Timothée Chalamet And Harry Styles Have Chuck Bass To Thank For Their Style Emancipation

Female rivalry, privileged teenagers, Manhattanite snobbery… we have the original series of Gossip Girl to thank for lifting the lid on the dizzyingly gilded lifestyles of Upper East Side rich kids, offering a captivating showcase of late Noughties style in the process. But, while eyes may have been on Serena van der Woodsen’s bohemian insouciance and Blair Waldorf’s fussy chic (Emily in Paris could take notes), as far as the show’s menswear was concerned, it was Ed Westwick’s Chuck Bartholomew Bass who ruled the roost – and changed the game.

Next to Nate Archibald’s safe collegiate prep and Dan Humphrey’s forgettable checked flannel shirt schtick, Bass’s penchant for bright, rakish fashion felt intoxicatingly flagrant. The Upper East Side’s answer to a modern-day Beau Brummell, with a hint of flashy Wall Street swagger thrown in for good measure, Bass pioneered a brand of “hateable fuckboy billionaire” before its time, channelling a narcissistic hedonism that was delightfully uninhibited.

Invariably flamboyant, with a pink argyle sweater vest from Brooks Brothers here and his trademark J Press silk scarf there (“Don’t mock the scarf, Nathaniel, it’s my signature”), Chuck’s dastardly style felt all the more masculine for its derring-do. In the process, he subverted traditional masculine codes of style and provided viewers with a new vision of what it meant to “dress like a man”.

Anyone who pays attention to the red carpet will know that menswear has increasingly taken centre stage in recent years, and homages to Chuck Bass – intentional or not – are everywhere. Young men such as Timothée Chalamet, Lil Nas X, Harry Styles and Ezra Miller have been experimenting freely with fashion, unbothered by traditional notions of masculinity and keen to subvert. But where would they be without Bass? The black and clear beaded crystal smoking jacket by Costume National that he wore to the Snowflake Ball in season two, for instance, came well before Timothée Chalamet’s glittering Louis Vuitton harness-bib at the Golden Globes in 2019. And Harry Styles’s sheer Gucci blouse at the Met Gala 2019 might not have been possible without Bass’s endless lavender formal shirts – most often paired with lavender suits and candy-pink pocket squares, no less.

It’s a far cry from 2007, when Gossip Girl first aired, and men in the public eye were mostly wearing penguin tuxedos to red carpet events. The Bass proclivity for bright and bold menswear, however, showed us something new. Preceding the “Pitti Peacocks”, the colourfully tailored tribes of men that stalked the piazzas in Florence to the Pitti Uomo trade shows throughout most of the past decade, Chuck’s dandyish approach to dressing ushered in a new age of sartorial experimentation where men could simultaneously flout and uphold tradition in favour of something more daring.

And it worked. Here was a womanising straight man secure enough in his machismo to don a silk jacquard robe (while getting a pedicure), wear striped red pyjamas to bed while he slept with a duo of his father’s hotel maids, and eventually tie the knot in a white suit accessorised with a bedazzled powder-blue bowtie that pretty much upstaged wife-to-be Blair. Stealth wealth it was not. Instead, Chuck believed in flaunting what he had, investing in the very best quality suits, shits, ties and shoes. He was similarly dismissive of those who didn’t match his sartorial flourishes. “Who let the Sasquatch in?” he says at a season-one party, in reference to rich kid-turned-backpacker Carter Baizen, who is dressed in a swamp-coloured Baja hoodie. “Anyone who trades their trust fund for a fanny pack flies in the face of all that is holy to Chuck Bass.”

Put together by Eric Daman, the costume designer who made his name on the show (and who incidentally had a stint working with Sex and the City and Emily in Paris’s legendary costume designer Patricia Field), Chuck’s pinstriped Paul Stuart suits, Banana Republic blazers – and the memorable white Maison Margiela tuxedo he wore to the White Party – took high fashion and American formalwear, and used it to push the menswear envelope in an exciting new direction. Daman has stated multiple times that Chuck was his favourite character to dress, because he provided him with an opportunity to do something different with a prominent male character. And the Chuck Effect has endured. Though it’s been eight years since the final episode of Gossip Girl aired, anything actor Ed Westwick posts on Instagram is inevitably flooded with comments of his most famous one-liner: “I’m Chuck Bass”.

2021 will see a much buzzed-about reboot of Gossip Girl that promises to be more diverse and inclusive. Early paparazzi shots of the series being filmed show male cast members with pink buzzcuts, pairing limited-edition streetwear with tractor-soled Gucci loafers and their regulation St Jude’s chinos. But the new characters have some big Tory Burch flats and Armani loafers to fill when they walk down the steps of the Met.

Daman is, as it happens, slated to return as costume designer. Whether he can create a new Gen-Z wardrobe that rivals the original remains to be seen, but the show’s sartorial history will surely help: in other words, Chuck’s pink cravat walked so that Evan Mock’s pink buzzcut could run. You know you loved him.