Remember that meme with Jared Leto and the Gucci coat? It’s a three-parter: a Joker-hair-green Gucci coat passes Leto on the
runway, Leto’s face erupts in delight, Leto shows up to a movie premiere in the same coat. Leto ended up shooting down the viral
narrative (“Sorry to ruin your meme,” he told Vanity Fair), but for a moment we believed we were witnessing something rare: a
celebrity acting on a genuine style impulse. In the Hollywood stylist era, when a celebrity discovers a garment, obsesses over it, wears
it, and actually looks great—well, that’s as rare as the Issey Miyake bomber Robin Williams wore to the “Flubber” premier, and it’s
worth celebrating.
It turns out that we were watching such an event play out in February, when Kanye West showed up to the Vanity Fair Oscar
Party wearing a leather blazer and pants made by British menswear label Dunhill. The cropped, kimono-style blazer wasn’t necessarily
an unusual aesthetic choice for GQ’s May cover star, who wears advanced leather like the rest of us wear denim. But when Kanye isn’t
in Key Work Wear or sweats of his own design, he’s likely to be found in garms designed by his “earth mom” Miuccia Prada, his friend
Riccardo Tisci, or his former creative director Virgil Abloh. Even for someone whose brand is confounding expectations, a low-key
British label with a pedigree that stretches back to the reign of George V felt like a surprising choice.
