IT’S THE END of August when we chat, but for Alexander Skarsgård, it’s Christmas. Well, in terms of work, at least. He dials in from London, where he’s about to head to a night shoot for Pillion, his upcoming “kinky gay biker movie,” as he describes it. They’re shooting a holiday scene tonight; in 30 minutes, Skarsgård will be biker gang leader Ray. Right now, though, he’s just Alexander, and he’s here to talk about his new Calvin Klein campaign.
More than a decade after Skarsgård’s first campaign with the brand, the 48-year-old Swedish actor is stepping into CK once again. (“Was it ten years ago now?” he asks. Actually, I tell him, I think it’s been eleven. “Oh my God. Oh my Lord,” he replies.) This time around, instead of being the dangerous, daring, stripped-back seducer, he’s a refined, sleek, magnetic pillar of energy, dancing around a lofty apartment to Harry Nilsson and getting dressed with ease, grace, and a whole lot of Calvin Klein Studio – the smart, elevated new line of basics from the brand.
“I’m incredibly honoured and excited,” Skarsgård says. “I’d worked with Mert [Alas, campaign director and photographer] on something else years ago and had such a great time working with him as well. It’s very fun, and he works fast, so it’s a very energetic set, which fits me. It’s very fun and loose and really, really good energy, which I kind of fed off of in shooting the video.”
This is still Calvin Klein, but not quite as you know it. Sure, the brand’s iconic underwear and sexy vibe are still in place – see: shots of Skarsgård reclining in a chair or against a wall, shirt unbuttoned and gaze steadily on the camera – but for fall 2024, it’s with a new air of elegance and timelessness. It’s a smooth whiskey instead of an ice-cold beer, a freshly pressed suit that fits just right, a shirt so silky, you forget the word polyester exists.
The easy, versatile elegance is the sort that Skarsgård naturally gravitates toward; it has the same essence, he says, as the “sleek, classic” style he knows well. “Traditionally, Scandinavian style is kind of minimalistic, and I’d say very monochromatic and very understated, so I kind of grew up in that milieu,” he explains. “Calvin Klein is obviously not a Swedish brand, but it fits very well into that.”
But no matter how sleek, how cool, how refined an outfit is, every man, at some point in his life, comes to the same realization: If it’s not comfortable, it’s not going to work.
“I’m like a five-year-old when it comes to clothes,” Skarsgård says with a laugh. He tells me about an old, beautiful wool suit that hangs in his closet, haunting him. It fits great, and he loves how it looks, “but after five minutes, it’s itchy and it’s hot and I want to take it off.”
“I find it difficult to find something that you feel like you’ve dressed up in and you look sharp, but at the same time it’s comfortable enough for you to relax in, so you don’t feel like you can’t wait to take everything off,” he adds. To him, Calvin Klein Studio hits the nail on the head; even the slim-fit blazer and trousers have some stretch to them. “The material was like wearing a sweatsuit, basically.”
The only time he’s willing to step out of his literal comfort zone with clothes is when he’s working – and even then, he sometimes still finds himself in pieces from his own closet. When I remark that, of all his past roles, I’d most like to pilfer the outfits of Lukas Matsson, his unserious, freaky tech-billionaire character on Succession, I find out that I’m pretty much just asking to steal from Skarsgård’s wardrobe.
“In the end of season 3, when Logan and Roman go to Lukas’s villa, we were still trying to set the character and the tone of Lukas,” he reveals. “We hadn’t really nailed it down yet . . . and I showed up to set wearing what I ended up wearing on-camera, which was slacks, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. Those were all my personal pieces, because we wanted something to play as a contrast to the Roys, who wore super-expensive clothes and were very dressed up.”
Surely, every Succession fan knows and remembers the Roys’ understated, logo-less Loro Piana and Tom Ford looks. By the time the show ended, “quiet luxury” was seamlessly embedded in all our vocabularies. Matsson, on the other hand, was a walking advertisement for brands like Fjällräven and Needles, with logos and colors and textures all competing for the spotlight.
“I thought that’d be fun, to play a character who didn’t give a fuck and just wore slacks and flip-flops to a billion-dollar meeting,” Skarsgård says. “So I didn’t have to purchase that. Those outfits, they were already mine.”
With Skarsgård, avoiding excess is an ongoing trend. Even a lifestyle, if you will. He hosts the podcast How We Fix This, which highlights various ventures and practices aimed at sustainability, and he is clearly no stranger to the impact the fashion industry has on the environment. Instead of buying new clothes, he prefers to have a limited wardrobe with versatile options. Two suits, maybe three, tops – and to make the cut, they have to be comfortable, make him look good, and feel great.
“It’s not sustainable with fast fashion, where we’re incentivized to buy new pieces of clothing every single day and then throw them out and then buy new stuff,” he says. “I think it’s very important that when you go out to buy stuff, [you] buy stuff that you obviously love and you’re excited to come home and try on but [also] pieces that will last and sustain you. You want to build a relationship with those pieces, or at least I do. I love having stuff that I’ve worn for many years and that I have many memories from wearing.”
He doesn’t like the idea of having a brand-new outfit for every red carpet, either. “What signal does that send out to the public?” he asks. “It’s basically saying you can’t be seen in the same outfit more than once, which incentivises people to just go out and buy, buy, buy, which I can’t endorse.” Far preferable is putting on a blazer he wore to a premiere five, ten, fifteen years ago and reliving the experience. Creating a capsule wardrobe from pieces so good, so well-made, he can wear them and feel great until they “fall off [his] body and disintegrate.” Only then is it time to buy something new, then repeat the cycle until that piece reaches the end of its lifespan.
The key idea here is intention: investing in items that are timeless and high quality, that’ll last you for years to come, rather than trendy fast-fashion that’ll be deemed out in a month.
“I don’t want to shame people for purchasing, buying, shopping – I’m not saying that unless you only buy secondhand stuff, you’re a bad person and you’re ruining the planet,” Skarsgård says. “I’m just saying that I think we can, without shaming or stigmatising it, be a bit more aware of how we consume and how much we consume, and do it in a slightly more sustainable way than we’re used to.”
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