Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
GQ magazine hasreleased its list of the 13 most stylish men in the world right now. It’s like the most well-dressed police lineup ever, but what sartorial lessons can we learn?
Tight is still right
Sharp cuts and tight fits are still a shortcut to style. We’re not talking blood-stopping skinny jeans here, we’re talking suit jackets, shirts and trousers. They just make everything look better. Still. Eddie Redmayne is well versed in pulling off a very, very specific, sartorially-pinched red-carpet look: boarding-school pupil interning at a private equity firm goes to wedding. Meanwhile, Idris Elba, whose every red-carpet appearance seems to be a screen test for the next Bond, works that “tight” mantra to the hilt: broad-shouldered suit jackets with a fitted-waist jacket.
Classics are your best friend
Lucky Blue Smith: the model, who looks like the image you’d come up with if your art teacher told you to “Draw a very handsome male model, please”, dresses in menswear classics. Just look at his Instagram – which looks like stills from a Larry Clark film – and you’ll see what I mean: The Brokeback Mountain Sherpa denim jacket, the Rebel Without a Cause white T-shirt and the rustic plaid shirt, all worn with A+ casualness. A sartorial lesson to us all: if in doubt, go iconic.
Be the mane attraction
If you’ve still got hair, you might want to pay attention. Two men on the list, Harry Styles and Justin Trudeau, are not afraid to work their hair, telegraphing their power with it but doing it in vastly different ways. As Styles’s hair has got longer, it has loosened up; now he looks like the world’s scruffiest show pony. Meanwhile, Trudeau has done the anti-Harry, pulling back on his long locks for an alpha haircut that’s just loose enough to suggest both diplomacy and the regular-guyness that is his stock in trade.
Do ‘one-piece’ fashion
Diplo’s fashion style is achingly on-point, and, frankly, you wouldn’t expect anything less from a superstar DJ (up your fashion game, Calvin Harris!). His stylistic overview seems to be: you only need one really great “fashion” piece to carry off your whole look. And whether that’s an oversize white monk shirt (in Major Lazer’s Lean On video), a subtly logo-ed sweatshirt or T-shirt, subtly pairing them with some basics seems to be enough to pull off a whole look.
Wide-brimmed hats still don’t work
Hats – who’d have ’em? Not us. What might work on Future does not work on everyone. A wide-brimmed hat is a massive statement piece. It says “look at me!” in a way that sucks the oxygen out of the rest of your outfit. Just look at what happens when a male celebrity wears a big hat – James Bay, Pharrell Williams in that hat, Justin Timberlake – they loose cool points immediately, and you’d be hard-pressed not the conjure up an image of a gap-year student at a festival wearing a fedora and drunkenly barking about Brexit. In short: statement hats, they’re not worth the risk.
