Over the weekend, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures hosted its fifth annual gala, rolling out the blue-grey carpet for those in the business of making movies. Well-heeled A-listers showed up in droves.
Some played into the Hollywood glamour of it all; the likes of Jacob Elordi, Will Arnett, and Jeff Goldblum kept their sunglasses on for the shutterbugs, harkening back to the lost art of performative movie stardom. (Goldblum, with his arachnidan shades, pleated bib, and super-puffed puffer jacket by ERL, also looked a bit bug-like.) Kim Kardashian outdid herself in Margiela couture: a corseted dress that was so tight, her ribs folded out on top of it. Kardashian also had her face fully covered, which felt a little humdrum the second time around.
But what stood out to me most was not the Magritte-esque veil or even Jeremy Strong’s red shades and tawny Zuckerberg hair, but rather the unusual quantity of black-on-black suits. It’s a combination that is often considered a no-go for formal occasions, because black shirts traditionally read more casual than classic white. Worse, in a black-on-black look you run the risk of blending in with the security and wait staff working the event—who themselves are dressed that way in order to blend into the background.
While black, in most fashion contexts, is considered reliably chic—think: your free-thinking, imported-cigarette-smoking art professor in a black turtleneck and slacks—black dress shirts, specifically, tend to be associated with birthday magicians, career goths, and extras on The Sopranos.
Some of the evening’s stars, it seemed, were trying something new—noir neophytes, as it were. Him protagonist Tyriq Withers’s Armani suit was a semi-casual, semi-dressy version of the monochromatic ensemble: an open blazer with big, bold contrasting velvet lapels and a striated shirt, a couple of buttons left undone. Hunger Games actor Tom Blyth also went for a sultrier black-on-black look via YSL with a sheer and more deeply unbuttoned collared shirt.
The real key to a great black dress shirt is texture—a shinier material, like silk or satin, provides a fancier, partyish energy befitting a big night out. Actor Robert Downey Jr. and producer Benny Blanco used this styling trick to their advantage by donning shirts that were slightly more sheeny than the tuxedo jacket with which they were worn. Composer Ludwig Göransson did the opposite in his velvet blazer over a matte-finish shirt, while Adam Sandler leaned in by wearing a muted black suit with a glossy striped tie. Jude Law and Simu Liu played up the textures in their monochromatic looks, too.
