When Brad Pitt hit the carpet at the New York City premiere of F1 on Monday evening, he looked, as ever, like a movie star. With the bright lights of Times Square reflected in his smoke-toned sunglasses, the 61-year-old actor wore a sharply tailored double-breasted navy fresco dinner jacket with a contrasting black grosgrain lapel, a pale pink shirt, John Lobb buckled loafers, and a petal pink pocket square. Actually, forget looking like a movie star—he looked like Brad Pitt.
For F1’s global press tour, Pitt linked up with his longtime collaborator, the stylist George Cortina, to coordinate his red-carpet wardrobe. They decided that for each premiere, he would wear a suit handmade by the legendary Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard.
“They don’t do this for anyone,” Cortina told me by phone from Los Angeles on Monday. But because Cortina has a longstanding relationship with the 119-year-old tailor, and because Pitt is Pitt, they agreed—despite the fact that the actor’s schedule couldn’t accommodate a trip to London for a fitting. Plus, the actor wanted color: butter yellow, purple, silver. They decided on a mix of classic tones (like the lightweight navy-black combo for New York) and a few more colorful options, including the lilac-hued suit he wore to the film’s debut last week in Mexico City.
“They were excited to make it, because no one asks for that,” said Cortina. “They cut the suits dry with his measurements. I just had a seamstress adjust them lightly, but they were pretty spot on.”
The atypical task—fashioning custom suits in unexpected hues—harkens back “to bespoke in the ’70s, of Tommy Nutter, all of those great British tailors who did amazing things,” said Cortina, who himself has been wearing bespoke suits since he was in his 20s. The idea was “to do something different within the world of Savile Row and within the world of fashion, because people think that Savile Row and fashion have nothing to do with one another.”
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