressing up.
At the recent Screen Actors Guild Awards, Bradley Cooper, Steven Yeun and Matt Bomer were close to impeccable wearing more or less regulation black tie, while others in the celebrity cohort made a point of showing how truly flexible this sartorial warhorse can be. The tuxedo was tweaked almost to the point of redefinition, with versions of it rendered single- or double-breasted, adorned with crisscross lapels and cropped like a bellhop’s bolero. There were tuxedos that night in bronze, brown, midnight blue, lipstick red, blush pink and, most memorably, ivory, as Jeremy Allen White bid to switch up his thirst-trap underwear-model image for something more suggestive of a leading man.
Dressed in a Saint Laurent tuxedo over an open shirt and with a diamond Schlumberger Bird on a Rock brooch pinned to his lapel, Mr. White evoked adjectives not often associated with millennial bros. Like a short-king avatar of Cary Grant, he was sophisticated, suave and — let’s just say it — debonair.
In the realm of replicating old time Hollywood glamour, Mr. White had plenty of competition that evening. And in light of the parade of elegantly tuxedo-clad celebrities like Tyler James Williams (baby blue double-breasted Amiri), Glen Powell (shawl-collar bronze Brioni), Ryan Gosling (dove gray Gucci) and Cillian Murphy (pinstriped Saint Laurent), it seemed clear what to expect on the Oscars red carpet.
That is, no wardrobe stunts. Those are better left to the glorified costume party that is the Met gala. The Oscars, after all, is Hollywood’s big date night, in that it has a certain instructive quality of use to any civilian preparing for a red-letter day.
