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The best-of-the-year lists have been debated, assembled, and published. Year-end honors have been collected. The holiday season is upon us. Which means that there’s one more thing to do before we all settle in for the holiday break: it’s time for GQ’s readers to vote for their most stylish man of the year.
If the past few years in red-carpet menswear have been defined by a hazy, late-pandemic sweats-giving-way-to-suits vibe, 2022 was, to borrow a phrase, back outside. The world’s most ambitious dressers—as the Biggest Fits of 2022 happily attest—were back to being their bad selves. But only one of them will be crowned—by you—the Most Stylish Man of the Year.
So let’s dig in. As we have in the past, we’ve pulled together 16 of the very most stylish people on the planet, each of whom has spent the past year earning their berth. (As is standard practice, Tyler, the Creator joins Harry Styles in the winner’s circle, meaning both get the year off.) Each brings something a little different, though all exemplify the way that various strains of menswear—tailoring, streetwear, avant-tech-ninja gear—intermingle in all of our closets. But only one of them can be the Most Stylish Man of the Year, as selected by you. You can read more about each of them below.
Voting kicks off today at noon, Eastern time, on GQ’s Instagram; round one runs for 24 hours. We’ll repeat that throughout the week, and announce our winner on Friday. Head to IG to put in your votes, and make sure to check back each day to find out who’s won and who’s been eliminated. May the most stylish man win.
Going shirtless to the Oscars, showing scapula at the Bones and All premiere in Venice: Chalamet made some big moves in 2022, and his fashion appetite continues to evolve. He’s always a contender—he cracked the quarter finals last year, and nabbed the runner-up spot in 2020. Can he grab the Most Stylish title this year?
Many fashion designers are known to rock a low-key wardrobe of T-shirts and jeans—the polar opposite of the wild, conceptual gear they spend their days sketching. Villaseñor…does not do that. Instead, the Rhude and Bally designer is perhaps the foremost wear-tester of his own work: you won’t catch an NBA star in a leather suit and python boots until Rhuigi’s tried it first.
No young hooper is as committed to the mission of NBA style, and none is quite as adventurous, either. And while on the court SGA has experienced his first flush of genuine superstardom, he’s still making sure to flex off of the hardwood, too. What’s the fashion equivalent of averaging 30 points per game?
Rogen may be a Hollywood veteran, but he’s a newcomer to our bracket—and perhaps the only contender whose fashion journey seemingly began with a budding interest in ceramics-making for the purposes of making weed paraphernalia. He has since parlayed his charming stoner on-screen persona into charming stoner off-screen style practice, but with a heavy dose of polish, too. He was the perfect guy to put that slouchy Fear of God suit on the map.
It takes a truly stylish man to convince us that a pair of micro running shorts and a bucket hat (and nothing else) constitutes one of the biggest fits of the year. But Glover still looks cool even when he’s not en route to the gym on a hot afternoon in July. Actually, the Atlanta creator spent plenty of time wearing more substantial clothing this year, including a row of very colorful, very relaxed outfits to promote the show’s final season.
Full transparency: we already crowned Chris Pine, aka the people’s Hollywood Chris, as our most stylish man of the year. Ever since he started dressing like an Allman Brother who downed a green juice (that’s a compliment!), we can’t get him out of our heads. But in the dog-eat-dog, anyone’s-game world of this bracket, the man must carve out his own path as a contender. Lucky for him, he positively freaked it on the outfit front this year, making him a formidable standalone opponent.
Steve Harvey may have spent 2021 reintroducing himself as a style icon, but 2022 was the year when he really let things fly. During a visit to Dubai back in March, he paired a set of logo-covered Balenciaga pajamas with a micro handheld Dior Rimowa suitcase that holds his cigars. As his stylist, Elly Karamoh, told GQ at the time, the bag was “one of his favorite accessories to carry now. He doesn’t go anywhere without his cigars.”
You could argue that it was the groovy melodies and TikTok-ready lyrics of his breakout smash “Bad Habit” that finally put Steve Lacy on the map—but what if it was actually because of the the bonkers Linda Farrow x Bernhard Willheim mask sunglasses he wore on the single’s artwork? Though he’s been simmering just below the pop music mainstream for years, only a seasoned fashion maestro could pull off those shades, much less turn them into a signature accessory that no one else would be able to pull off.
We know Pete as the king of Staten Island, who oversees his kingdom of wacky streetwear with a probably-Supreme-branded-gloved fist. But thanks in part to his fast-and-furious romance with Kim Kardashian, we got to see a new side of Pete’s style this year: a guy who, despite his general disregard for formalwear (remember when he popped up during the final hour of the Emmys broadcast to present an award wearing Dickies and wraparound shades?), can work a suit in a way all his own.
It took decades (and the TikTok hive mind) for the world to come around on the merits of Adam Sandler’s personal style, though the best part of this development is that the Sandman probably couldn’t care less. An anti-fashion icon for the ages, Sandler’s preternaturally schlubby wardrobe has left everyone else’s overly considered attempts at normcore in the dust. He’s never needed our approval to do his thing—but we bet he wouldn’t be mad if he scooted past some of the other smooth operators on this bracket.
A$AP Rocky may be the happiest guy on Earth these days, but he’s long been one of its most devoted and experimental dressers. He and his lady Rihanna welcomed their first child this year, which has led him to his newest fashion frontier: dad style. The only thing better than two fashion killas in love is an unbelievably fly family of three.
Delightful in its subtlety, Steven Yeun’s approach to dressing is like the slogan for the movie-streaming channel IFC: “Always On. Slightly Off.” The actor is a devoted minimalist with a knack for low-key, off-kilter clothes, making a run of perfect and simple navy outfits on the Nope press tour or even a trip to the chiropractor wearing head-to-toe IYKYK streetwear look cool.
Kendrick made a blazing return to music-making this year with the release of Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, and the album’s artwork debuted what would become a crucial fashion accessory during its rollout: a diamond-covered titanium crown of thorns made by Tiffany, which he later wore while performing, seated, from the front row at Louis Vuitton’s final ode to Virgil Abloh over the summer. But it was another crown of sorts that really demonstrated Kendrick’s mark on the fashion ecosystem this year: the grandma-style crochet bucket hat he wore to a Dodgers game. Heavy is the head that wears two crowns!
The king is still the king. And Bron is decidedly in his imperial era, style-wise. He knows what he likes—simple silhouettes, killer sneakers, even more killer watches—and wears a lot of it. And the league continues to pay its respects.
Andrew Garfield has been exceptionally busy on the acting front as of late. That degree of creative output—plus all of the awards-show critical acclaim that’s come of it—has meant that he’s also had to get down to business on the dressing front. Thank goodness he looks this good in a suit.
Butler got so deep into his role as Elvis Presley in the Baz Luhrmann biopic Elvis that, as he told GQ earlier this year, he came out on the other side of it “not knowing who [he] was.” But playing the King didn’t just impact the actor’s sense of self, or result in his newly gravelly speaking voice—it also left a mark on his wardrobe, which suddenly became full of sexy modern zoot suits and retro-cool casualwear.
