Timothée Chalamet’s Style Is a Sleazy Boy Fever Dream

I can’t stop thinking about Timothée Chalamet’s skinny scarves.

In the early 2000s, I dressed like a lot of teen girls in that era, hoping to look like Paris Hilton or Sienna Miller going shopping. I loved wearing a ruffled mini skirt, dirty ankle-length Ugg boots with no socks, a cropped tee, and a too-thin knit scarf wrapped tightly around my neck, the loose ends hanging down like noodles and my fake hot pink Chanel “C” dangle earrings getting caught in the fibers. I was happy to leave all that in the past, until I saw Timothée Chalamet’s new look and remembered how ridiculously fun it was to dress with complete and utter shamelessness.

For the last few months, Chalamet has been parading the streets and the red carpet in an eyebrow-raising amalgamation of method-meets-nostalgic clothing. He’s promoting his film A Complete Unknown, a serious movie in which he gives a seriously excellent performance as Bob Dylan. Chalamet has already won a SAG Award for the role, and was a top contender in the best actor category for the Oscars this past Sunday night. Though he lost to Adrian Brody, he won the red carpet in a buttery yellow suit custom designed by Givenchy's new Creative Director Sarah Burton and, later for the after parties, wore a custom look from Haider Ackermann (a cropped, swiss dot tux jacket and front pleat trouser with a pointy shoe), set to make his debut for Tom Ford in Paris this week. Instead of doing the awards season circuit dressed in a boring tuxedo or classic menswear tailoring, he and his stylist Taylor McNeill have gone balls-to-the-wall with fashion.

He’s been spotted in Paris wearing a tiny, sparkly Chanel bag with a Starter jacket and a New York City Ballet baseball hat. Chalemet’s done Dylan cosplay several times, most hilariously at the premiere of A Complete Unknown, when he streaked his bangs blonde like Dylan once did, wearing them fanned out beneath a beanie, his face sporting a porno ‘stache. That look came with an oversized leather jacket, flannel shirt, and a black and grey wool scarf tied exactly the way Dylan did when he wore the look in 2003 to the Sundance premiere of his film Masked and Anonymous.

Chalamet’s gone the sleazy route with more leather and Alexander McQueen skull print scarves. He’s posed for cameras in True Religion jeans (I had them too!), Pepto pink Chrome Hearts jeans, tank top, and work boots, a thin strand of Cartier diamonds strung round his petite neck. At said event, his girlfriend Kylie Jenner met him dressed in a black sequined Balenciaga gown with a corseted bodice and a long train. Together, they looked like two lovey-dovey middle school kids going to a school dance, not yet knowing about dress codes, her in a gown and him in a hoodie.

Through all of these appearances, Chalamet is grinning more often than not. The guy is having a blast. He’s done sports commentary on ESPN in a hot pink puffer, and sat for an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes wearing a pink-and-lavender-striped polo shirt and a matching lavender cardigan. Chalamet’s also championed independent designers like Martine Rose, Telfar, and Kiko Kostadinov. He and McNeill have mastered the art of celebrity dressing in 2025, which isn’t just about method or nostalgia or getting clicks. It’s about the simple purity of enjoying the clothes.

As stylist and Kim Russell notes of Chalamet, “He’s less serious than other people in his field in terms of style choices.” She added, “Many other actors take the tuxedo route, which is very serious and signals these ideas of being a professional who only cares about their craft. If you wear anything too outrageous, people won’t take you seriously but that’s clearly not true.”

It’s not as if Chalamet’s red carpet style before this was staid. He wore a red halter top to the premiere of Bones and All and went shirtless for an event celebrating Wonka. He is close friends with genius designer and new Tom Ford creative director Haider Ackermann (no doubt Chalamet will be flying straight from the Oscars to sit front row at Ackermann’s debut show in Paris next week). The beauty of Chalamet’s style, aside from its playful attitude—and the fact that he’s so cute and genuinely charming—is that he can do high and low, classically dapper and chaotically cool. As Russell put it, “It’s important to have someone so very much in the spotlight challenge what traditional menswear looks like.”

Russell has dissected many of Chalamet’s looks on her popular Instagram handle as of late. She says that in his style, she sees “Lenny Kravitz, Cam’ron, Robin Williams, NBA, and NFL players on that moodboard, and Kendrick Lamar.” The latter makes sense, seeing as how McNeill also styles the rapper and was responsible for his viral flared Celine jean moment at this year’s Superbowl.

Russell also points out that a big part of Chalamet’s vibe right now may have a lot to do with him being a born-and-bred New York City kid, which, if you grew up or went to school below 14th street, tends to skew more dirtbag skater—the kids from the movie Kids, if they sometimes frequented a member’s only club between dollar slices. Again, Chalamet’s wardrobe is producing beats of nostalgia and irony, but remixed for now.

And the hits just keep coming. At the Oscars lunch last week, Chalamet turned up in a shiny black pant and matching jacket—the first-ever custom menswear look from Gap, designed by the label’s creative director Zac Posen. In an Instagram caption, Posen wrote, “Timothée is a product of history, of what came before and what’s happening now. In 1969, Gap was selling jeans and records, telling a generation how to dress, how to listen. The pattern is familiar—styles shift, cultures loop back, and here we are again.”

Nostalgia has become a bit of a broken concept in fashion. It’s either too on-the-nose or it’s too conceptual. But when people like McNeill and Chalamet give it a respectful bent and add a heavy dose of charm and charisma, that’s when you’re really brought back. Clothes like Chalamet’s remind us that the trucker hat wasn’t really about the logo patch, and the tracksuit wasn’t about the crystal “Juicy” on your ass. It was about wearing clothes that were totally nuts, naive, and wildly thrilling. It was about FUN. These are the clothes where giving a fuck goes to die, and maybe we could all use a little more impropriety in our lives right now. That is, after all, where greatness meets fashion.

My personal favorite look of Chalamet’s wild style ride thus far was the one he won to accept his best actor award at the SAGs—a lime green shirt and leather suit from Chrome Hearts, accented by a Cartier bolo tie. Again, it was a look borrowed from one Dylan wore years ago. Standing up to accept his award, he hugged his mom, made his way to the stage, and then thanked her. (He later Facetimed his dad to show him the statue.)

In his speech, Chalamet emphasized how hard he worked on the role and humbly spoke about how appreciative he was of everyone who worked on the film. But he also said that as much as he was honored to achieve the award, it was only just the beginning. “The truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness,” he added. “I know people don’t talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.” There’s no doubt he’s on a journey towards greatness as an actor. As far as style goes: Timmy boy, you’re already there.