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At Venice Film Festival, sexy movies like Babygirl and Queer racked up a total of 15.5 minutes of standing ovation time between them – and the red carpet is feeling the steam. There’s been see-through shirts, tuxedos with tank tops, and Brad Pitt in bell bottoms. Venice has gone full menswear.
It might not be as buttoned up or sequinned as Cannes, but Venice Film Festival is a little more relaxed on the red carpet. Historically, that meant the usual suits and… not much else. But take GQ co-cover star, and eternal cool guy Brad Pitt, who hit the Palazzo del Cinema for the premiere of Wolfs in a custom Louis Vuitton suit that flared in all the right places. Not quite cowboy, but not quite straight-up classic either.
Underneath this custom LV banger, he flew the flag for slutty menswear in a sheer fitted tee that gave a full chest view with chains on show. Plus, he was standing firmly in the no tie camp that has seen a surge in membership. It’s not surprising to see Pitt bend the rules, given his history of pushing the envelope for dressing well, and if his latest red carpet look was anything to go by, he’s not slowing down.
It wouldn’t be out of place on Louis Vuitton’s Paris Fashion Week runway. And that’s the point. We’re living in a menswear free-for-all, where dress codes don’t have the weight they once did. So red carpets act like a mini-catwalk, and the perfect place for fashion houses to market more ballsier pieces to guys who are taking more risks with how they dress.
Joining Brad on the red carpet of Wolfs was his GQ co-cover star and on and off-screen buddy George Clooney. His Giorgio Armani tux was right on the other end of the spectrum, landing in the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” side of black tie. Aaron Taylor-Johnson didn’t exactly shy away from any 007-related rumours when he joined the Cloon on team tux with Giorgio Armani, armed with a cummerbund capable of holding its own against any black tie-clad bad guys.
But the menswear moments kept coming, from a rumoured-to-be Bond to a former Bond. Daniel Craig moved away from saving the world to debut a softer look. Joining his co-star and on-screen lover Drew Starkey for the photocall of Queer, where he plays a drug-addicted lover in Mexico, Craig went sans-jacket for his full Loewe fit, in a white shirt, tucked into straight-fit jeans with sneakers.
Starkey was also dressed in Loewe, opting for a pair of brown pleated pants, a white shirt, and the Spanish house’s rounded Campo boots, which update the classic Chelsea boot with the label’s quirky playfulness. “We wanted to keep a cool, leading man feel for this. Relaxed and effortless but still polished. We like the idea of playing slightly vintage for the vibe of the movie,” Warren Alfie Baker, Starkey’s stylist, says.
With the cast dressed in Loewe (Jonathan Anderson was behind the Queer wardobe), a costumey coherence was definitely there. Take the later red carpet appearance, where Craig wore an off-white single breasted suit (similar to one he wears in the movie), and Starkey repped a rich blue tux that was “fresh and young but filled with all the Loewe sensibilities,” Baker says. With one foot in the ‘50s, and the other in the present day, both Craig and Starkey’s fits feel like an extension of the film’s steezy south-American wardrobe.
Venice is pretty warm, too, and if you want to see how to do black tie in peak Italian summer, look at Jude Law. While attending the premiere of The Order (which got a seven-minute standing ovation), he switched out any kind of shirting for a fitted vest courtesy of Kim Kardashian’s Skims, with a top-notch Brioni tuxedo, which he’d actually worn before. But in the spirit of toying with tradition, he swapped out any kind of tie for a loosely fastened silk scarf to finish it all off.
“Venice seems to have an ‘up in the air’ dress code. I wanted to find a way to make Jude feel dressed up enough without wearing a traditional tuxedo, with a shirt, bow tie and cufflinks,” says Brodie Reardon, Law's stylist. “This is where the tank/scarf combo came to mind. He likes wearing tees and tanks with suits so I thought: if he wore a tank it would dress it down. And then instead of having a bow tie, I chose to use a satin scarf to emulate what the bow tie would do on a traditional tuxedo.”
Basically, Jude Law’s sidestep of the dress code showed that if you buy a really good suit (which Brioni has been making for 79 years), it’s gonna serve you again and again.
If you’re wondering why this year’s Venice Film Festival was such a belter for menswear, hear it from Reardon: “People are bending the rules in a way that appeals to their personal style.” We’re living in an era where casual is king, and lawyers, MPs and finance bro final bosses make up the bulk of daily suit wearers. The rest of us can go to work in a T-shirt (like Luca Guadagnino at the Queer photocall). So, massive events like the Venice Film Festival are prime menswear flexing real estate, and an opportunity to stunt. And we can’t say we’re mad about it.
