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Jonathan Bailey isn’t just burning the rulebook for his promotional campaign trail looks. He’s dancing around the blaze, a gleeful king on a tropical island of big style moves and very few fucks. Earlier this week, for a Jurassic World Rebirth photo call in London, he got the dogs out by donning flip-flops—actual flip-flops—on the red carpet. During last year’s Wicked press tour, meanwhile, he let his thighs shine in Sydney in teensy shorts and a sheer polo. But also know that Bailey can pay homage to other gods on his little menswear atoll, too. For his latest turn at Rebirth’s premiere, it was straight-up, nerded-out Steven Spielberg cosplay.
That meant a total potluck of menswear staples: a denim shirt tucked into soccer dad jeans underneath a big brown blazer, a beaten-up Friends baseball cap with some very round sunglasses under the brim. And it’s this hodgepodge that made Spielberg an unlikely style north star in the first place. Here was a guy that just wanted to make movies—who loved movies—and made an absurd amount of money in the process. The glitz, the red carpets, all of that came second to his love of the craft. He was famously quoted as telling the now-defunct Parade Sunday newspaper in 1994: “I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends’ lives.” This guy never tried to be someone other guys dressed like.
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And yet in recent years, Spielberg has begun to pop-up on Insta moodboards and throwback accounts. Look at the old mid-’90s photos of the man in the director’s chair, and he could be any guy with an overpriced pint of Guinness in a city where people fawn over small plates. Now, he rides again.
It’s widely accepted menswear theory that all the biggest icons are accidental. Nerdy authenticity is cooler than any finely-tuned curation. What better agent of chaos than Jonathan Bailey, then, to preach the new gospel. As he told British GQ in his most recent profile: “Spielberg-ing it” is the word to use for magical, ridiculous situations that should be savored. “There’s a lot to be in awe of. The moment you wake up, and you’re like, ‘Ugh’, I think you have to get a big ol’ slap on the old botty bott bott.”
Cool guys wear baseball caps with blazers. Spielberg is a style god. Chaos reigns.
This story originally appeared on British GQ.
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