He doesn't know it, but Andrew Garfield and I have been competing with each other since we were born
I don't mind that he's winning – it's actually inspirational
By 
FUN FACT – Andrew Garfield and I share a birthday. This astrological quirk of timing means little, if anything, other than an inevitable, occasional game of comparison. We’re also almost the same height (I have an inch on him, which I mention because it is the only category I seem to be winning in). Most of the time, the game is easy to ignore. Then Wimbledon happened.
When Garfield arrived at the courts last weekend – head-to-toe in ice-blue Ralph Lauren, mahogany loafers, an unreleased IWC Ingenieur on his wrist (breaking embargo without concern is a serious flex) and that hair (honestly, if the rumours of a discreet trip to Turkey are true, make him the poster boy) – the comparison game went up a notch.
I may be taller, but Garfield’s natural panache (and I repeat, that hair) has leapt lightyears ahead. Honestly, if I had my picture taken and I looked like that, you couldn’t tell me shit.
At 42, Garfield delivers a strong argument for allowing your style to evolve, and to keep experimenting while it does. As an actor he has the professional excuse of roles for adopting new looks, but the through-line of the past five years suggests genuine appetite rather than obligation.
During his 2022 awards run for tick, tick… BOOM! he and stylist Warren Alfie Baker leaned hard into Saint Laurent: a velvet suit with a gold metallic-thread shirt at the Critics Choice Awards, then a double-breasted burgundy velvet evening jacket at the Oscars. By 2024, he was in custom Valentino from the Alessandro Michele era for the We Live In Time premiere at the London Film Festival, all louche ’70s proportions. At the 2025 Oscars it was a custom brown Gucci suit with a silk shirt and sunglasses, worn like a man arriving at Cannes in 1974.
Which brings us back to the hair. Who knew that Farrah Fawcett waves would give Garfield the kind of ’70s rockstar appearance most men privately wish they could pull off? Worn loose at Wimbledon, it turned a smart-casual summer outfit into something closer to an album cover.
And Wimbledon…Garfield has form here. At one of last year’s games, it was head-to-toe cream one day and a slate grey, double-breasted ensemble the next. The appeal of this approach is partly practical – if everything is the same colour, nothing can clash – but on Garfield, it reads more as a man who has worked out exactly what suits him and, more importantly, doesn’t complicate it.
And here is where the first-person accounting gets less flattering. Garfield has also maintained a svelte waistline into his forties; a fondness for beer and a great (read: greasy) pizza has added some inches to mine. He has that hair; I have resigned myself to the fact that the only picture I need to show my barber is Jason Statham.
We were born on the same day, and somewhere along the line the ledger split just a bit.
But that’s the useful thing about watching a man your exact age dress this well. It removes the excuse. There is no template here for how a 42-year-old is supposed to dress – whatever that means anymore – only a man still visibly interested in the question. The suits get browner, the hair gets longer, the watches get rarer, and none of it looks remotely like a crisis.
Later this year he starts press tours for The Uprising and Artificial, which means more carpets, more fittings, more data for the comparison game. I’ll be watching from the couch. Most likely still with a good IPA in hand, obviously.
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