Timothée Chalamet bare backs on the red carpet in Venice, maybe that’s a detail for you…

Flesh and buzz

friday wear ? Somehow. On September 2, on the occasion of the preview of Bones and All, Luca Guadagnino’s cannibal romance Timothée Chalamet crushed the competition and was the center of attention on the Venice Film Festival red carpet. Machine-gunned by a horde of photographers, transformed into a subject of buzz on social networks, the actor even ended up becoming the subject of a controversy worthy of our time. : can a man dress like this?

Electric lamé

What are we talking about, exactly? First, a suit designed by the highly respected Haider Ackermann. In a bright and shiny red, this one was cut in a lamé fabric and knit, made with metallic threads. Fragile and unsuitable for everyday clothing, lamé is frequently used for evening wear or theatrical costumes. Conductor of electricity, it is even used to make fencing jackets, allowing to signal hits during attacks.

The sign on the back

But, even more than the material, it was obviously the cut of the suit that made people react. Indeed, this one had the particularity of being provided with a collar halter directly inspired by the piece of harness that is traditionally placed around the neck of pack animals to lead them. This is how the combination showed the entire bare back of the actor, obviously delighted to show off from every angle, and to give rise to an almost hysterical debate.

pub neck

Is this outfit progressive or ridiculous? Is it a way of shaking up the deleterious codes of masculinity, or simply the new publicity stunt of an actor whose outfits in the city, perfectly ordinary, never provoke any reaction, but who has made a specialty of liven up the red carpets with their clothing choices? The temptation is great to reply that this operation is all of these things at the same time.

Red on red

Finally, note that if the outfits change the red carpet, it remains. That’s how it is in the room Agamemnon, of Aeschylus, dated 458 BC. J.-C., that it made its first appearance, when the wife of the king of Mycenae rolled out a red carpet for him to celebrate his return from Troy. Later, in Antiquity, custom, inspired by the Phoenicians, would require that the floor be covered during religious ceremonies with red fabrics… Red like the Chalamet jumpsuit? Somehow.