Getting dressed with Ryan Gosling

The July sun sets slowly over Beverly Hills and Simon House, a 1956 mid-century modern home built by architect Howard Frank and positioned to open onto views of the Pacific Ocean glimpsed in the far distance. Sat out front, Ryan Gosling recalls something that happened many years ago, and many miles away from California.

It was when growing up around Ontario, in the eastern centre of Canada, that Gosling witnessed the metamorphic power of clothing, of putting on a costume. “I remember, probably the reason why I am in this job, or in this business is that one day, my uncle came home and decided he was going to be an Elvis impersonator,” the actor said. “And it started with him bedazzling this eagle onto the back of a white jumpsuit.”

Gosling, whose mother worked as a secretary while his father was employed as a travelling salesman for a paper mill, was born in London, Ontario and raised between the province’s cities of Cornwall and Burlington. “I am from a paper mill town, my dad worked in a paper mill and the men in my family worked in a paper mill – a white jumpsuit with a bedazzled eagle on it was quite a striking thing to see,” he said. “But, it was transformative. It really kind of changed, it empowered him to become this character.”

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And it struck a chord with Gosling. “I think I saw then just how powerful clothes could be,” he surmised. It’s something, a manoeuvre perhaps that has continued to play a role in the actor’s own career, which began in 1993 with his casting for The Mickey Mouse Club. “[Clothes] are so helpful.”

‘Analogue hero in a digital world’

A white satin souvenir-style jacket, a pair of black motorcycle trousers, a navy pyjama shirt detailed with white piping, many white T-shirts, their sleeves rolled up: a list of everyday items of clothing that Gosling has previously worn – respectively in his role as a Hollywood stunt driver in 2011 success Drive, as Luke Glanton in The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), on the red carpet in Cannes and in real life, snapped on city streets around the world – and that have since become emblematic of a career prized for its diversity of roles and projects.

How much, I ask Gosling, is he involved in building a character’s wardrobe? “You know, at this point, very,” he said. “I worked very closely with designers.” Most recently, this included fine-tuning what Six, the prisoner turned CIA agent Gosling plays in The Gray Man, should wear while being chased around the world by a rogue operative. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, based on a novel by Mark Greaney and history-making before its Hollywood premiere as the most expensive release ever released by Netflix, The Gray Man is also “a pretty extreme action film”, as Gosling puts it.

“I think my character’s style is very practical,” Gosling said of Six. “All the choices he makes are very pragmatic. They are about survival. You know, he just wants to have a normal life and be a normal guy and he kind of got sucked into this. He is pulled out of prison and these are his choices: he can die in jail, or die as a spy. He chooses this because it is a way to live a little before he dies. So, everything that he wears in the movie, aside from his watch, is something that he hasn’t really chosen, it’s been chosen for him.”

And so, Gosling and the film’s wardrobe department are set to work. Matching scenes with outfits brought to light surprising inspirations. He was after, “things that I kind of just saw in my day-to-day life”, he said. “There is a section in the film where I am on the run and I am trying to go grey.” Gosling details to give an example of their making of Six. What item of clothing would be inconspicuous enough to let a hunted spy disappear? The answer came in the shape of a two-piece zip-up tracksuit, casual workout wear Gosling previously spotted a member of the film’s team wear. “And the track suit came from my stunt coordinator, [who] has a martial arts school in Orange County and that’s their school track suit,” Gosling said. “So, I just asked them whether I could wear it in the film.”

An “analogue hero in a digital world”, is how Gosling defines Six. “He does not have tech, he does not have gadgets,” said the 42-year-old. “He has pragmatism, human ingenuity and a sense of humour. That’s all he’s got in his bag of tricks. I think that makes him different.” Albeit somewhat low-fi, the one tool Six possesses is a wristwatch.

‘Always elegant, there and working’

Spotted throughout the film: a Carrera Three Hands by Swiss heritage make TAG Heuer. It was in October 2021 that Gosling was announced as its latest brand ambassador. A first for Gosling, the partnership is familiar territory for TAG Heuer. Now steered by its CEO Frédéric Arnault, the brand, which was founded in 1860, has long been linked to luminaries of motorsport, tennis, big wave surfing or the entertainment industries. “No pun intended,” Gosling said. “It came at the right time. I had just had kids and time was something that I thought a lot about.”

The Carrera Three Hands, an automatic watch with a 39mm steel case, sapphire caseback and silver sunray brushed dial, is available with a black alligator leather or a steel band. At TAG Heuer, this is an important model: the Carrera, which is christened after the daredevil Carrera Panamericana road races across Mexico of the early 1950s and was debuted in 1963, is one of three key designs by Jack Heuer. “It’s very sturdy,” Gosling said. “It has to go through a lot. I get into car crashes, a plane explodes, a train explodes. You know, it has to be a watch that can take a lot.”

Then, a question about the root of Gosling’s awareness of TAG Heuer takes him back to his youth in Canada, once more. Had he seen the brand’s watches growing up? “I don’t know that I saw one as a kid, you know? But I do remember a really amazing campaign that they had, these amazing photographs of an Olympic swimmer swimming next to a shark. Or people playing rugby on the edge of a cliff. Very arresting.”

Arresting too is the sequence of international sets in The Gray Man, through which Gosling and the cast run, jump, drive or helicopter. Gosling’s – or Six’s – wardrobe adapts to all. “I start in a red suit, I move into a tracksuit and I end up in this acid wash look with track pants and combat boots,” Gosling said. “But, the watch stays the same. It’s always elegant, there and working.”