The perfect Freedom Day would've happened on the original Freedom Day. And it would've been insane: one long 72 hour party divorced from the threat of yet another variant stickier and deadlier than the last. Freedom Day wouldn't have been someone else's "I'm terrified" day. Freedom Day, as a concept, wouldn't have felt like a cynical nod to 'THE WAR' coughed up by overpaid Tory consultants. And Freedom Day would've been the perfect time to dust off the maddest, ritziest suit for a maskless rooftop party in which dancing wasn't illegal – just like Timothée Chalamet's.
At the Cannes Film Festival premiere of The French Dispatch – the upcoming Wes Anderson oddity that places worthy New Yorker journalists on the twee edges of a dreamy Mitteleuropa – Chalamet was a reminder of just how fun these such red carpets can be. In Tom Ford, and in a horde of Cartier that was worth more than the combined GDP of several northern counties, the 25-year-old went in. No in-between smart-casual for events that are in-between lockdowns. No playing it safe.
Which is an ever increasing phenomenon as the world opens up. Celebrities, with their unparalleled access to designer loans and stylists that subsist on a strict diet of wheatgrass smoothies and jade eggs, haven't had the opportunity to go mad. And, as Hollywood's enduring wunderkind, Chalamet has always done just that. In the last normal times Venice Film Festival, we saw the Dune star cosmic ordering some galactic regalia from vaunted designer Haider Ackermann. At Busan, overalls from the back of a painter-decorated van in Neo-Tokyo 2133 (and from the rail of American artist Sterling Ruby). Now: shimmery Studio 54 suits pared back with a grandad collared shirt and a pair of generously heeled boots.
He wore sunglasses too, even though it was early evening, and no, we didn't mind one bit. Because we're trying to get back to normal. We're trying to enjoy ourselves again. And nothing says fun and freedom like a Tom Ford suit and a feverish afterparty with HRH of the Otherworld Tilda Swinton.
