What do Paul Mescal’s tight little grandma cardigans say about the political and economic state of the world? That was the question on everybody’s lips this week, as the Irish actor arrived to the Los Angeles premiere of Gladiator II in yet another shrunken knit, charcoal-grey in hue and barely grazing his waistband. The little Gucci number he slid himself into capped off a set of cardigan moments we’ve seen during this press tour: first, on that infamous episode of The Graham Norton Show, next to Saoirse Ronan in a semi-sheer scoop neck whose buttons struggled to remain shut; opposite Nick Grimshaw on Radio 6 in a baby blue laced-up knit from av vattev; another baby blue cardi on the tour’s Australian leg from indie label Hades Wool (which subsequently sold out); and a hand painted silk, tartan top from B W Marks.
On menswear blogs across the web, Mescal’s penchant for poky knitwear is often boiled down to wanting to “show off his guns” or something like that, but there’s actually a lot more to it than that. The softboi androgyny of a shrunken cardigan speaks directly to the audience the actor has cultivated since his Normal People debut, an audience that hangs on his status as ‘one of the good guys, actually’. A man wearing a cardigan clearly designed for a woman or small child must be a good person, or else why would he trade his masculinity for a garment that exposes his wrists in such a revealing way? Look, we know he’s not exactly wearing a dress or anything, but there’s a very subtle gender play happening with a too-small cardigan, one that says I’m comfortable in my masculinity and I’m not afraid to show it! Mescal is the type of man who cries when his team loses at the rugby and sings “The Climb” at karaoke, so his fashion choices have to reflect that.
Elsewhere on the Gladiator II press tour, Mescal and stylist Felicity Kay have stuck to the winning formula which I’ll call ‘tailoring with a twist’ – traditional suiting that’s ever so slightly off-kilter, to separate the star from the crowd. After appearing in some thigh-bearing ads for Gucci back in October 2023, Mescal continues to stick with the brand, donning a set of suits for the tour whose smart shirts had been switched out for lace-up pirate blouses and unfastened pussybows. Like with the shrunken cardigans, the red carpet MO seems to be about keeping things traditionally masculine with an ever-so-femme touch, because – if anything – Paul Mescal knows exactly who his audience is.
Scroll through the gallery above to see all the actor’s press tour looks.