Three years ago, Tramell Tillman hatched a long-term plan to be invited to the Met Gala.
He would turn heads in a superfine suit at New York Fashion Week. Capitalize on being cast in a buzzy role in the enigmatic Apple TV+ thriller “Severance.” Take a walk through the New York Botanical Garden for a soul-baring profile. Land a part in the latest “Mission: Impossible” film.
So when this spring the invitation arrived in the inbox of his stylist, Chaise Dennis, “he shared his screen with me so I could see he wasn’t lying,” Mr. Tillman said in a phone call from Los Angeles on Saturday.
“I was on the verge of tears,” said the actor, 39, who stars as the cheerfully menacing manager Seth Milchick in “Severance.”
And then came the big question: What should he wear?
Selecting a designer was easy: Thom Browne, whose designs he had previously worn while promoting Season 2 of “Severance” in London. But when it came to the look for this occasion, said Mr. Tillman, who grew up the youngest of five in what he calls a “stylish” family in Largo, Md., he wanted to be intimately involved in its creation.
He took inspiration from a production of the Tyla Abercrumbie play “Relentless,” which he saw in Chicago in 2022. The show is set in 1919 and tells the story of two Black sisters’ discovery of their late mother’s diaries, which reveal secrets about their family’s past in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The play also introduced him to the stories of Black artists like the actor Ira Aldridge and the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
With his look, he really wanted to lean into the “opulence and regality” of that era, he said, “and, in a beautiful way, through fashion, honor the lives of these humans that we don’t hear about often.”
The ensemble centers on a pinstriped black velvet tailcoat, worn with a black silk cummerbund, a striped oxford shirt and a black silk bow tie. Elongated coattails complete a look composed of more than 18,000 beads that took 300 hours to embroider by hand.
From Mr. Browne’s perspective, Mr. Tillman was an ideal collaborator.
“It was a nice conversation with Tramell because he’s very intelligent, and the way he appreciates and approaches these things is as a true pro,” Mr. Browne, 59, said in phone conversation from his New York office on Sunday, where he was finishing up fittings for the 22 stars he will dress this year.
For Mr. Tillman, whose interest in fashion has grown over the years, how he dresses is inextricably linked to how he understands his identity, whether in real life or onscreen.
“Every piece of clothing has its own form of storytelling,” he said. “For instance, with Milchick, how he’s dressed is very specific to how his character presents himself.”
So what would his “Severance” character think of his Met Gala look?
Mr. Tillman laughed.
“I think he would be positively agog,” he said.
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
The post Tramell Tillman’s Arrival at the Met Was Years in the Making appeared first on New York Times.
