Brad Pitt isn’t aging backwards. He is allowing his wrinkles to carve character into his face in the tradition of Robert Redford. Yet in an ironic twist on one of Pitt’s defining films, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story of the same name, Pitt’s fashion does indeed seem to be aging backwards. Over the past year, the 59-year-old actor has been busting an exuberant — and highly textural, occasionally gender-neutral — wardrobe. He looks fuzzy like a stuffed animal at times. It’s not so much that he’s trying to look younger, it is more like the confidence of age has unleashed a sense of fun we haven’t seen before. And yep, it looks great on him.
So why can Pitt get away with this playful game of dress-up? First of all, as Derek Zoolander would say, he’s “really, really good looking.” It is also his swagger: it is like he is daring anyone to tell him he can’t dress like a slap-happy Smurf. That kind of chill can’t be bottled. Men are generally allowed to age more whimsically than women: think the whole Dad oeuvre of goofy hats and T-shirts. If women dress eccentrically, on the other hand, they are immediately labelled a kook. It takes a lot of DGAF to surmount that.
Pitt is onto something very important here, something we can all learn from. There is really no reason we, too, can’t unleash how we feel inside on the outside. The confidence it takes to pull off Pitt’s playful period is the key. What else is aging good for, if you can’t shrug off worry about other people’s opinions and express yourself?
Pitt launched his new look on the summer 2022 European promotional tour for Bullet Train, busting out baggy linen suits in Creamsicle, cotton-candy pink and bright green. He wore a skirt suit, also in linen, this time brown with an asymmetrical rough hem by an artisanal brand named Anecho. When Variety asked him what was up, he offered an apocalyptic explanation: “I don’t know. We’re all going to die, so let’s mess it up.”
Then early this year, filming Wolves in Manhattan, there emerged the new fuzzy theme. There was a smattering of “what in the middle life crisis is this” on Twitter when he was snapped in February in head-to-toe fleece. Turned out it was a costume for the film, but then the internet went deep into the ‘Pitt’ of its recent photo vaults and found lots more examples of the heartthrob wearing cushy clothes. In particular, one white fuzzy bucket hat he seems to be enamored with. But if you look closely, it is what he wears in his off-duty, on-the-way-to-set outfits, that says much more.
If you look back over time, Pitt has been a fashion shape-shifter throughout the phases and high-profile romances of his life. He often seems to morph into the woman he’s dating. He was blond when he was with patrician Gwyneth Paltrow. He took on a surfer/hippie vibe when he was married to America’s Sweetheart, Jennifer Aniston. And he worked the bad boy look in motorcycle leathers in the early years of marriage to Angelina Jolie, as she emerged from her own Goth era and before she made her own transition to the humanitarian queen of expensive and tasteful neutrals. It must be noted, he is now said to be dating a much younger woman, health coach Ines de Ramon, 30. A possible catalyst for a revamped look?
