It was quite a historic 76th Primetime Emmy Awards.
For one, it's actually the second Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony held in 2024 since the 75th edition was pushed back to January of this year in light of 2023 Hollywood labour disputes. Actors Eugene and Dan Levy were the ceremony's co-hosts of the evening—the first time that a father-and-son duo co-hosted the Emmys—that saw the FX series Shōgun gaining historic wins. Leading with 25 nominations (including 17 at the Creative Emmy Awards), Shōgun won Outstanding Drama Series, and leads Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai were awarded with Outstanding Lead Actor and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series respectively—making history as the first Japanese actor and actress to do so in each category.
On the red carpet, the best-dressed men celebrated cultures, made impactful statements, and defied traditional notions of menswear. Richard Gadd (who won three awards for Baby Reindeer) arrived in a Loewe kilt, Alan Cumming completed his Teddy Vonranson tartan-incorporated ensemble with a trans flag pin, and Reservation Dogs actor D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai sported a red handprint over his face as a means of drawing attention to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement.
And sure, there may have been the usual black tuxedos but there were also plenty of choices that strayed from the classic. Esquire Singapore cover star Taylor Zakhar Perez opted for a monochromatic brown Gucci fit, while Finn Bennett's Saint Laurent choice as well as Jonathan Bailey in Giorgio Armani were sleek displays of elegant tailoring.
All in all, a winning evening for men's fashion.
View the best menswear looks at the red carpet of the 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards in the gallery below.
"Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking."—one can imagine Anna Wintour herself uttering those words as a throng of floral-clad outfits paraded themselves in, one after another, into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was the first Monday in May, also known as the Met Gala, and Wintour assumed her longtime role as co-chair. She was joined by Met Gala 2024 co-chairs Jennifer Lopez, Zendaya, Chris Hemsworth, and Bad Bunny. Honorary chairs for this year's edition were Loewe's Jonathan Anderson, and Shou Chew, chief executive of TikTok.
The annual benefit celebrated the opening of the latest seasonal exhibition, Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, where around 250 objects spanning four decades are on display. Each fashion object features a relation to nature, serving as a metaphor for the fragility and ephemerality of fashion. As an extension of this time travel of fashion through a nature-centric lens, the theme of Met Gala 2024 was "The Garden of Time". While the title immediately conjures up images of flora and fauna, in actuality, it's quite a broad theme.
"The Garden of Time" is a reference to a 1962 short story of the same name by J.G. Ballard. It tells a story of Count Axel and his wife live in a villa surrounded by a garden of crystal, time flowers. In order to escape an approaching angry mob, the count began plucking off the flowers one by one to travel back in time, until there were none left and they both succumbed to their inevitable downfall.
Yes, it is somewhat of an irony that the story's narrative inspired the dress code for this year's Met Gala—a benefit attended by modern-day aristocrats.
Looking into the source material, the theme leaves room for interpretation. Sure, the florals and anything else garden-related are a given, but manners of aristocratic dress were also options. And due to the time-travelling nature of the story, there's also no fixed period to be restricted by. First-time attendees (and the first K-pop group in history to attend the Met Gala) Stray Kids wore custom Tommy Hilfiger suiting in the brand's signature hues with subtle floral and botanical details, while Barry Keoghan stunned in a velvet Burberry suit that was a nod to period dressing.
Others took on the story's more nuanced theme of doom and destruction. Wisdom Kaye's Robert Wun ensemble was the perfect manifestation of destroyed beauty with its burnt edges; Bad Bunny's Maison Margiela suit featured loose topstitching that were irregularly done; and Dan Levy's Loewe fit beautifully interpreted the theme with a floral suiting that graduated into darkness.
View our picks of the best menswear looks at Met Gala 2024 in the gallery below.
