The first full-fledged Academy Awards ceremony in two years carries on the distinct assertion that certain things are now “back.” Hollywood is back. Live awards show broadcasts are back. Tinseltown drama
is back. But if there was one takeaway from even just last night’s Oscars red carpet showing, it’s that the one consistent thing about the last two years—the iron grip of the internet—never left at all.
Red carpet pixie Timothée Chalamet, who has grasped the art of drumming up post-show headlines based on his ensembles alone (Converse and sweatpants to the Met Gala!), arrived shirtless except for a sequined, custom-tailored Louis Vuitton jacket from Nicolas Ghesquière’s spring 2022 womenswear collection. The jacket, worn open in the front with lace-rimmed sleeves, showcased an entire arsenal of Cartier jewelry (the Maison named Timmy as an official “Friend of the House” last fall), and was cropped in the back with a scoop high enough to reveal his trousers’ V-shaped split waistband, fastened with an LV-monogrammed tab. It’s a bespoke-y detail that becomes instantly saucy when there’s no shirt underneath to keep tucked in.
(The shoe, also LV, was classic Chalamet, who loves a formal boot; real heads may recall his “Venice Haider Ackerman boots,” as fans have dubbed the same well-shod pair he’s worn to the film festival a few years running.)
We saw a lot of skin on the carpet last night, and not in the way we normally do, from Kristen Stewart in sequined Chanel tap shorts to Zendaya in an ultra-cropped Valentino button down. (Did I forget to mention that sex is back, too?) But Chalamet and his stylist Erin Walsh, whom the actor began working with last year during rollouts for his films The French Dispatch and Dune, certainly calculated the look to get the Twitter stans running for the hills. If his impish red carpet smile wasn’t enough, the actor later captioned his post-game Instagram fit pic with a cheeky “?,” while Walsh captioned her own post, “The internet is broken.” While Timmy certainly isn’t the only harbinger of meme-dressing, he’s one of its foremost champions—and, as a 26-year-old from Manhattan, one of the biggest stars who grew up witnessing how hypebeasts dress both online and IRL.
For what it’s worth, Timmy was outspokenly stylist-free up until recently; back in 2018, he told Time Out, “I hear about celebrities who have stylists, and that blows my mind. It’s certainly not why I act, but I can wear cool clothes from some of the nicest designers in the world. [So why] am I going to pay someone to figure out what I should be wearing? That’s the fun part.” But surely, with a busier schedule, brand partnerships, and maybe an ever-widening threshold to clear one’s maximum viral potential, collaboration calls. And like clockwork—whether intentionally derivative or not—Timmy’s trendsetting played out almost immediately last night, with fledgling red carpet heavy-hitter Simu Liu slipping off the shirt underneath his lipstick-red Versace suit for the Vanity Fair afterparty. Breezy!