The eternal challenge -- at least for guys who play by the rules of the red carpet -- is how to be sartorial standouts in a sea of tuxedos. The opening salvo in the awards show derby, Sunday night's Golden Globes, found a few fellows standing head and shoulders above the rest. Among those who managed to show the penguin suit who's boss:
Bradley Cooper
We can’t really put our finger on what made Cooper the cream of the tuxedo-clad crop. Maybe it was because the last time we saw him he was on the big screen in “American Hustle” in full so-bad-it’s-good ‘70s regalia. Or perhaps it's because it wasn't any one thing but every little thing he got right, from the fit of the jacket to the amount of shirtsleeve showing at the cuff. Of course the black, peak-lapel Tom Ford tuxedo (Cooper actually wore head-to-toe TF) didn’t hurt matters any. Classic. Timeless. Perfection.
Matthew McConaughey
It takes some serious swagger to pull off a Dolce & Gabbana three-piece, one-button, peak-lapel tuxedo -- in forest green velvet no less. But McConaughey showed he had that in spades Sunday night. When he took to the stage to accept his award for actor in a drama, McConaughey came across as smooth and unruffled as the texture of his tux.
Mark Ruffalo
Ruffalo, one of the award ceremony's presenters, was a perfect example of how a guy can stand out from the crowd without sticking out like a sore thumb, choosing a John Varvatos collection three-piece, two-button, peak-lapel tuxedo in brown and gray with a broken-weave texture so subtle you almost don't notice it at first. (Compare that with Jim Carrey's tone-on-tone-on-tone Varvatos ensemble that made it look like the comedian was wearing a tuxedo folded out of a single sheet of black origami paper.)
Facial hair follies
As a facial-hair aficionado, I'm always intrigued by what the menfolk on the awards-show circuit choose to do when it comes to putting their best face forward (my colleague Melissa Magsaysay has already mused on the manifestation of the "man bun"). And while it's hard to tell what's a result of being groomed for an upcoming role (literally) or simply in-between jobs laissez-faire, there was some noteworthy facial fuzz in evidence including Leonardo Dicaprio (sporting a mouth beard), Michael Douglas (part pirate beard, part bristle-cone pine) and Chris Pine, whose beard was a paragon of pogonic perfection.
But there was something about Christoph Waltz's mustache that made all other beards and mustaches in the room pale in comparison. The two-time Golden Globe winner, who presented the man-bunned Jared Leto with his Golden Globe for supporting actor, was kitted out in a Prada kid mohair tuxedo accessorized with a strip of lip spinach that stretched to the corners of his mouth where they turned down ever so slightly.
We don’t know (and frankly don’t care) if it's for a new role, to cover a cold sore or merely grooming whimsy that gave rise to the 'stache but it adds a dash of panache -- not to mention a certain vaudevillian flair -- to the Austrian actor.
It's the kind of mustache that could arm-wrestle the beard belonging to Dos Equis' "most interesting man in the world" and win handily.
And it gets my vote for tonsorial flourish of the night.
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