Ever since creative director Kim Jones took the wheel at Dior in 2018, Robert Pattinson has been riding wingman. He fronts campaigns, and he turns up to shows, and he puts his arm around Jones and both of them smile a lot. A friend of the brand! And, as is tradition, the Batman star arrived at today’s Dior menswear show for Paris Fashion Week – and he wore a solid anti-suit for all the haters of traditional tailoring.
Which isn’t to say Pattinson turned up in his civvies. On the contrary, his slate co-ords have all the polish and structure of a mega two-piece, but just without all the usual scaffolding. Instead of a blazer, it was a Nehru-worker jacket hybrid; great for galactic viceroys, even better for antique furniture restorers in Bordeaux. And, with matching trousers, it feels smart without trying too hard. OK, so it doesn’t exactly toe the dress code line for a summer wedding. But at least you’d be the coolest guy there.
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Pattinson pairs it up with a shirt, and here lies a universal low-effort, high-yield smart-casual banger – and he has form in remixing menswear. This is the same guy that embraced solid weirdo fashion for a GQ covershoot; the same guy who sieves the learnings of his modelling work into his acting work. In that same interview, Pattinson spoke of how tricky it was nailing his ‘campy dauphin’ role in 2019’s The King until he turned to fashion: “I’d been trying to do it seriously, but then I was talking to someone at Dior, and I started mimicking them and doing it in this funnier way,” he says. “I started doing it as a joke at first, but then I filmed myself and watched it back, and thought this actually kinda works.”
Fashion is a big deal for Robert Pattinson. And don’t get it twisted: Dior does classic tailoring very, very well (the perennial ‘Classics’ collection is home to the sort of meticulous suits that impossibly handsome French financiers wear). But under Jones, it also dropkicks the Dior archives into the year 3023, pairing all of the original influences of the 78-year-old label with a double shot of Neo Tokyo.
The result: a forward-thinking, refreshing remaster of traditional menswear – and a suit that even the most apoplectic suit haters will love.