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It's A Harness! It's A Bib! It's A… Wait, What Is It?

If you look at awards shows with the same eyes you do a runway, you'd see little to no correlation between the two: runway shows are about 10 minutes long whereas award shows seem to never end and one is (mostly) for business, while the other is (mostly) for entertainment. This goes for tonight's SAG Awards and the impending Fashion Month. But, in so many ways, they're both still so crucial to fashion: A runway show is a chance for a designer to showcase their most up-to-date vision, and a red carpet is one of the rare chances we get to see it in life. But some looks get lost in translation.
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Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images.
Photo: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images.
Case in point: the embroidered bib. If you're wondering what that is, it's okay — we'd never heard of one of those either until Louis Vuitton confirmed via press release that Timothée Chalamet's black sequin accessory wasn't a harness, nor some sort of deconstructed vest, but indeed a novelty bib. And now, the viral accoutrement is causing buzz again after Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan sported another Vuitton bib at tonight's SAG Awards. Though a similar, near-exact silhouette, Jordan's version — designed by Vuitton's first Black creative director for menswear, Virgil Abloh — is a lot more noticeable.
But, despite even the New York Times' chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman passing on the official word from Louis Vuitton, the Internet is (still) having trouble figuring out just what to call that thing. Is it "the awards show harness"? Is it an "embroidered mid-layer"? Did Timothée Chalamet walk so Michael B. Jordan could run? Well, we're here to set the record straight. We've said it once and we'll say it again: Friedman is right — it's an embroidered bib. And yes, we won't get mad at you for calling it a harness, but that... may or may not give off a different vibe (depending on what you're into).
Now, does that mean the fuchsia, Vuitton-monogrammed piece was the right choice to pair atop a navy Vuitton suit? That's up for you, and maybe Twitter, to decide. But the point here is that more and more men are defying traditional menswear norms and spicing up red carpets that are otherwise pretty uninteresting if you're not in a sequin gown, save a bold print here and there. Like Cody Fern, Billy Porter, Troye Sivan, and more. But these are A-list, leading men we're talking about — not the quirky queer sidekick not even nominated in the supporting role category — it's the much-memed-about guys from Black Panther and Call Me By Your Name!
Alright, maybe we're biased because they do look pretty cool. But, at least we know what to call the darn thing in the pretty likely case we'll see it on the red carpet again.

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