Fashion
The Curious Case of Brad Pitt and the Cantaloupe Linen Suit

The Curious Case of Brad Pitt and the Cantaloupe Linen Suit

What does one wear while promoting a movie in Paris during a heat wave, when you need to balance two important goals: to look good for the press, and to not sweat your body weight? Brad Pitt landed on the obvious solution: a linen suit.

To promote his new movie, the action-comedy Bullet Train, GQ’s August cover star pulled up on the Seine River as only Brad Pitt could: toeing the line between loungewear and formalwear in a slouchy, cantaloupe-orange set complete with drawstring pants(!), a rusty red henley tee (which, curiously, features hook-and-eye closures instead of buttons), yellow aviator sunglasses, and white slip-on sneakers. (Considering the steamy weather, his co-star Brian Tyree Henry also made the smart move to wear shorts that matched his double-breasted, purple plaid blazer.) In a way, this wildly bright suit is peak Pitt: He could be posing on a red carpet in Paris, or offering you your choice of cold or room temperature water in the kitchen of his Hollywood Hills home, and either scenario would make sense with this outfit.

Brad Pitt, in orange linen, attends the Bullet Train photocall on July 16 in Paris.Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Getty Images

Pitt, this time in gray linen, high-kicks at the Bullet Train Paris premiere on July 18.Pierre Suu/Getty Images

The suit is so Pitt, in fact, that he appears to have made this particular style his uniform for the Parisian leg of the Bullet Train press tour, having worn two other incredibly similar suits over the last few days. In addition to the orange kit he sported on Saturday, he wore a slightly different zippered style in khaki to a press event on Sunday, and a nearly identical slouchy style in slate-gray linen to the film’s premiere on Monday. The latter was styled the same way as the orange, with a similarly curious henley, pair of slick aviators, and telltale drawstring.

Uniform dressing—particularly when that uniform is a little freaky, a lot breezy, and allows for spontaneous kicks on the red carpet—feels like an apt fit for 58-year-old Pitt, who, in his GQ cover story, said he considers himself to be on his “last leg, this last semester or trimester” of his career. At a certain point, whether you’re a movie star or not, you’ve probably earned the right to trade in starched wool for breathable flax-fiber weave. Think of it as a sartorial relaxation flex: wherever you go, there you are.