DONALD GLOVER
“It was hard to think of someone living. When I close my eyes and think of elegance, the first person who comes to mind is probably Fred Astaire, and then possibly Samuel Beckett. Or any of those incredibly tall, incredibly lean white males of the last century who had this kind of gravitas about them. I think it boils down to a physicality, or it’s something that you have within yourself. Elegance isn’t necessarily something that you can dress for.There are very many people who have panache or swagger, but actually elegance is almost a state of being. It involves all sorts of other features of your personality.
“Donald Glover has that incredible grace and physicality in his being. He moves in a way that is just incredibly charismatic, and in his body he seems to have a really strong sense of who he is. He carries himself with a kind of levity that so many other people don’t have. Despite his quite radical choices in clothing – actually, the fact that he doesn’t wear clothes quite a lot of the time – he never allows his clothes to possess him. And though Donald Glover works with a stylist, he owns that look when he puts it on.There’s no way he’d wear something that he didn’t feel himself in.
“I think elegance is about knowing what looks good on you, and wearing it well. You care about your appearance, but not to the point of being pernickety about it. I like the idea of it being slightly outside of fashion, even though Donald Glover wears highly fashionable clothes. But he’s an individual. He looked incredible when he was promoting the Marvel film, Spider-Man: Homecoming. He wore a lot of block Gucci suits – he was dazzling, arresting. I think that really elegant men should kind of drag your eye to them, even though they’re not necessar ily doing it deliberately.
“With Childish Gambino, there’s definitely a more earthy, naked, rugged masculinity, and dare I say sexualised sort of energy in that persona. When he’s doing his own thing he’s more, well, clothed, for starters, and you get more of a sense of his whole being a bit calmer .
“There’s a lost art of elegance. It’s a tragedy that I couldn’t think of, like, six names that just tr ip off the tongue!”