We admit it: Watching the 78th Golden Globes on Sunday made us finally miss dressing up. We remember the good ol’ days: slim black suits a la Colin Farrell and Kevin Bacon, feeling like Edward Bunker in Reservoir Dogs. (You know, the actor who played Mr. Blue, blocked from collective memory because of the star power of Buscemi, Madsen, Roth, Tarantino, et al. But he was there, in that same always-appropriate attire.) Call us Mr. Beige, then, but in reality, the last 12 months of work-from-home COVID-19 lockdown has meant we’re much more Mr. Tie-Dye like Jason Sudeikis’s Zoom-in to the awards.
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But after a year of cotton-blend comfort, the Golden Globes’ men made us long for the days and especially nights of normalcy pre-pandemic. So let us count the ways.
Let’s start with Christian Slater. Onetime Gleaming the Cube skateboarder, he looked somehow more relaxed in a greenish two-button suit with notched lapels. Look at the shirt: It’s white. You have a white shirt. I have a white shirt. And we both have that level of smile, which will be as genuine post-COVID as a Chilean miner seeing the sun for the first time in a month.
Or Sterling K. Brown. The two-button navy suit is the first most men buy, the one most men wear to work. It’s so simple. It’s the first shaky steps into more formal dress, and it’s a staple that should be in every guy’s closet. It’s in our closet, the shoulders a little dusty after a year of disuse. But Brown looks so classic, so perfect. Ready for the office, a date, a wedding, a mass. He is literally ready for anything.
There was plenty of play, however. Jared Leto’s flared set, Dan Levy’s buttercup gold mock-neck, Kenan Thompson’s satin peaked lapels. Beyond the black and blue suits, there are so many ways to step out in faith, to have fun, in high dress. Think summer weddings. Think unbuttoned jackets and sweat and loosened ties or no tie at all, and how good wearing a suit can feel when contrasted to the normal Monday-to-Friday attire. The men of the Golden Globes fill me with a lust that I’ve largely stifled for the last year, dutifully staying inside and away.
And there was Tracy Morgan and Anthony Anderson in their modern tuxedos. The tuxedo is the uniform of success. It is red carpet and the terminus of walking down the aisle. It is senior prom and the modern ball, the opera and the symphony and high society. It represents the pinnacle for men, and while we’ve all had achievements in the last year, have any of us truly summited? These men, with bow-ties and precise tailoring, make me long for just a little justified celebration.
But probably the man I most related to while watching last night’s awards was Jackson Lee, son of director Spike. Wearing a dark, trim suit with a blousy, kimono-like wrap over it, it seems like a symbolic hybrid of where we’re at right now. The vaccine rolling out and local restrictions loosening across the country, Lee is every man coming out of hibernation, one foot in comfort and one in elevated dress. (Yeah, Lee is Gucci ambassador, so the analogy isn’t perfect, but go with it.) When transitions are spoken of, let us count ourselves among his number. The Golden Globes made us long for a return to the real world, graceful transitions and all.
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