Bonus post this weekend, because I felt like it.

From the heart soul dreams of an SSENSE sale. Photo: Screenshot.

I cannot pretend to know the mind of actor-writer-director-self-tanner Bradley Cooper. But I do have eyes, and those eyes have come across this outfit, and this recent Bradley Cooper outfit is all I can think about. (Oh! To see without my eyes! In the sense that I wish I didn’t see it, this outfit, the one that will haunt me for the rest of my days. Or at least until it’s warm.)

Cooper, whose movie Maestro is nominated for three Academy Awards, is dating and/or being photographed with the model Gigi Hadid. (Previously Hadid was appearing in the same sentences with Leonardo DiCaprio and not many other places — good for her.) Hadid and Cooper were first linked in October; this week they held hands in London. “Hadid, 28, and Cooper, 49, went for a casual stroll throughout the city streets on Thursday after jetting out of New York City together two days prior,” Page Six reported. “Despite being spotted out to dinner on numerous occasions, this is the first time the couple has shown any PDA.”

Gigi Hadid looks great — she is wearing her cashmere brand Guest in Residence’s loose pants, a Miu Miu bag, and a leather jacket. Bradley Cooper looks like he is the security detail in one of those movies about what happens when the president’s college-age daughter goes out with a normie, and also he looks like the president, and somehow also the normie.

I think of dressing like a math equation, which is a bit iconic considering how bad I am at math, particularly equations. Bradley Cooper’s outfit is like an improper fraction: a pea coat with cargo pants? And not regular cargo pants, or the IG girl cargo pants, but very Bush-era cargo pants (do I see a faint imprint of stars and stripes, around his upper thigh?). The jacket’s collar is half-popped, a scarf is tucked inside, but Cooper’s posture is distressingly tight and inflexible, like he’s locked in a defensive crouch.

The sunglasses-and-beanie combination is very Leonardo DiCaprio-core: to appear inconspicuous, a man dresses extremely conspicuously, and it only makes them look like they are robbing Giorgio Baldi of Rihanna’s used napkins. Not sunglasses or a hat, but sunglasses and a hat, both of such opposite proportions that his head looks like a circus tent.

I can imagine a market for this outfit: if you are hearing rumors in St. Petersburg at 12:30, and Terrence Malick cut you out of The Thin Red Line and you’re trying to make it back into the final cut before picture lock at 6 pm. I do not think either of those errands apply here.

I’m also not against other possibilities. Perhaps it is dark in the bedroom where Bradley Coooper dresses.

I hate broad proclamations like “the internet this” or “the internet that,” but the internet really does seem to be anti-Bradley Cooper in the way some people were anti-Anne Hathaway 10 years ago. There is a needling, striving, teacher’s pet quality about him, and Cooper doesn’t wear it as well as Jeremy Strong. If he wants to be relatable to regular guys who don’t date supermodels or are close personal friends with Lady Gaga, this outfit seems like a great start. Many straight men dress like this, unfortunately, and they should all stop.

Update, ~20 hours later: I said what I said … but now I’m starting to think … what if Bradley Cooper’s outfit here kinda tore?? The juxtaposition of patterns, the arrangement of textures, the frowny face, the embrace of the avant-garde. His hat of many colors (shades of blue). The peacoat is very London, the cargo pants scream Los Angeles, the face suggests Broken Arrow. This man will be swayed by no trend, is unmoved by every editorial. He dresses with a certain vivid imagination, an inspired dreaminess. What will he put in all those pockets? What’s he hiding under that hat? He is dressing to not win an Oscar. That’s the first relatable thing he’s ever done.

Update, ~7 hours after that: Never mind, ignore the above ^, I can’t be held accountable for what I said when I was hungry.