EXCLUSIVE: Career changes aren't simple. Less so when you're in Hollywood. And yet Robert Pattinson's move from hunky teen haematophage to film star proper has been simple. We don't just think of vampires that settled on a soulmate far too early. We think of the exquisitely grotesque High Life, in which the 34-year-old serves a life sentence aboard a sex-crazed starship. We also think of The Lighthouse, in all its LSD sea shanty wonder. We think of an actor that is talented, and one that boasts some chops that are likely to close in on a big shiny award sometime soon.
Adjacent to this professional transformation has been a personal one. As Pattinson bulked out his CV, he bulked out his wardrobe. Red carpet monotony was torn asunder, a traditional (if not well-worn) cocoon from which emerged sharp, not-at-all-Tony-Montana silk shirts, and stuff that stood apart from general actor fare. He even wore three-quarter shogun-like shorts once, long before Jacquemus won us back around to the idea of the go-tos of no-good-stoners in teen movies, and prior to the haunted Catholic school uniforms of Prada that set the menswearsphere ablaze.
He's doing his own thing. And, in a shot revealed exclusively to Esquire, he continues to do so. As a Dior frontman and regular attendee to the brand's spectacle-heavy runway shows, Pattinson didn't let the side down, and showed up (digitally! Social distance! Stay ALERT!) in the most recent of Kim Jones' creations, settling further into his niche for solid menswear that shouldn't make sense, but simply does.
Just as Dior blasted off into the cosmos as models loped against a backdrop of Luc Besson-esque supernovas, there was something undeniably alien about Pattinson's pairing of a printed roll-neck, a printed shirt, overcoat and beanie (look 29, by the way). This wasn't for classicists. But it was familiar. Thanks to another collab with artist Kenny Scharf (a longstanding mechanism of Dior's shows after crossovers with Hajime Sorayama and Shawn Stussy), we've seen these hi-graphic, surreal, Nerds-bright cartoons on murals and artworks before. They helped reshape New York as an artistic centre back in the Nineties.
Now, they're not only helping reshape one of the oldest, most storied fashion brands on the planet, but they're doing the same for one of its actors, who, coincidentally, is also one of the most famous of his kind on the planet. And like Dior, he doesn't always play by said planet's rules.
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