Why everybody loves underdressed celebrities

In the fashion industry, we have recently been witnessing a war of titans: on one side, there is the army of Julia Fox, the champion of avant-garde trends, who for some months now has decided to turn her everyday life into a stage for brazen, shocking, borderline, even grotesque looks. In this first faction, united in the sign of bizarre fashion, there is a host of celebrities who relentlessly chase the wow effect and who strive - sometimes perhaps a little too much - to keep the sparkle alive, unleashing ever more extreme weapons to tempt the paparazzi. On the opposite side, there are the champions of normcore, paladins of zero-mile utilitarian clothing - in the sense that they don't even dare to go as far as the nearest shop to give their wardrobe a vital boost. For the lazy faction, fashion just means dressing up, while clothes are mere garments used to cover the body and get out of the house, without the slightest cerebral effort. In short, a veritable army of anonymous fashion killers who, in a hypothetical war of new trends, would rather commit suicide than fight. Yet there is something in their style - if we can call it so - that is surprisingly magnetic. 

In this utopian 2.0 version of 'Alien vs. Predator', there is one detail that inexorably ties the two sides together: both, in different ways, dress badly. And by 'badly' is implied an infinity of facets: from disengaged bad to overly cerebral bad, from the careless errors of style committed by who simply wishes to go unnoticed, but unfortunately cannot. Precisely this last category, in recent times, sees Robert Pattinson main character. Yes, thanks to him, normcore has never been so normal, and even his daddy-camping Bermuda shorts paired with a surgical mask (blue!) are overwhelming proof of this. Next to him, in comparison girlfriend Suki Waterhouse - who herself relies on a style that is more comfortable than eye-catching - looks like she has just stepped off a catwalk at Seoul Fashion Week. But we are not entirely sure that Pattinson's is a gentleman strategy to put the spotlight on his better half. We are therefore faced with a paradox: although the days of spiky hair on the cover of GQ are now a faded memory, the British actor's aesthetic still manages to steal the spotlight from all other celebrities, even those who have made fashion the reason of their success. To paraphrase, nothing surprises us anymore, so we might as well save ourselves the trouble.

If even Adam Sandler has managed, unbeknownst to him, to create a trend out of faded t-shirts and '00s rapper sweatpants (see: "Sandlercore"), Robert Pattinson's awkward, fashion-phobic style confirms the subtle theory that we all have on the tip of our tongues, but which we didn't dare to state until now: normality, today, is more surprising than excess. And in the year in which even Kim Kardashian's 9-year-old daughter changes at least three times a day - and none of those changes involve non-slip socks and a lycra tank top - and singers and rappers are careful not to wear the same trainer twice in the space of six months, Pattinson manages to be irresistible by sporting the same basic outfit several times in a row: black bomber jacket, visor cap, slim trousers and a pair of decidedly unremarkable adidas knits. But with this sort of ultra-conventional uniform and negligible personality, the new Joker is proving to the world that there is nothing cooler than not giving a damn about fashion. And that someone like him can create an audience - and a veil of luxury - around even the least interesting garments in our wardrobe. In a war of style, Robert Pattinson is the ultimate monster you don't expect.