Let’s Raise a Glass to Willem Dafoe’s Wiseguy Collar

Willem Dafoe has spent a fair bit of his career around fictional organized crime. In 2003’s Once Upon a Time in Mexico, he played drug lord Armando Barillo. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, he was the extremely stabby hitman J.G. Jopling. And while he wasn’t technically a mobster in The Boondock Saints, he did play Paul Smecker, the FBI agent tasked with investigating a whole load of mafia-related malarkey. Basically, when it comes to method dressing, he’s got plenty of past roles to pull from. And yesterday, pull he did.The legendary actor was in Hollywood to celebrate Angélique Kidjo, the Beninese singer-songwriter who became the first African musician to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dafoe, who spoke at the ceremony, joined Kidjo and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. for the moment.JB LacroixFor the occasion, the Kinds of Kindness star wore some slick Celine shades and a green blazer over a black polo shirt. Sounds normal enough! Except the polo was left unbuttoned at the top and its collar was absolutely enormous. Rather than sitting neatly underneath his jacket, the two points were popped out and spread right across the blazer’s lapels.It was very Italian mobster. The sort of collar you’d expect to see in Goodfellas or Casino, likely accompanied by a gold chain, a pinky ring, and a guy who knows a guy (who knows a guy). Back in the ’70s, collars escaping over jacket lapels were just part of getting dressed—see basically any photo of guys like Al Pacino around the time of Serpico. Over the years they got smaller and stiffer and generally a lot less fun. Dafoe, apparently, has other ideas.The 71-year-old has a history of messing around with proportions. Two years ago, while exiting a junket for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, he wore an all-black fit finished with a teeny, tiny shrunken cardigan that looked like it had lost a fight with a tumble dryer.So perhaps this is Willem Dafoe's whole thing. Cardigans should be tiny. Collars should be massive. And somewhere in between, menswear gets a lot more interesting.This story originally appeared on British GQ.