MR PORTER is old enough to remember when the year 2020 was the distant future. The stuff of dystopian sci-fi and long-range climate change models. And now, thankfully, it’s over. Yet, when historians come to study what men wore in 2020, it’s not going to be the Drivesuits of Pacific Rim or the transparent coats of Blade Runner. It’s more likely to be the same pair of sweatpants for five days straight.

This was not the case for all of us. Some men rose to the challenge. They didn’t just put on what they had been wearing the day before, they managed to piece together some of the most coherent outfits of any time, never mind this godforsaken year. If, in doing so, they felt the weight of responsibility on their shoulders, they certainly didn’t show it, although in one case, there was a bag that, if overladen, could have dug in a bit.

Think of this, then, as our (OK, short-staffed) fantasy fashion football team of 2020’s most stylish men. The seven guys who didn’t just make wearing clothes look easy, they gave us a glimpse of how the world could be.

Swanning about in what will now forever be known as “Before Times”, here’s the joint second-tallest Skarsgård in Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival back in January. That the film he was there to promote, Nine Days, still hasn’t been shown in cinemas some 339 days later says more about the year we’ve just had than the quality of the film itself. Mr Skarsgård’s attire, meanwhile, is beyond reproach, bristling with a swaggering assurance that is perhaps symbolic of our species as a whole at this particular moment, blissfully unaware of what is about to hit it. The camel tailored overcoat neatly complements the olive rollneck beneath, while the black trousers and polished Chelsea boots show poise and restraint. Those were the days, eh?

A pattern begins to emerge, and we’re not talking about the geometric motif on Mr Riz Ahmed’s knitwear, fetching though it is. Here’s the British actor, MC and activist at another film festival early on in the year for the world premiere of Mogul Mowgli, which follows a British-Pakistani rapper who is, er, struck down by a disease. Mr Ahmed’s garb is somewhat prescient and presents an elevated version of what many of us wore to work this year. We wouldn’t be surprised to see a drawstring holding up those trousers, assuming the hands in the pockets aren’t for support, and the retro running shoes are what most of us have been slipping on to queue up outside the supermarket. Note also the chain peeping out at the neckline, some months ahead of Normal People normalising such jewellery. Always one step ahead, this guy.

Cards on the table, we could have curated an entire best of 2020 line-up exclusively featuring outfits worn by Tyler, the Creator. If we had to pick just one ensemble from his sartorial oeuvre (and, sigh, the picture department made us do it), it would be this get-up, which he wore to accept the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in January. We say accept, but when collecting it, the Odd Future founder pointed out that the record in question, the brilliant Igor, wasn’t exactly something you could comfortably classify as “rap”. Furthermore, given the academy’s history in this department, he accused it of using such distinctions to sideline black artists. (The organisers finally got the memo and dropped the “Urban” tag.) We can tell you what was comfortably classy: the chocolate brown trousers and Golf Wang cap, paired with a red and pink striped polo shirt and pink moccasins. Precisely the right statement to make.

Now, we’d love to believe that Mr Jaden Smith’s embracing of the rainbow this year has been, in part, a nod to the tireless efforts of health-service staff across the globe, the real heroes of 2020. But he also has an album out that plays on the hippy-dippy aesthetics of Sgt Pepper and the countercultural movement that wafted through Haight-Ashbury towards the end of the 1960s. Either way, he’s worn it well and turned it into – brace yourself for industry lingo here – “a thing”. The knitwear is hard to place. If the shirt and jacket begat the shacket, is this floral arrangement a cardicket? A jackigan? It’s certainly something. However, it’s the accessories that make this outfit – the pearls and beads, the New Balance sneakers, the rose-tinted spectacles hanging from the pocket of Mr Smith’s jeans. We all could have done with a pair of them this summer.

For argument’s sake, if we divided 2020 into two segments – the first two-and-a-half months and the remainder, rolled into one perpetual day – Mr Justin Bieber’s attire here would sit firmly the latter camp. Of course, people wore such garments before, certainly in the 1990s, when beanies, checked shirts and preposterously proportioned trousers were de rigueur. Born in 1994, the Canadian singer no doubt absorbed much of this in his formative years and has here assimilated the style of PaRappa the Rapper into his own. But this particular look belongs to recent months rather than previous decades. Carpenter jeans have come into their own as a means of carting around the personal effects we now need to hand – face masks, hand sanitiser, medical-grade gloves – and, not that Mr Bieber needs it, to hide a lockdown paunch. Perhaps we’ve all learnt to experiment with clothing and hairstyles and, for those caught growing out their locks or unable to get to a barber, a hat, especially one with a pop of colour, has been a boon.

If the previous two looks had you wondering – and we’re not quite sure how to put this, but here goes – where all the grown-ups have been hiding since March, here’s actor Mr Tom Bateman in an actual suit. Not that the clothing worn by the star of the forthcoming Death On The Nile, and the only one who wasn’t implicated in Hercule Poirot’s last outing, isn’t, in its own way, playful. His double-breasted jacket and matching trousers convey a more relaxed attitude than the tailoring of yore, but add the half-placket shirt, unbuttoned, and the retro sneakers – not to mention the well-groomed lockdown hair and beard – and it doesn’t take too much detective work to find your way around a wardrobe.

OK, the game’s up. Of our seven standout sartorial decisions of the year, four were made in its first two months. That’s 57 per cent of our looks coming from just 16.6 per cent of 2020, which is far from the most horrific stat we’ve seen in that time. Having met him since the arrival of Covid-19, we can confirm that musical polymath Mr Dev Hynes still cuts a fine figure today, as you can read in our interview with him, here. But back in February, he was looking impossibly sharp, and not just in terms of the acute angles of his lapels (the pocket square and trouser creases could have had someone’s eye out, too). The muted palette of the outfit, all textured greys and rich browns, really comes to life thanks to the vibrant red rollneck peeping out. Right now, with the most Betwixtmas of Betwixtmases upon us, it might be hard to recall what it was like when we could dress up, go out and feel no fear or guilt. So, bookmark this page, and when the time comes once more, use Mr Hynes as a reminder that you could always do better.

The people featured in this story are not associated with and do not endorse MR PORTER or the products shown