Alexander Skarsgård has found his latest role: menswear's resident rule-breaker.
The Swedish actor has stepped out in thigh-high leather boots, tiny tartan shorts, halter tops, shimmering trousers, and sexually suggestive graphic shirts, turning an otherwise predictable red carpet into his personal dressing-up box.
But while his increasingly kinky wardrobe conveniently complements his BDSM romance film, Pillion, the new silver screen endeavour did not create fashion's playful Skarsgård.
It simply gave him even more material to work with.
Long before his current press tour, the actor was already willing to poke fun at conventional ideas of masculine dressing. Now, alongside stylist Harry Lambert, Skarsgård seems increasingly uninterested in whether clothes belong on the masculine or feminine side of anybody's wardrobe.
Remember when caring about clothes was enough to get a man called 'metrosexual'?
We've come a very long way, and Skarsgård's commitment to the trend is powerful enough to open a new section of menswear at the department store.
Alexander Skarsgård's Gender-Fluid Fashion Playbook
Perhaps the best evidence arrived all the way back in 2016.
Skarsgård attended the MTV Movie Awards wearing formal eveningwear above the waist and virtually nothing below it, before being walked on a leash by Mia Goth.
Nearly a decade later, the actor's wardrobe has become considerably more sophisticated, but that mischievous streak remains at the heart of his styling.
At Cannes, he wore a black double-breasted suit with glossy thigh-high Saint Laurent leather boots. Another appearance paired sparkling blue trousers with a traditional jacket and pink bow tie.
At the BFI London Film Festival, meanwhile, an ostensibly conventional white shirt and black tie turned out to be something considerably more daring. His Ludovic de Saint Sernin top wrapped around his neck like a halter, leaving his shoulders and arms completely exposed above tight black leather trousers.
Business in the sun, leather after hours. Suddenly, the notion of 'real men wear pink' needs to step up its game.
Alexander Skarsgård's 'Pillion' Era Turns up the Kink
If Skarsgård was already willing to experiment, Pillion has given him a particularly fitting theme.
The film stars Skarsgård as Ray, the dominant leader of a motorcycle gang who introduces Colin, played by Harry Melling, to a submissive BDSM relationship. His wardrobe has subsequently borrowed liberally from fetish aesthetics.
At the Zurich Film Festival, Skarsgård wore a white silk Magliano shirt printed with sex toys alongside pinstripe trousers and loafers. At Cannes, a vintage graphic tee featured boot-licking imagery, while another appearance found him in leather trousers.
Then there was British daytime television. Skarsgård appeared on Lorraine in a beige jacket, tiny tartan S.S. Daley shorts, socks and loafers, even giving viewers a twirl.
'I wanted to be sexy today,' he joked, adding: 'There's nothing sexier than a middle age man in a British school boy uniform.'
Clearly, subtlety was never invited to this press tour, and fans love it.
'He is so weird and so hot', commented one Redditor on his outlandish style choices, while another fan took the appreciation a step further, saying: 'I hate the guy's taste in clothing. He should take it all off!'
Is Alexander Skarsgård Taking Men's Fashion Beyond Metrosexuality?
The funny thing is that Skarsgård's wardrobe demonstrates just how the word 'metrosexual' has evolved.
Popularised in the 2000s, the label was once applied to straight men who cared conspicuously about clothes, grooming, and overall appearance. Simply taking fashion seriously could be seen as a departure from traditional masculinity.
Skarsgård's approach goes the distance. He can wear a conventional black suit one evening and tiny shorts or thigh-high boots the next, moving between masculine and feminine fashion codes without making the switch itself the spectacle.
Pillion may explain the especially fetish-heavy chapter happening now, but Skarsgård's history suggests something simpler underneath it.
He likes playing with clothes.
Perhaps the modern successor to the metrosexual man isn't another carefully defined category at all. Maybe it's simply a man who no longer needs a label at all, and in the case of Alexander Skarsgård's sense of style, there is no box that can contain it.
