Timothée, You're On Notice
We need to talk about he who was once called “the most influential man in fashion.”
“Did We Overhype Timotheé Chalamet as a Style Icon?” This was a question I posed to the readers of my Paper Magazine column (RIP) in July 2020.
The first observation of a tide shift for me came at the 2020 Oscars. A "chic mechanic", a "sexy paramedic", a “valet attendant”, a “gas station manager” — these were just some of the ways Timmy’s navy blue Prada jacket and trousers paired with a Cartier Vintage 1955 ruby & diamond brooch were described online. (He's rumored to have picked up the outfit from a Prada store in Los Angeles earlier that the day.)
I didn’t, to quote Nicki Minaj, “hate hate hate” the look, but it felt out of step with the man who wow’d us to outer space with his silver satin Haider Ackermann suit and black cowboy boots at the Venice Film Festival in 2019.
It was looks like this that helped earned him the title of “Most Influential Man in Fashion,” by Vogue — a deserved title at the time. What many of us fancied about the Timmy of that era was the collectively held belief that he dressed without a stylist (though the New York Times reported in 2022 that he (“has worked with stylist Erin Walsh”). In a celebrity ecosystem that relies heavily on stylists imparting their aesthetic (and contacts) onto their clients, Timmy gave off the enviable vibe that he dressed how he wanted, in what he wanted, via his relationships with designers like Virgil Abloh, Stella McCartney and the aforementioned Ackermann.
That was then.