Men Playing Men Playing Sports Are Ruining My Life: Part One

Unfortunately, I can no longer support Marty Supreme.

I’m thinking about men and sports too much these days, and while normally that would be deeply upsetting to me and my homegirls, there are two sides to this particular coin.

The Good Stuff

Heated Rivalry, the smutty gay rivals-to-lovers telenovela turned life-affirming study of the human capacity for love, consumes my every thought. It is the best of what television can be: addictive, earnest, impeccably scored if you are a millennial or older, and horny as hell. I know that I have remained suspiciously mum about my addiction to this show, but that is because reflecting on it outside of muttering to myself during commercial breaks (NO, I WILL NOT UPGRADE MY HBO) invites the opinions of others, which I actually don’t have the capacity to humor because these two men are my close personal friends and not fictional characters. I will reveal my definitive opus on this here platform to coincide with the sixth and final episode of the first season dropping at midnight, Friday 12/26. Prepare yourselves.

The Bad Stuff

As for the horrifying flip side to this whole men playing men playing sports thing:

I am seeing orange. EVERYWHERE. And I hate it.

Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme premiere looks are driving me fucking nuts.

Sidebar: I know he is punching the air that his ping-pong movie is currently being eclipsed in the zeitgeist by gay fanfic dredged from the depths of television, while he’s fighting for his life on an Oscar campaign tour. Life is cruel.

Now, this isn’t only a Timothée problem but I feel justified in directing this frustration towards him because anyone who thinks a Pantone swatch is a principle upon which to build a month’s worth of outfits deserves it:

Referential styling is boring.

The orange is, of course, a reference. In Marty Supreme, Chalamet’s character uses bright orange ping-pong balls to gain a competitive advantage: white shirt, white ball—easy to miss; white shirt, orange ball—easy to see. Got it.

Message received.

Revelatory.

It’s such a lazy, lazy strategy to make every red carpet appearance for this film a promotional opportunity to reference a single plot point. This isn’t even second-layer-of-the-onion type stuff. This is straight surface. And while the last few years might suggest otherwise, red carpet fashion does not actually have to function as marketing.

Unlike Barbie, where staying “in character” made conceptual sense—the very premise of a premiere for a female actress is playing dress-up in fashion as a performance of femininity, spectacle, and control—Marty Supreme has very little to do with fashion. (Although, I really can’t wait to see the 4,000+ looks that the brilliant Miyako Bellizzi made for this film.) It’s a Safdie film about a man, a sport, and stakes that are presumably high, emotional, and psychological.

So why lean so heavily on the crutch of the reference?

Ego. Or, more precisely, fear.

Kristen Stewart articulated this perfectly when she cut straight through the self-mythologizing haze of “method” acting discourse in an interview with Times earlier this month:

“Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine. There’s no bravado in suggesting that you’re a mouthpiece for someone else’s ideas. It’s inherently submissive. Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?”

That’s the heart of it. This isn’t about commitment to the role; it’s about resistance to vulnerability.

@nytimes“Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?” Kristen Stewart has been acting since she was a child and became a star in her late teens in the “Twilight” series. Now 35, her first feature film as a director is in select theaters. She recently discussed filmmaking, fame and more on “The Interview.” Video by The New York Times #KristenStewart #TheChronologyofWater #MethodActing #Acting

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There’s a more cynical (but ultimately empathetic) reading here too: the orange thing is camouflage. By committing to a single, totalizing concept, Chalamet sidesteps the risk of personal style altogether. “Method” dressing becomes an aesthetic alibi, a shield that protects him from scrutiny— especially after previous big swings were publicly roasted.

Those earlier risks were often thoughtful, strange, genuinely creative, and engineered by the IYKYK iconic stylist, Emma Wyman. She is no longer with him, so I can venture to guess that those ideas were punished accordingly.

Now, we get the stupidest kind of safety masquerading as intention.

And maybe *whispers* this orange business is not even pretending to be about the art. Maybe it’s about the money.

From Left: EsDeeKid, someone that I do not know, and Timothée Chalamet in the stu.

Against my will, I’ve been exposed to the 29-year-old actor’s latest publicity stunt: a feature debut on a remix by Liverpudlian rapper EsDeeKid. A lyrical highlight includes the line: “It’s Timothée Chalamet chillin’, tryin’ to stack a hundred million.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I vaguely remember when serious actors understood that loudly declaring one’s desire to make a shit ton of money was not the most effective strategy for courting acclaim.

There was also a time—brace yourself—when celebrities wore clothes they actually chose. Let that sink in. Things they liked. Things pulled from closets, thrifted, borrowed, or sent by brands they vaguely recognized and then wore again because they felt good in them. Relationships formed after the fact. Taste came first, partnerships followed. Stylists entered later as editors—or translators—and worked to sharpen their talent’s instincts. I AM SO SORRY FOR WHAT THE CELEBRITY STYLIST HAS BECOME.

Lifting from the moodboard is nothing new. A gag is a gag, and when archival fashion is done well— forensically and academically—it can land in ways that feel magical and impossible.

Immediately, I think of Zendaya in the “Gynoid” suit from Thierry Mugler’s Fall 1995 collection on the Dune: Part II press tour. See, this pleases me. Law knows how to get it right more often than not (although he is arguably the modern architect of this over-reference culture—peep this essay; some points were made but we’re not gonna do my good sis like that with the title *side eye*).

Vogue Chaos Issue 20: How Law Roach Strangled Fashion’s Future by Activating Archive Culture

It is a certain truth that celebrities are more aware than ever before of how they are perceived through their style, and instead of this anxiety manifesting as hyper-vigilance toward aligning their fashion choices with who they authentically are as individuals, they play toward characters.

We’re deep in what I’m calling late-stage styling, where the dominant visual language is collapsed into brand codes instead of style codes. That manifests on the red carpet in theme dressing so literal and dull that it borders on a client-facing pitch deck. Plot point = outfit. Press tour = cosplay. Risk has been all but engineered out of the system. Instead of self-expression, we are getting IP alignment. Instead of a desire to use fashion to express oneself, we are getting obedience to the algorithm. Fashion on these carpets is ceasing to suggest character—it’s hitting us all over the head with marketing points.

The result isn’t offensive; it’s worse: it’s lazy. Dressing as content, instead of communication. A real shame.

Besides the fact that I appreciate—and dare I say—like the Marty Supreme jacket from a typography and design perspective, it’s so annoying to think we may be entering an era where dropping a merch collection gets you an Oscar. (Although, I doubt it.)

I’ve written a bit about this aesthetic implosion in the VIP styling arena, but what is highlighted so clearly in the case of Timothée is that the red carpet has indeed become a visual marketing extension of the projects these actors are promoting—a 360 package of performance. Virality is no longer just the annoying but ultimately innocuous goal; it is the very raison d’être.

Spooky.

And because we barely touched on this earlier, I’ll leave you with the fact that Chalamet’s sudden stylistic shape-shift in his EsDeeKid video is just another proof point in the impeachability of celebrity style.

It is so often a role; so often a gimmick.

And while I can only imagine that his body is physically rejecting 1950s high-rise waistbands after wearing them for months on Marty, and thus he has taken to sagging his pants to the lowest possible heights, it all rings hollow.