Though Timothée Chalamet just earned his second Oscar nomination for portraying an early-career Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, his most compelling performance this year may actually be the quirked-up version of himself he crafted for the film’s press tour. The public-facing Timmy of the last few months is a guy who crashes his own lookalike contest, rattles off football stats on ESPN, and rides Lime bikes on red carpets. He also, with the guidance of his stylist Taylor McNeill, wears clothes as if they contain riddles.
His latest brain-scrambling style move? To borrow a term from the Chicago rapper Chief Keef, Chalamet has become a True Religion fein. The man’s been sagging his Y2K-baddie jeans—a favorite of noughties Hollywood party girls, 2010s rappers, and the cast of Jersey Shore—all over town.
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True Religion jeans, recognizable by their thick white stitching and signature horseshoe imprint on the back pockets, are a relic of the early 2000s’ designer-denim boom; their ubiquity once garnered a memorable namecheck from Fergie in the 2005 Black Eyed Peas song “My Humps.” The California-born upscale denim brand faltered into the 2010s, but thanks to Gen Z’s hearty appetite for nostalgic fashion (and their relaxed definition of “vintage” that connotes pretty much anything predating the iPhone), the brand has made a niche comeback among the TikTok-Pinterest fashionista set. And while Supreme released a collaboration with the brand in 2021, True Religions have yet to achieve a full-scale revival. Chalamet’s endorsement may provide just the right kind of accelerant.
The actor first popped up in a pair of faded True Religions in late December, when he surprised fans with a surrealistic, performance-art-style, 13-minute Instagram livestream. In the clip, he wore a white tank (which he later removed), cream-toned Nike Air More Uptemos, and those darn jeans while he danced around a cavernous warehouse with a confetti cannon to “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. (Huh, there are those Peas again…) Then, fast forward to last week, when Chalamet greeted fans in Paris in a similar pair of True Religions and the same off-white Uptemos. This time, he incorporated them into his usual post-swag assemblage of designer duds and winking merch: a Las Vegas Raiders windbreaker, a mini denim Chanel crossbody purse, studded leather belt, and a New York City Ballet baseball cap.
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Days later, at the premiere of A Complete Unknown in Rome, Chalamet channeled the colors of Italian flag in a matching True Religion set—a white-stitched denim jacket and skinny pants, both the same shade of deep red as a glass of Barolo—accessorized with an emerald green linen scarf and black Prada cowboy boots. (Fittingly, the cowboy-boot-wearing models at the Prada show a few days later seemed to be channeling Timmy himself.) The caprese-toned outfit felt more like an homage to 2 Chainz than to Bob Dylan, even if the musician was known to rock jazzed-up Levi’s back in his day. Plus, Timmy has already worn what could be considered a double-denim ode to Bob.
But the real whopper of an outfit appeared this week, when Chalamet was photographed meeting friends in Manhattan’s West Village. His low-slung True Religions held up by a flower-embossed leather belt, Chalamet mixed bubblier pieces—a cotton-candy-pink Telfar puffer jacket, pink striped Chanel knit scarf, and a silver quilted Chanel crossbody bag—with greenish-brown Dr. Martens combat boots and a trendy Arc’teryx logo beanie in brown and acid green.
As my colleague Samuel Hine recently put it, Chalamet is “the most compelling style figure of our time because he reacts to his increasing fame not by smoothing his edges, but by getting increasingly weird”—which, in itself, feels like a pretty Dylan-esque move. The actor is certainly aware of the viral potential of giving beloved Y2K fashions another spin around the block; he sent a ripple through the Twittersphere when he wore his own baby pink Juicy Couture hoodie right here in the pages of GQ back in 2020. I wouldn’t be shocked if he showed up on Saturday Night Live this weekend wearing full velour.
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