The men who showed us how to dress this year.

This has been an odd, murky and turbulent year for masculinity. Out of the bilge, however, there emerges a coterie of gentlemen that we aspire to. They are paragons of present-day masculinity; sartorially-adept demi-gods, who are setting trends rather than following them. These men have no one succinct way of dressing; instead, their strengths lie in their versatility and confidence, pulling off any satin cowboy shirt or patterned suit that comes their way. So, without further ado, we present our breakthrough style icons of 2018…

Mr Jonah Hill’s style is almost too good to be considered “breakthrough”. His sartorial clout has been well-documented in recent years, but this year his clothing was of particular note. Mr Hill is a man that walks his own path, and manages to dress like a modern-day king in seemingly everything he puts on. Our interest was piqued when he went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show earlier this year to speak about his coming-of-age skateboard movie, Mid90s, in which he told the talk-show host: “It took a long time for me to come out as the person, artist, mind, what I represent, how I feel, how I’d like to be spoken to, how I speak to the world in a way that actually represents who I am as a person as opposed to be something else that I’m not. I’m under construction like we all are.”

Goldblum fever has been a thing for a while, but in 2018, the mercury went through the roof. Torturous metaphors aside, the Jewish actor covered ShortList magazine wearing a rainbow-print Gucci sweater, a 25ft statue of him was installed near Tower Bridge, and everyone started calling him “Zaddy”. Mr Goldblum spent the year rocking Prada and Calvin Klein, clomped around in Balenciaga’s chief dad sneaker, the Triple S, and managed to charm the pants off the fashion industry just by being himself. How does he do it? The perennial Cheshire cat grin? The knack for wearing colour? The rest of us can only look on in gawping wonder.

Key is a member of the Korean boyband SHINee, and came onto our radar in 2018 after MR PORTER’s Editorial Director went to Seoul Fashion Week, saw Key perform at the Charm’s show, and developed a worryingly contagious style-crush that swept through the team. Key is novelty personified, because he has no fixed style identity whatsoever: in his new music video for “Forever Yours”, released last week, the singer wears a car-mechanic’s boiler suit, a shearling cowboy look and a whole lot of Prada, all the while flying around the universe in a vintage car. Good stuff.

Ripping a look straight off the runway is something we at MR PORTER wholeheartedly advocate, but we have to admit that it takes a certain amount of sartorial panache to be able to make it completely your own. Radiohead’s Mr Thom Yorke did that this year when he attended the Suspiria premiere wearing a blue-printed Dries Van Noten suit. Of course, the look was controversial enough to inspire a Reddit thread full of Radiohead fans debating the cojones it must take to rock a look like this (with sandals, no less!), but it was one of the finest runway-to-red-carpet transitions to happen all year.

If you were to Google “Donald Glover 2018”, you would find a repertoire of ridiculously good outfits. The genius polymath – talented at seemingly everything – also happens to be upsettingly well-dressed. This isn’t news, but this year he outdid even himself. From his all-white Ermenegildo Zegna look at the Grammys to the Gucci suit at the Met Gala complete with an embroidered Illuminati motif on the back, Mr Glover is a style force to be reckoned with.

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