Only Stellan Skarsgård Is Pulling Off the Bare-Chested Suit
Sander, who has worked as Skarsgård’s stylist for the past two years, says the idea for his no-tie red-carpet look emerged midway through a fitting with Dior, before the brand’s representatives completed an ensemble with a necktie. Before the tie, “it looked smart and effortless, which is what we wanted,” Sander recalls.
Indeed, just weeks into awards season, Skarsgård has heeded a chest-forward approach several times already this month. In early January, the actor (who is, lest we forget, the patriarch of a Swedish acting dynasty that includes one of my personal favorite style superfreaks, Alexander) attended the Palm Springs International Film Festival Film Awards in elegant yet unpretentious black suit from Hermès, which he accessorized with a casually lopsided silk scarf and a whiff of exposed sternum. The next night, at the Critics Choice Awards, the actor ended up in another Dior suit—a debonair double-breasted number also sans tie, his shirt unbuttoned. (Later, he made headlines not for his incredible suiting or acting nomination, but rather for his critique of the ceremony’s sparse, girl-dinner-adjacent catering.)
Something about an unbuttoned shirt amidst reverent black ties feels at once glamorous and merited, like the sartorial badge-of-honor equivalent of being able to light up a cigarette indoors with no real consequences. When I texted the fashion writer Liana Satenstein (a vocal proponent of a plunging neckline on a mature man, having waxed poetic for Vogue about Michael Douglas’s V-neck sweater in Basic Instinct) regarding Skarsgård’s unclad neckline, she replied: “Major BDE energy. A man who exposes his chest at that age is secure with himself and is living his best life, nothing to hide, nothing to adhere to.”
On a younger actor, bare-chestedness at a formal event can sometimes feel slightly unearned and a smidge smutty—sorry, Hudson Williams!—but on a distinguished star like Skarsgård, it’s just right. As Sander told me, when her client shows skin at an event, “it’s not flashy like the youngsters.” Plus, in any case, “he’s quite vocal about the fact that he’d rather be naked than dressed.”
