In the span of a few meteoric years, Glen Powell has played a cocksure pilot, a lovesick con man, and a rizzless banker bro, a triumvirate of archetypes as all-American as his jawline. (His star-making role as a mustachioed college ballplayer, badgering undergrads about his “average cock,” is more telling than a naturalization test.) Looking good in jeans is practically his birthright.
On the press junket promoting Twisters, Powell’s turn as a storm-chasing social media phenom, the actor has upheld that mandate with dogged panache. Tyler Owens, a “tornado wrangler” with a massive following on YouTube, is an American archetype of a uniquely contemporary nature, and Powell has dressed the part by leaning into his own old-Hollywood swagger—with a slight, uh, twist.
Exiting The View last week, the actor wore an outfit as quintessentially American as apple pie: weathered button-up, Brando-esque tank, and vintage Levi’s, accented by crisp center creases snaking down the front of each leg. (On Instagram, Warren Alfie Baker, Powell’s stylist, confirmed that his cowboy boots were from Lucchese, the tony Texan cobbler favored by oil barons, upper-crust ranchers, and power-suited Southern machers.) Later that evening, Powell caucused with the tortoiseshell-rimmed constituents of another New York institution, taking the stage at The 92nd Street Y in a creamy double-breasted blazer and the same pair of trusty blue jeans.
In 2024, dressing up your denim is not, as the teenager of a regular Y-goer might put it, a “galaxy-brain” swerve. But what distinguishes Powell’s commitment to the bit is exactly what fired our synapses to begin with: those razor-sharp creases, a flourish typically reserved for dress pants, suit trousers, and for the real pencil-pushers, khakis. Applying the same rigor to your jeans is a counterintuitive flex, but it’s that precise frisson that makes the proposition work. If you’re jonesing to imbue your Levi’s with a jolt of rodeo swashbuckle, you could do a lot worse than printing out a picture of Glen Powell and hightailing it to your tailor—or grabbing an iron and DIY’ing your way to stardom. —Avidan Grossman
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