When actor Drew Starkey embarked on the press tour for Luca Guadagnino’s forthcoming drama Queer, he also took on the challenge of having to go toe-to-toe (or rather, suit-to-suit) against his costar, the menswear titan Daniel Craig, on successive red carpets.
Throughout the Queer press run, both stars have mostly worn Loewe, the Spanish luxury label helmed by designer Jonathan Anderson, who costumed the film. But while the erstwhile Bond opted to take the leading-man-style equivalent of a languid early retirement with his luxuriously relaxed outfits (those yellow-tinted shades are doing wonders), the newcomer Starkey has erred towards straightforward, on-trend silhouettes. Working with the veteran Hollywood stylist Warren Alfie Baker, he’s taken some risks; a lipstick-red Valentino dinner jacket he wore to the Academy’s Governors Awards was a recent highlight. All the while, the buzzy actor has looked entirely respectable, if a little lacking in offbeat sex appeal.
That is, until this week, when Starkey pulled up to the Jimmy Kimmel Live set in a retro suit by Savile Row tailor Edward Sexton that made him look like a Beatle. Wearing a single-breasted jacket in charcoal tweed, a butter-yellow shirt, and a slim black necktie fastened with a teensy gold collar pin, the actor looked more like himself in a suit than he has in months. It didn’t hurt that his fashion mullet carried the whole look into the contested realm of indie sleaze.
