Channing Tatum takes style advice in stride, letting outside guidance carry him downstream like a rugged river rock on its way to becoming a polished stone. He appears, as of late,
to be always willing to cede the floor to his more fashion-centric friends, heeding their takes on what would look best on him. This is an elegant quality, as it takes a specific wisdom to know that life is about learning.
In a new interview for VMAN about Tatum’s various new projects, the actor and his 21 Jump Street costar (and GQ’s perennial wear-what-you-feel guru) Jonah Hill speak broadly about how he’s been navigating his early 40s. Once they’ve gotten past the Hollywood biz formalities, Hill gently asks Tatum about his newfound personal style, saying, “I’ll let you talk about this in any sense you want to talk about it.” The subtext is, of course, that Hill is not just a personal style sage for the masses, but also to his homies.
For Tatum, who admits he’s run the gamut between “the year of the fresh white tee” in his younger years to an ill-fated attempt at wearing, it’s simple: “Jonah, you basically don’t let me look like a fool.”
“That’s what’s beautiful about having friends like you. Somebody can tell you a perspective that you can’t fully have on yourself,” he continues. “You told me to never wear boots, but I understand what you meant by that now. No boots for me. Boots on you are ok. And I’m glad you cleared that up, because I did feel for a second very betrayed when you went on national TV with boots on.”
“I think they read a little Mumford and Sons on you and then for me, I need a little more like, butching up sometimes,” Hill acknowledges. “I do feel like I did play a good part in this style evolution and [that]s something I’m very proud of personally, that I didn’t do for the glory. I did it out of love and excitement to see you look so rad. And then, when I saw you on the bike with the vintage T-shirt and the Dickies I was like, ‘How incredible does this guy look?’”
Tatum also name checks Zoë Kravitz, his director costar in the upcoming thriller Pussy Island and also his maybe-probably real-life paramour, as a fellow teacher in his style education. (For the record, Kravitz accompanied a Dickies-clad Tatum on the aforementioned bike.) Last summer, the two of them told Dateline that Kravitz insisted that Tatum stop wearing Crocs, echoing Hill’s sentiment that “there are people out there who can pull off the Crocs thing; I just wasn’t sure you were one of them.” They simply didn’t feel like his vibe.
“She had a good argument,” Tatum said then. “The one thing I can pull off, is listening.”
But now that Tatum has clear guidance on his no-gos, the question remains: how is he determining what does work on him, what does spark joy? Later on in the interview, he tells Hill, “The only problem is now I’m completely addicted to these vintage apps. Now I don’t even go on Instagram anymore.” Channing, please release the search terms—and in the meantime, let’s get a Channing Tatum Grailed curated collection, STAT.