If you’re driving in Los Angeles these days, there’s a good chance you’ll see the back of Paul Anthony Kelly’s head. In this town, billboards for Love Story, FX’s hit series chronicling the romance of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette—starring Kelly as America’s first son—tower on seemingly every corner. “They’re everywhere,” Kelly says. “It feels amazing. It’s proof that we did it. We made it.”
By Christian Högstedt.
And after you’ve made it in Hollywood, there’s only one place to go: Vanity Fair’s annual Oscar Party. While getting ready for the event at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Oscar Sunday, Kelly tells me that he’s a little overwhelmed to attend for the first time. “But I’m ready,” he says. “I’m ready to just go hang out with everybody and say what’s up and congratulate people.”
There is one problem with his plan, though: Kelly, who’s been doing a nonstop press blitz since before his show debuted, recently lost his voice. At a time when he has to rely on being seen more than being heard, what he’s wearing is of utmost importance. And luckily, he’s being dressed for the VF party by famed menswear designer Bruno Cucinnelli.
Rather than going with a classic black penguin suit, Kelly and his team, which consists of stylist Warren Alfie Baker and his groomer Jessica Ortiz, put a fun twist on the archetype by sporting a chestnut-brown dinner jacket. “It’s a shawl one and a half-breasted tux that’s this kind of light brown, blushy tone,” he gently croaks to me. Along with the “Marron Glacé” jacket, Kelly will also be sporting an American 1921 Vacheron Constantin watch, “a beautiful, beautiful piece of horology.”
