MARLON WHO?
The old style icons are dead. (Literally.) Right now, Shia LaBeouf, Jonah Hill and co say more to us than Brando et al ever could
Time was when a style icon needed to tick certain boxes: he had to have a square jaw, piercing eyes, look great in a white T-shirt and drive cars really fast, while smoking. Actually, whatever he was doing — fighting bad guys, chasing women, swilling cocktails — he had to be able to do it while smoking.
Fast-forward to 2020 and a new generation of style icon has arrived. He bears not even a passing resemblance to his brooding forebears. There’s Shia LaBeouf, atypically handsome with an art school layer of dust and scuzz: torn tracksuit bottoms stuffed into his socks; obscure crab shack T-shirt and retro dad hat, backpack slung across an arm.
There’s Jonah Hill with his Regular Joe appeal, albeit with extra tats and pink hair. There’s Timothée Chalamet for the delicate drama school boys, and Dev Hynes, Louis Vuitton muse big-blazerwearing style god for the hipster musos. Reclusive Frank Ocean pops up in public once a year in a Prada or Arc’teryx jacket, melts Instagram and disappears again. Harry Styles is a Seventies pretty-boy pin-up and Gucci muse for the online
era. Tyler, the Creator is a rapper, brand owner, oddball polymath and champion of young grand-dad style. Héctor Bellerín, the Arsenal star, is the rare footballer not terrified to deviate from the ripped Amiri denim and Balenciaga hoodie norm. Instead, he is the man of 1,000 hairstyles and Vivienne Westwood striped jumpsuits.
What do these modern style icons have in common? Unlike style icons of yore, they look like men you might actually know, albeit with lots more money and maybe a stylist on call. (Ssshhh! Don’t tell anyone).