Nicholas Hoult Felt “Very Fashionable and Very Sexy” in Prada Leather at the Met
The last time Nicholas Hoult attended the Met Gala, he didn’t have much fun. “I was very nervous, and I didn’t know that many people,” he says, sitting on a grey velvet couch in a suite at The Carlyle Hotel. “I wasn’t going with anyone specifically.”
This year he went with Prada, and it was, in his words, “a very different Met.” He knew the brand, he knew the people, and he was the one hyping everyone up. When his Mosquito co-star Daisy Edgar Jones FaceTimed him in his hotel room, he told her not to worry — that they’d have fun.
Hoult’s Prada look stood out on the carpet: a trouser and blouson made of textured calf leather, accented by a nappa leather tie over a silvery grey shirt. Then there was the broach: a vintage Tiffany’s piece set off by a ruby the size of a quail’s egg. “I’ve never felt fancier than today, to be honest,” Hoult says.
He tied the tie himself — a holdover from years at British boarding school. “Really cinch it up there,” he says of wrangling the leather. “Tighter than you’d expect you'd want it.”
The look, he says, began with him wanting to be “very fashionable and very sexy.” Just kidding — it started with his stylist, Jason Bolden, plumbing the Prada archive. “It’s a brand that I’ve always really loved,” Hoult says. “Also very conveniently, so does my wife. They’re a very welcoming bunch of people. Speaking to Miuccia and spending time with her — learning about her life and going to mime school — you’re like, ‘Oh, these are fascinating people who are fun to be with.’”
It may have been Hoult’s second time there, but there was still a first in store: “For the first time in my life, I got a facial sculpt.” Three hours before our interview, in fact. From a facialist named Alessandra who used various shaping apparatuses.
“I guess for my 36 years on earth I have had a very tense face,” he says. “Now, it’s very relaxed. My cheeks feel loose.”
Loose. Limber. Ready. A few minutes before being “called down,” Hoult is visited by Carey Mulligan in her own printed Prada gown. The two hug, compliment each others’ outfits, and chat briefly about their nerves.
“We’ll have fun,” Hoult says.
“We absolutely have to have fun,” Mulligan replies. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
