2024-07-16 01:00:01
The hearts of England fans felt familiarly broken this morning after being beaten 2-1 by Spain in the Euro 2024 final. Still, in one other contest at least there is cause for celebration. Jude Bellingham has been voted by you, the people, as the most stylish player at the tournament.
Over the past fortnight, we’ve asked thousands of GQ readers on Instagram to pick their best-dressed guy from a series of head-to-toes. It was in the final round that Bellingham found a worthy adversary in Denmark’s Joachim Andersen: a man GQ anointed as the chillest guy in the Premier League in an interview from this summer. But the final score was decisive: Bellingham took the win with 57 per cent of your votes.
Since his debut, Bellingham has been quietly amassing a portfolio of big fits. Where so many of his peers go hard, and go often, the Real Madrid wunderkind has drip-fed the populace with his style; small peeks here and there that hint at the true menswear capabilities of one of the best players on the planet. It’s smart: always keep the people wanting more.
When collecting The Kopa Trophy at the 67th Ballon D’Or, Bellingham made a football awards ceremony look like the Grammys red carpet. Instead of a quiet, perfectly nice and normal suit, the 21-year-old elected for Louis Vuitton under the current Pharrell administration. And where a lot of footballers fall deep on the monogram, Bellingham went for the small touches of a menswear veteran: a slight kick to the trouser, a continental tie, and, like all the best-dressed men in Hollywood, a very stunty brooch of gold and pearls.
Marc Piasecki
Even before that, at Louis Vuitton’s S/S ‘24 show, Bellingham again went fool-proof in a pitch-black suit. But the fit was baggier. There was a Wild, Wild West neckerchief (a key code in Pharrell’s sprawling arena extravaganza). And there was no shirt: a common move among the macro-counters of Hollywood, and one that’s maybe edged Bellingham a little closer to pin-up status (look on TikTok, and there are a lot of cute fancam videos, and a few quite dirty comments). Funnily enough, Kim Kardashian’s underwear brand Skims also tapped Bellingham for a very greased-up campaign.
Between those Vuitton set pieces, there have been moments of real fashion nous; a doughy roll-neck here, a pearl bracelet there. But every single time, Bellingham hits a nice, pleasant volume that is neither boring nor brash; the equivalent of a house party that’s just getting warmed up, after the first-hour awkwardness but well before the 3am techno witching hour.
And we don’t see it every single day either. Bellingham’s an insanely good footballer that’s letting work come first. He doesn’t try too hard to make fashion his thing – and that may be the most stylish thing of all.
