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In the run up to this weekend, there’s been a lot of chatter about a certain well-dressed chap with a close relationship to Britain’s most prominent kingmaker. The penchant for Savile Row suits, a relish for the cheeky bon mot—we’re talking, of course, about Bill Nighy, the wry septuagenarian who is in the midst of a red carpet blitz for the ages.
Nighy is a suit guy par excellence; the only thing he loves more than wearing them is talking about them, often in heart-wrenching, refreshingly candid fashion.“I know it’s all nonsense and I know there is nothing wrong with the way I look,” he once told an interviewer, “but I have never been particularly confident in that area and a suit helps me out.” When our colleagues across the pond profiled him last year, they noted his appreciation for the type of wonky sartorial details—“where the vents should be, the line, the cut”—that’s usually the preserve of serious Styleforum posters.
In a surprise act of fashion kismet, Nighy’s press run coincides with a surge of interest in classic tailoring tied to another event altogether: The coronation of King Charles, whose winding road to the throne culminates at Westminster Abbey this Saturday. Faced with the prospect of going toe-to-toe with the would-be menswear king, most folks would pack up their brogues and call it quits. But Nighy has risen to the occasion with elan, cementing his reputation as one of our premier suit-wearers in the process.
While his royal peer gears up to claim the crown, the actor has quietly made the case for his own moodboard sovereignty, popping up in increasingly unexpected places in suits so exquisite they’d make the Duke of Cornwall blush. At the Met Gala on Monday evening, he linked arms with the belle of the ball herself in the best outfit of the night: a soft navy suit, crisp white shirt, dimpled silk tie, and sturdy black derbies. On the Upper East Side the next day, he answered this poor fella’s question in impeccable form wearing a navy blazer, foulard tie, cuffed gray slacks, and dressy brown loafers. In March, he yakked it up with the talking heads at BBC Radio in a sharp two-piecer and a single-breasted topcoat. In February, he ditched the blue suit for a shadow-plaid gray number and a familiar patterned tie.
Like King Charles, Nighy is a chronic outfit-repeater, rarely deviating from a uniform of discreet soft-shouldered suits, crisp point-collar shirts, and sensible dress shoes, accessorized with nothing other than a thicket of silver hair and his signature blocky frames. (He may be a purist, but we haven’t clocked a single foppish pocket square yet.) Unlike the elder Windsor, though, who favors tweedy glen-plaids and rakish peak lapels, Nighy’s tailoring skews sleek, mod, and startlingly cool—his jackets are cut slightly longer in the skirt, his trousers fall with just the barest hint of break, and he wears them both with an unmediated ease greener stars struggle to approximate.
It’s not just that he looks fantastic; it’s that somehow, inexplicably, he’s managed to do it while surfing a major shift in the fashion zeitgeist and is, to borrow an industry term, absolutely crushing it. As menswear’s wild-style era gives way to a new sense of elegance, Nighy’s particular brand of docent swagger feels oddly prescient. His look isn’t really a rallying cry for the reject modernity crowd—it’s a testament to the power of dialing-in your style so completely that getting dressed every morning becomes as seamless as slipping on your favorite Lobbs. In his closet, the suit is very much alive—long may it reign.