Even the most oldfangled of the menswear set can't deny The Big Shift. As the way men dress becomes ever looser and more experimental, left-field dressing is becoming the norm. Go ask Kit Connor. In the grand tradition of Vuitton harnesses (Michael B. Jordan and the young king Chalamet), and iced-out party suits (Joe Jonas), his experimentalism isn't the exception. It's kind've the rule now. Particularly when it comes to walking the red carpet.
While the Heartstopper star has had a silly amount of fun with fashion this year, a lot of planning goes into it. There's an R&D phase; expert help is enlisted. “Kit has a huge understanding of fashion and film references" explains Chris Brown, a stylist that continues to work with the 18-year-old. “When we discuss styling, we always go back to the old Hollywood icons, and how we can make this contemporary and modern. We share of collection of vintage images and runway shows to build a picture of how it would translate now in 2022.”
So: a Cary Grant overcoat (tried-and-tested, safe) but covered in Loewe's sink strainers (cool, slightly mad, a viral runway bit that sent menswearheads into a frenzy). The same again at the Attitude awards – a look Brown was personally responsible for. It was a knitted polo shirt, buttoned up, with an echo of a '70s flare, but exuberant, punchy and with a multi-hit paint job of coral, blue, white and yellow.
Of course, the fact stars like Connor have been ignoring conventional dress codes in recent years is a reflection of progressivism within the fashion industry itself. Menswear's more abstract moments only used to be there to digest and decipher – think of the harnesses used to strap models upside down to other models at Rick Owens in Spring 2016), or the mud-caked puffer hoods upon a phalanx of listless dancers at A Cold Wall in 2019 – without ever actually going into production. Contrast that with the vests and overcoats perforated with plug holes at Loewe this year, which absolutely did.
They made it, Connor wore it – and people bought it. The plug hole coat, which was a fashion show pony in Paris, made it onto the rails with relatively few alterations.
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“In the past few generations, the red carpet has always been about a tuxedo or a suit. There's now more freedom. There's dressing down or dressing up, and it's still perfect for any event,” says Brown, and in Kit Connor – a man still starting out on his style journey – he's found the perfect expression of a new, more fun approach to dressing: “I think there's more expression and creativity now than ever before."
