Eddie Redmayne isn’t afraid to have fun with fashion. “I’ve been really trying to re-embrace the fact that red carpets are theatre and that you can enjoy them,” he says, sitting on the top floor of Omega’s Her Time townhouse. “One of the wonders of our job is playing dress-up, and it's one of the reasons you get into acting when you're a kid. I’ve always been riveted by fashion.”
The London-born actor has had plenty of opportunities to get creative on the red carpet over the past decade, having attended numerous awards shows (and won) for his roles on the big screen – Les Misérables, The Theory Of Everything and The Good Nurse, to name a few. He’s a seasoned regular on global best-dressed lists for fuss-free tailoring, but his recent award season looks have seemingly levelled up. Traditional black tie has been replaced with cropped dinner jackets, bow-adorned shirts and more avant-guard suits. Marni, Saint Laurent and Valentino are brands regularly worn on rotation. Having hit the four-zero hallmark last year, Redmayne has entered the age-range with the sartorial panache of a man with unapologetic confidence. And we like to see it.
“I’d seen Harry Lambert,” – the acclaimed stylist of that heartthrob/singer/actor – “who worked with Josh O'Connor, one of my favourite actors, and Emma Corrin, and the work that he had done with them I thought was so intriguing. There was a classicism to it, but it was playful, and so I asked Harry if he'd be up for it, and he was.”
And so, the experimentation continues. Last night, Redmayne stepped out for the launch of Omega’s Aqua Terra Shades in a charmingly feminine look. Underneath a black blazer lay a silk shirt with a pussybow tie, classically paired with an understated flared bottoms and a Cuban heel. The neckwear nodded to the new romantics without an unnecessary number of print or frills. In fact, the only embellishment was one of the brand’s newest designs: an Aqua Terra in 18K Moonshine Gold.
The new collection – where Redmayne, Zoe Kravitz and Zhou Dongyu star in its campaign – adds some colour to the traditional Seamaster that was first designed in 2002. It may come as a surprise, then, that this brand ambassador is colour blind.
“I see fully in colour, but probably how I see colours differs from how you see them,” he explains. “It's one of the reasons, before having Harry as my stylist and when my wife was very influential, that I have been known to choose outfits that I think are quite a nice colour, but that end up being a complete catastrophe.”
Still, there’s no look that a beautiful timepiece couldn’t rectify. “What I love about the Aqua Terra, is the simple classicism of its shape, but also that the colours give it vibrancy, which means you can wear something quite classic, and it will do the talking for you.”
Watches have always been part of Redmayne’s DNA, well before his relationship with Omega started in 2015. He recounts how his father introduced him into the world of horology with a Swatch Flik Flak when he was five, but it was the Omega De Ville that his dad wore that sparked the aspirational interest. “With my dad, my visual memories as a kid were of seeing him with the watch and taking it off before swimming; it was a very valued thing.”
Redmayne hopes that his offspring will have the same level of interest. “I'm very lucky to have a very beautiful collection of Omega watches and I just hope that my son has the same wrist size, and if not…” he says with a chuckle. Well, there’s always the Flik Flak.
