The Best Dressed Men at the 2025 Oscars Skipped the Traditional Tuxedo

If you wish to fully grasp Timothée Chalamet’s Oscars suit, you may do better to consult a food reporter rather than a fashion critic.

They might be able to tell you the outfit was a shade of French butter. Or was it egg yolk? Perhaps just lemon?

Whatever the tint of his monochrome look, Mr. Chalamet’s effervescent not-a-tux was the consensus gotta-talk-about-it outfit of the evening. There was certainly much to scrutinize. The jacket was cropped like a maitre d’s uniform. A tie? Overlooked. In its place, a dot of a pearl collar. The pants, which weren’t even suit pants but were, in fact, shaped like five pocket jeans, puddled indifferently around his glossed black boots.

It’s unclear if this outfit was nodding to an outfit Bob Dylan once wore, as some of Mr. Chalamet’s carpet looks have during this award’s season sprint, but his Oscars look at least had the spirit of Dylan. (This critic’s theory: It was “Blonde on Blonde” in outfit form.) This was a suit that smirked at ceremony but felt glamorous and elevated despite it’s provocation.

The unusual red carpet outfit also provided a crucial preview for Givenchy, who made it specially for Mr. Chalamet.

The Academy Awards came a day before Paris Fashion Week commences, a week that will include the first runway show from Givenchy’s recently appointed creative director, Sarah Burton. Alongside an Audrey Hepburn-ish black-bowed gown worn by Elle Fanning, Mr. Chalamet’s Tweety Bird combo served as the amuse-bouche for whatever Ms. Burton is going to present days from now.

(Mr. Chalamet is the men’s fashion industry’s teaser of choice. In January he made noise at the Golden Globes in a sequin-speckled suit, the first design from Tom Ford’s new creative director, Haider Ackermann.)

Most actors continue to view the Oscars as solemn ground and dress for it. Adrien Brody, Joe Alwyn, Sebastian Stan and Ralph Fiennes reflected the overwhelming majority in aspirational, if expected, black tuxedos. Even “The Apprentice” nominee Jeremy Strong, the industry’s leading lobbyist for brown as an acceptable formal-wear color, wore a cappuccino Loro Piana tux that fit, well, as straight and to-the-body as a tuxedo should.

What brands like Givenchy seized on is that flouting conventions on the carpet can make for a great publicity, even if it doesn’t always make for praise.

Valentino deployed this tactic as well. The label is in the midst of a complete overhaul under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele, who joined Valentino last March after nearly eight years at Gucci. And what Sunday proved is that Mr. Michele’s aesthetic (think: Victorian grandpa after a few too many glasses of psychedelic-spiked sherry) may work better on the red carpet than the runway.

Take Colman Domingo’s Valentino suit jacket in a red even more potent than the carpet at his feet. Worn with some disco-y flares, the jacket was belted at the waist, like a kimono. Oh, it was rococo all right. But it also granted Mr. Domingo, who was nominated for best actor, a louche ease.

Or, Omar Apollo, an actor from “Queer,” who wore a black Valentino suit with beefy lapels and a bouffant scarf streaming down the front in lieu of a tie. (Another actor from “Queer,” Drew Starkey, wore a similar scarf-as-tie Valentino outfit at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Evidently, Mr. Michele doesn’t see men’s wear’s halting tie revival as revolutionary enough.)

There was, though, one more actor who swerved harder than them all: Adam Sandler.

During the show’s opening monologue, just after Conan O’Brien declared that “for such a prestigious night it’s important that everyone’s properly dressed,” the camera whipped to Mr. Sandler, dressed in mesh shorts and a hoodie, as if suiting up for pickup basketball.

It was a bit, sure. But it was the sort of outfit that has long made Mr. Sandler, 58, Hollywood’s version of John Fetterman. It was played for laughs, but it got at an earnest idea: Mr. Sandler’s passion for mesh is distinctively his own and can be capitalized on.

“You know what, Conan, I like the way I look because I’m a good person,” Mr. Sandler lobbed back toward the stage. “I don’t care about what I wear and what I don’t wear.”

You know who does care though? Aviator Nation, the brand that made Mr. Sandler’s hoodie. Moments after he appeared on the broadcast, the company sent out an email blast that the neon blue zip-up was available on its website for $175. How rare is that? An Oscars outfit, at a budget price.