Jacob Elordi is a very tall, very attractive man. I know it. You know it. The internet certainly knows it. The Aussie A-lister looks good in basically anything he wears, be it an Arc’teryx jacket and enormous trousers or a vintage sweatshirt and Blundstones. So after he walked the red carpet at the London premiere of The Dog Stars last week, it was hardly surprising when photos of him posing alongside his canine co-star Rak Jasper went far and wide.
“Jacob Elordi the man you are,” read one tweet. “Suddenly, I’m a dog,” said another. You get the gist. Here at GQ HQ, however, the photos of Elordi’s fit elicited some real debate over the Bottega Veneta suit he was wearing. The double-breasted pinstripe jacket does a cracking job of showing off his broad shoulders. It’s styled over a crisp white shirt and dark tie, as classic as it gets.
It’s all a little ’50s New York gangster. Paired with his mullet and mustache, it works. You half expect him to pull a cigar from his pocket. Further south is where the contention begins. At the bottom of Elordi’s matching pleated trousers, it was impossible to ignore the very full breaks pooling over his shiny black dress shoes. I’m inclined to say it was intentional. After all, the guy’s six-foot-five—if his trousers are too long, it’s almost certainly by choice.
This is what has us intrigued
This is what has us intrigued. Elordi’s pants ignore a golden rule of classic tailoring: a little break in your trousers is good, but they should never puddle. “The more modern customer will like them at least an inch off the top of the shoe, but the classic gentleman is going to want the trouser halfway down the back of their shoe with a small break on the front,” Graham Simpkins, head of tailoring at Savile Row house Hackett, told us last year.
So, of course, when one of the best-dressed guys in Hollywood lets it go for a few more inches, it raises some questions. According to Dominic Sebag Montefiore, creative director of Edward Sexton, the trouser length isn’t the only issue. “I think the width of the trouser isn’t really balancing the jacket in a way that I find aesthetically fulfilling,” he tells GQ over the phone.
“And the length of the trouser seems like that they, perhaps, didn’t have enough time to get them altered.” Montefiore does like the “really lovely, classic, elegant tailoring fabric,” however, and says it’s “lovely to see people experimenting with with interesting cuts from the past.”
Scott Fraser, of his namesake tailoring brand, is also a fan of the cut. “As a fit, beyond the slightly swampy bottom on the shoe (which is fine, really), it’s a beautiful cut on him,” he says.
That low cut [jacket] is great
“That low cut [jacket] is great. It helps elongate his torso, but also slightly nips him in at the waist. He looks good! But he always looks good. He’s probably not that bothered about the nuance of one and half to two inches extra length. Being a tall guy, he’s probably begged for it.”
Maybe Elordi knows something we don’t. After all, he’s been at the forefront of a lot of menswear moments recently: the rise of the handbag, the slutty shorts, the pivot to womenswear brands.
He isn’t afraid to ruffle some feathers. We’ve seen him in chic relaxed tailoring in the past, so maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing with the length of his trousers. If anything, the fuller break somehow manages to make him look even taller (short kings, take note), which is a pretty impressive feat in itself. And even if the pooling trousers are agitating some tailoring die-hards, he still looks pretty great overall.
The reactions online say as much. This story originally appeared on British GQ.
Source: www.gq.com
