Men’s Method Dressing Will Never Be the Same After Alexander Skarsgård’s Pillion Press Tour

Alexander Skarsgård plays an aloof biker who sparks up a dom-sub relationship with an unassuming parking attendant in director Harry Lighton’s new BDSM dramedy, Pillion. But the actor’s appetite for kink doesn’t stop at the script. On the press tour, Skarsgård has leaned into a different kind of power play, deploying fashion that feels equal parts dominant, deliberate, and faintly perverse. Though the film will finally hit American cinemas on February 6th, we’re still left begging for more.

Although Skarsgård has always had an appetite for outré red carpet dressing (once, he got dog-walked by Mia Goth), the seeds of Pillion style were planted at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where the film had its debut. The actor stepped out to a photo call already in daddy-dom mode: he wore leather trousers with a graphic tee depicting someone being stomped with a boot. (The cheeky item is by Magliano, an Italian brand that Skarsgård would turn to multiple times throughout the tour).

Then came the pinnacle of Skarsgård’s stay in Cannes. At the Pillion premiere, he wore a Saint Laurent tuxedo jacket—standard, right? Well not so fast. Instead of pants, the actor slipped on a pair of slouchy leather boots that went all the way up to his thighs.

“I was inspired by the guys in the film,” Skarsgård later told W of his Cannes premiere look. “The GBMCC, Gay Bikers Motorcycle Club in the U.K., whose members are in the film, came to the premiere in Cannes wearing their gear, including their harnesses. One guy brought his pup mask. It just felt boring showing up in a regular black tuxedo. I wanted to bring a little leather to the carpet.”

For decades now, the menswear landscape on the red carpet has centered on prim-and-proper suiting. Skarsgård’s leading man style has proposed something entirely different. Sure, he’s method dressing by nodding to the Queer subcultures represented in the film. But the actor, who has teamed up with the celebrity stylist Harry Lambert for the tour, is also just having plain fun with getting dressed.

Skarsgård crowning moment came at the film’s London premiere in October. Not only did he wear a cut-off and backless Ludovic de Saint Sernin blouse and a pair of leather pants, with eyelet-trimmed laces running up the crotch, he also cuddled Maggie the Dog (a Rottweiler that appears in the film) and posed with various members of the cast, some in full pup regalia.

Boys, in a sea of stuffy suiting, consider Skarsgård Pillion style your permission slip: let your fashion freak fly.