DEAR CLEMENTINE: Why did Chalamet and Jenner wear matching orange? | Timothée Chalamet

WWhen Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet and media mogul and businesswoman Kylie Jenner showed up at the premiere of his new movie Marty Supreme in Los Angeles this week, they looked like they were being tanned.

Dressed head-to-toe in bright orange outfits made by Los Angeles-based brand Chrome Hearts, they sparked strong reactions online. “Now I’ve confirmed there’s a lot of orange,” one person said on Reddit.

According to Jenai Phillips, a trend forecaster and founder of the Fashion Tingz newsletter, it “seems like a very deliberate exercise in curated vision. Modern couples’ clothing isn’t just about a coordinated look; it’s a semiotic performance.”

For fashion psychologist, Dr. Dion Terrelong, “When a couple wears the same clothes, they may consciously or unconsciously signal the strength of their bonds and interconnectedness… The question is, why a couple might feel the need to signal the status of their relationship to those outside it.”

His and her matching outfits are nothing new. Zoe Kravitz and Harry Styles were recently spotted wearing similar beige-on-gray outfits. However, dressing for couples is arguably more fun when it comes to gold or purple: David and Victoria Beckham’s matching purple at their wedding is etched on the nation’s retinas. Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake famously did this with their denim collection. Then there’s the bold tailoring of Elton John and David Furnish, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, and suit-loving Gilbert and George.

Looking further, Sonny and Cher had fun matching bell bottoms, fringes, and fur. The fruitful creative partnership between John Lennon and Yoko Ono and compatible values ​​sometimes found expression in military clothing or head-to-toe white.

“When couples in joint projects wear the same clothes, they are kind of saying that they are not only internally connected, but that they are co-producing them as well,” Terrelong said.

Phillips cited other historical examples of couples dressing alike. “During the Golden Age of Hollywood, famous duos such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton used coordinating outfits to… project an ideal of glamor and cohesion, effectively presenting themselves as one overall ‘brand’.”

Couple dressing up isn’t just for the entertainment industry. In Hemingway’s half-finished, posthumously published novel The Garden of Eden, the couple’s style merges into a shared uniform of fisherman’s shirts and canvas shoes. Hair is cut to match; Their aesthetics mirror each other while playing with gender roles. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda were also photographed in matching outfits.

“In these eras, couples’ clothing constantly occupied the space between intimacy and performance, functioning as both personal expression and public narrative,” Phillips said.

As for today’s similarly dressed celebrity couples, Phillips believes that “the motivations have changed: in the early 2000s, the emphasis was on conspicuous cohesion…to assert power, status and public visibility.” Today’s approach is “conceptually driven, and often social media-conscious,” she says. Brand is also a key driver.

Marianne Johnson, UKCP’s relationship specialist, distinguishes between celebrity and non-celebrity couples who both dress up. “As a celebrity couple, you may share a love of being in the spotlight…it’s a creative and relatable thing for a couple.” While “on the non-celebrity front, I think couples often influence each other’s style.”

When non-celebrity couples intentionally dress alike, it tends to generate interest, at least in the West. But it is common in some non-Western cultures. In South Korea, for example, it’s called the Ku-byul look, where couples dress alike to show their love or promote closeness.

“Psychologically, matching or repeating each other’s clothing can indicate a feeling of unity and be a non-verbal way of saying, ‘We share a world together,'” Johnson said. “We naturally mirror the people we feel close to, and clothing is one of the most obvious ways a reflection can appear.”

But even for non-celebrities, Phillips noted, “it’s often a personal brand, an image of the couple that they want the world to embrace.”

“It wasn’t all calculated marketing,” she said. “There’s still an intimate dimension: the joy of synchronicity, the playful coordination, or the visual expression of a relational identity. Brand and authentic expression coexist.”

Whether you see this particular couple wearing orange as a beautiful expression of togetherness or as a cynical marketing ploy, it may be accurate. But there’s a wonderful simplicity in one user’s opinion about the X: “They both look like oranges.”