There were a lot of outfits to choose from this week for the Outfit of the Week. But the reason it’s Ryan Gosling is, well, because it’s Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling doesn’t step out much. He’s quiet even when there’s no pandemic, so the fact that we have new Ryan Gosling photos, and he’s dressed in a beautiful mustard yellow suede suit…it was an automatic.
The suit is a perfect fit. And he’s been known to do this – Ryan may be low-key in terms of how public he is, but he’s not a low-key dresser. He has often worn suits of different colours, he does a white tuxedo on occasion, this is not a guy who only shows up in blacks and greys. I’m not saying he’s out here like Billy Porter, but he does have a style personality, and the fact that he went with yellow on this occasion, it tells you that he wanted to stand out. Didn’t mind standing out.
And he’s being paid to stand out.
This is a Tag Heuer event. Ryan has just been named their new ambassador and what makes this noteworthy is that this is his first ever brand partnership. That’s right, Ryan Gosling has never signed a partnership deal. It’s been a 20 year career, and it’s not that the opportunities weren’t there, he just never wanted to until now. So the fact that it’s Tag – I mean it’s a great get for Tag, that’s exactly what you want in an ambassador. Someone so selective, someone who is well-known, super respected, but also comes with some mystique. That’s Ryan Gosling. Already they’re comparing him to Steve McQueen, which is stated in the Tag press release announcing Ryan as their person.
Is this about the money? Well, of course, money is part of it. But because Ryan has been so exclusive, it doesn’t feel like a pure money grab, because otherwise he wouldn’t have waited until now to get with the right brand. And all of this really does line up – it is a pretty perfect brand-to-celebrity combination. As Tag Heuer CEO Frédéric Arnault said:
“A star since his early days, he has grown to become an icon—one both enigmatic and inscrutable. The movie Drive represents the strongest link with who we are today, and we are excited about the creative projects we have together.”
Enigmatic and inscrutable…
That’s their marketing focus here. Most of the time brands rely on the pretense of “relatability”, or at least some connection between their potential customer and the face that is luring that customer. Nobody is pretending here though that there’s anything relatable between their ambassador, Ryan, and the customer. In fact, they appear to be building his campaign on quite the opposite…
You don’t know him. But you want to. You have questions. But he won’t answer. He is the coolest. Don’t you want to be this cool?
For more on Ryan’s partnership with Tag, check out his new interview with GQ. If you’re looking for gossip, he casually drops Eva Mendes’s name in there twice. So, yes, they’re good.
As for business gossip, unrelated to Ryan …
Frédéric Arnault, of the Arnault family, the son of Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH and currently the world’s richest man. Like I said earlier, Ryan is a big get for Frédéric, on the heels of his brother, Alexandre’s big get for Tiffany & Co: The Carters, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. As I wrote at the time of the Tiffany announcement, business insiders have been keeping a close watch on the Arnault family and all of Bernard’s children because of the succession plan and which child in particular he might hand off to.
At least from a celebrity brand profile standpoint, Alexandre and Frédéric have scored some recent wins.