The Whimsical Menswear in “Wonka” (2023)

This is a blog post that goes along with the most recent bonus pod! You can listen to the first 15 minutes of the bonus pod below, but you’ll have to subscribe on Patreon to get the RSS feed of the full episode (as well as access to our Discord). I remember when I first saw the initial photo of Timothée Chalamet playing a young Willy Wonka: a beaten top hat drawn down dramatically, shadows on Chalamet’s angular features, and a particularly whimsical, Victorian-esque outfit, all with Hollywood snow falling all around. It looked hilarious, another try-hard reboot that was completely unnecessary. Who the hell was asking for a Wonka origin story? And then, shortly before the movie was released, I found out that the damn thing was a musical. The infamous artsy and moody Hollywood fuckboi, fresh from his outing as Paul “Muad’Dib” Atreides, was now going to sing and dance while wearing a big velvet coat and a humorously large jaunty scarf. I was now incredibly intrigued. This was mainly…