Why Jonah Hill Is the Most Stylish Man of the Decade

By all available metrics, Jonah Hill had a massive decade: He picked up two Oscar nominations, worked with Scorsese and the Coen brothers and Harmony Korine, and wrote and directed one of the best-reviewed movies of 2018. And yet, it’s possible to argue that his greatest contributions to culture over the past 10 years were as a jawnz enthusiast. Jonah spent the bulk of the 2010s obsessing over streetwear—early-adopting Palace Skateboards and collecting grails from Wacko Maria—before shifting his attention to arty designer labels like Marni and Dries. He impulse-dyed his hair—at least twice. He got a bunch of tattoos, occasionally switched to an all-suit uniform in an endeavor to be taken seriously, dabbled in merch (of the vintage, Vampire Weekend, and hyperpersonal varieties), and sometimes pulled on some weird-ass combinations when looking good was secondary to the task of securing an iced coffee and a cigarette. He started the decade without much clue, and ended it with some honest-to-god taste. And if you, like us, found yourself following all of this unreasonably closely, well, there’s a reason for that: You were probably doing all of those things, too.

All that said, Jonah isn’t exactly like you. He’s still famous, and he’s still a couple of chess moves ahead, like the cool older brother who turns you on to Dinosaur Jr. when your friends are all bumping Sugar Ray. He’s got a knack for discovering underground brands right as they’re really starting to pop, from Palace to Richardson Hardware to Bianca Chandon. His sartorial eye is sharp and off-kilter enough to pull off advanced maneuvers like tucking his basketball jersey into his trousers—a move so simple yet thrillingly ingenious that I had no choice but to immediately copy it a few days later. (Jonah later told us the jersey tuck was a joke to mess with paparazzi, but I stand by it as a great look. The discovery of penicillin was an accident, too.)

That, in effect, speaks to his true gift: Where many of the well-dressed celebrities we write about here at GQ are purely aspirational figures, Jonah is attainable. Accessible. The people’s style god. Like, sure, you can admire Timothée Chalamet draped in flowing fuchsia on a red carpet, but you’re far more likely to wear a boxy navy tee and black jeans while testing the waters with your new tinted lenses. No grooming routine on earth can give you Pierce Brosnan’s ethereal bone structure, but a screaming pink dye job is well within the realm of possibility. Maybe someday you’ll have enough dough to deliver three galactic-level fits in 24 hours like Harry Styles, but for now you can settle for finding a perfect tie-dye tee and wearing it over and over and over again. Future might rap “no stylist,” but my guy Jonah is out here actually living it.

Some day, when the fit archaeologists sit down to examine menswear in the late 2010s, studying Jonah’s wardrobe will give them the clearest sense of how men were really dressing at any given time. Like, the winter of 2017? There he is in that one Saint Laurent varsity that every famous person on earth had for a hot second. Summer 2018? Catch him in a bowling shirt and Baggies, just like the rest of us. Spring of this year? Swishy pants and a bright-as-hell hoodie. Some of his peers might have hit higher highs, but none of them made as big a leap from schlubby to consistently on-point as Jonah Hill. He’s not a full-on visionary like Pharrell, and he doesn’t have the runway-model looks of a guy like Robert Pattison. But he’s the most stylish man of the decade because he put in the work—because he earned it.

Originally Appeared on GQ