DEEP DIVE

Has Luke Evans Ever Buttoned Up His Shirt All the Way?

Thirst trapping 101.


Versace - Front Row - Milan Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019
Jacopo Raule/Getty Images

There are a few things you need to know about Luke Evans—he’s Welsh, he stars on an Emmy-nominated television show called The Alienist and will star in a handful of prestige drama films next year, he loves to attend events with fashion royalty on his arm (he brought Donatella Versace and Naomi Campbell as his dates to the Tate Modern and the BAFTAs, respectively), he went blond once, he is a frequent flyer who likes to wear Airpods, he loves animals, and he never buttons up his shirt all the way.

This information cavalcade was brought to the public’s attention by none other than Evans’s habit of sharing little slices of insight into his life via Instagram. But the times Evans has appeared in public wearing a button-down shirt with the buttons left half undone probably outnumber the amount of times he has fastened those buttons all the way up to the top (or, at least, that appears to be the case based on the photos he has shared on Instagram, where there are plenty of instances of his half-bare chest on display). It does not matter if he is at a fashion show, on a boat, eating breakfast, or in the back of a car—if the shirt on Evans’s back has buttons, it is going to remain half undone.

The half-buttoned shirt is not at all a bad look for Evans, and pretty much every photo and video on the actor’s Instagram is standard fare for a celebrity of his status—except when it comes to his mysterious captions. In August, the actor employed a baffling turn of phrase in an Instagram post, and hours have been spent attempting to get to the bottom of the meaning behind it.

Give yourself more than five minutes to unpack this image of Evans carrying a larger-than-life black umbrella while wearing a crisp, white, half-unbuttoned (of course) shirt in Italy. Then try to think about what this caption could possibly mean. Sure, it probably has something to do with Evans’s upcoming Netflix movie, Murder Mystery, starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler, and that’s likely why he ended this caption with a hashtag naming the film, but besides that, there is just no use in trying to comprehend what Evans means when he says, “Some people walk in the rain…..others get wet…” Is this some sort of attempt at sharing with his one million followers an inside witticism crafted by his Murder Mystery costars? Is it just a straight-up bad dad joke he made to comment on the extreme size of his luxe umbrella? Does he have an obsession with parasols? It is not exactly a familiar idiom, and it is doubtful that you will reach a logical conclusion trying to figure out the story behind this expression Evans made up for the ’gram.

But the most important thing to know about Evans, aside from the facts that he is an actor with a passion for vacation dad fashion (hence the half-buttoned shirts and porkpie hats) and might have a slight obsession with joking about umbrellas, is that he is “Happy. Just happy.” Try to name someone more committed to spreading peace (he loves the word) and positivity on their Instagram account in these dark times and you will likely be hard-pressed to come up with a name. Witnessing his lively vacation thirst traps and love for animals is the best part of following him online.

Whether the expression “Some people walk in the rain…..others get wet…” is nonsense or a genius analysis that has gone over the heads of many, and whether he ever starts buttoning up his shirts all the way, peace shall be with him too.

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