Menswear style on the red carpet

Fashion’s hyper caustic eye will settle on the 87 Academy Awards this Sunday night, where the industry’s leading ladies will parade their fishtails, tulle and sequins. While the sartorial ripple effect of awards season tends to veer towards the spectacular gowns, it’s worth giving a thought to the gentlemen who are left to debate the merit of shawl collar or peaked, French cuff or Napoleon, Oxford or evening slipper. The road to the red carpet is paved with safe and standard suits for men, which is why it’s heartening to see an increasing number of designers reworking the codes of formal attire.


A stately white tie tux is an easy fallback; pristine, sharp and invisible. Not for nothing are the likes of Gregory Peck and Cary Grant cemented as exemplars of male style. But the problem with the standard monochrome tuxedo that it’s about as personal as spam mail, has echoes of Mr Carson from Downton Abbey (“devilled kidneys, sir?”) and local rotary speechifiers. So it’s encouraging to see Britain’s bright young thesp talent exploring fresh yet traditional menswear on the red carpet


Eddie Redmayne, a hot favourite to win Best Actor at the Oscars for The Theory of Everything, chose a beautiful Giorgio Armani liquid velvet tuxedo in indigo, with contrasting peak lapels, to take home his Bafta a couple of weeks ago. Redmayne has previous form here, having eschewed the standard black at the film’s premiere and opted for a youthful blue plaid suit fromHardy Amies that looked entirely age appropriate and contemporary. His countryman Douglas Booth also reworked the red carpet uniform at the Baftas this year, donning a shawl collared velvet tuxedo from Dunhill in a soft teal shade. Velvet as an evening option is slowly being clawed out of the hands of Austin Powers to become a rich, tactile choice for Britain’s leading gentleman.


Which gets a triumphant tick, because men should be allowed to have a little fun with their evening attire and glitz it up on occasion. It nods to a more insouciant edge that’s infused the Hollywood menswear arena; Jared Leto at last year’s Academy Awards in a classic Saint Laurent tuxedo updated with glossy patent shoes and a scarlet bow tie, or the year before in gold jacquard from the same Paris house, this time with jaunty pink pocket square jutting just so. Another leading man bucking the standard black is Ryan Gosling, who’s favoured cobalt blue and claret shaded suiting from the likes of Salvatore Ferragamo and Balenciaga in the past and favours pieces with colour, texture or intricate detail over a fallback formula.


And where once a trusty pair of leather monkstraps sufficed, men are now breaking out the twinkle toes in favour of footwear with a touch more flourish; Leto favours bejeweled slippers from Louis Leeman while Matthew McConaughey, Adrian Brody and Kit Harrington have all opted for the glossy black patent ‘Greggo’ shoe from Christian Louboutin. So whether it’s in contrasting shawl collar Hardy Amies tuxedo suiting or majestic Church’s velvet slippers with embroidered crown, your next formal event can be an entirely red-carpet affair.