Adrien Brody’s relationship with J.Crew all started with a sweater. Specifically, one that he owned way back in high school. “It was such a great piece,” Brody told GQ in a call. “It was quite well worn. It was like a cable knit, dark green, crewneck sweater that I just loved. I didn't have a lot of gear then, but I remember that one was quite cozy and felt elegant.”
As the best actor nominee is out and about on the Oscars circuit for The Brutalist, he’s also now launching a different sort of campaign: J.Crew announced today that Brody is the new face of the brand for their spring 2025 menswear collection.
"We have a lot of respect for Adrien's creative approach and it really resonated with us. He has a similar appreciation for subtlety and nuance that defines J.Crew menswear,” Brendon Babenzien, creative director of J.Crew men’s, said about why they tapped Brody for this campaign. “His style is effortless, timeless, and brings a fresh perspective to American fashion. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he’s a fellow New Yorker.”
“It’s a wonderful moment,” Brody said. “I really appreciate their interest in collaborating with me, and I love their aesthetic and I love their classic American, iconic style, and I think it's really lovely.”
The spring fits he’s modeling are clean-cut, structural, and effortless. There’s a relaxed navy cotton suit, type of crisp white button-down you always need in your arsenal, and one specific navy sweater that might be the platonic ideal of a sweater. That last one caught Brody’s eye—and ended up in his closet.
“I asked to take home pieces straight from the shoot, and I've been wearing them and getting lots of compliments on them,” Brody said. “I have this blue, I'd say it's almost a mockneck, sweater that I just love of theirs that I've been wearing pretty much every day since we shot.”
Brody is currently being lauded for his performance as the character László Tóth, a brilliant Hungarian architect who emigrated to postwar America, in Brady Corbet’s four-hour epic The Brutalist. It’s a film with a heavy emphasis on craft, one quiet aspect of which has not gone unnoticed: László’s menswear, with people even asking where to source certain items. Was Brody expecting this sort of reaction at all?
“No, it's so funny. They also spoke a lot about my attire in Succession. It became such a theme,” he says. “We had a wonderful costume designer [Kate Forbes] and she was incredibly thoughtful and Brady and I were also very, very eager to make him stand alone, to not quite conform to the norms, but to exude a formality of the era. We intentionally never had László in a tie, for instance, but made sure that I was buttoned up all the time. Everything felt quite unique to him, rather than just adhering to the fashion sense of the times.”
Brody has more than a few characters with enviable wardrobes under his belt. He’s done his fair share of Wes Anderson movies, after all, and more recently played Pat Riley, the NBA’s most suited-up coach, in HBO’s Winning Time. But if he had to pick the most stylish character he’s ever played?
“Well, clearly Pat Riley was known for being incredibly stylish, and I was longing for another season just so that we could fully embrace his era of being super sharp, buttoned down. But his style choices earlier on were quite interesting as well,” Brody said. “Dmitri in Grand Budapest also had a wonderful sense of style that I loved. These long overcoats and monochromatic, ominous, tonal foreboding attire.”
He also still has a soft spot for a character whose look matched his offscreen style the closest—or at least felt the most personal.
“There was a character I did in Love the Hard Way that I loved very much. We shot that just before The Pianist and it was a little movie we made in New York and a wonderful filmmaker,” Brody shared. “Aside from the snakeskin jacket that was inspired by Nicolas Cage in Wild at Heart that the director loved—which I ended up owning—much of the style of attire and even the music that ended up being integrated in the film score was inspired by me at that time of my life. So it was quite personal.”
The last time Brody, now 51, was on the Oscars circuit was in 2003. When he won best actor for his performance in The Pianist, he was 29, which made him the youngest-ever winner in the category.
While he doesn’t remember much about what he wore during that campaign—or if he even thought about it at the time—-this go around he’s locked in. (And, naturally, GQ has taken note.)
“I don't overthink it. And I fortunately have access to some really beautiful clothes and wonderful, elegant designers and have built relationships over the years, which I'm very grateful for because I very much love the fashion space and the creativity and all the artistry that goes into it,” Brody said. “So I definitely have a much deeper connection and understanding of the creativity and the artistry for the pieces that I do wear. But I kind of have just been focused on doing my work and I have a nice little arsenal at my disposal and I'm grateful for that. And I just go one day at a time.”