One wouldn’t anticipate finding a Greatest Actor nominee strolling down Sundown Boulevard the morning of the 2025 Oscars. However, Colman Domingo began his day with a fast exercise and a haircut from Chaz Hazlitt earlier than pulling on sweatpants and heading out the door of The Pendry Resort in West Hollywood.
“What higher place than to go for a pleasant stroll? There’s been many goals which were achieved—and many who have failed—on Sundown Boulevard. So I believed I’d simply stroll the place dreamers stroll and take all of it in,” Domingo tells Vogue over the telephone. “I prefer to take a second for gratitude, my previous, all that was constructed to be right here, after which look in the direction of the longer term. To me, that at all times includes strolling.”
Domingo celebrated his second consecutive Academy Award nomination along with his function in Sing Sing. (Final yr, he was nominated in the identical class for Rustin.) To mark the momentous event, he turned to Alessandro Michele, who usual him a customized Valentino go well with. Domingo has turn into one thing of a Valentino man recently, sporting Alessandro Michele’s designs a number of instances all through awards season. Whereas the 2024 Academy Gala, 2025 Palm Springs Worldwide Movie Competition, and DGA Awards noticed extra outré seems, Michele additionally put his stamp on traditional purple carpet dressing for the 2025 Golden Globes and SAG Awards.
The method of making Domingo’s Oscars look started with Michele’s sketches, which the actor describes as “excessive power, impactful vogue moments.” Collaboration ensues. “[Valentino] exhibits me what they’re excited by, after which myself and my stylists, Wayman + Micah, we become involved,” Domingo says. “We do some enhancing and we actually began to do some storytelling.” For the 97th Academy Awards, Domingo felt particularly moved to put on the colour purple.
“It felt like every part’s arising roses. It felt like love. The factor that I really feel like I’m talking about greater than something—greater than course of, greater than moments of achievements—I’m speaking about [how] to be resilient and to carry love power right into a room,” he says. “What higher coloration than that traditional Valentino purple? In order that they got here again with some extra sketches and Alessandro leaned into that.”
Valentino took the temporary to coronary heart, making a tailor-made, double-breasted jacket in purple shantung silk over an identical shirt with a guru collar and black frog neck closure. He completed the look with black wool trousers and a tasseled belt. Domingo’s equipment had been simply as high-octane: he added classic Boucheron jewellery and a customized diamond-encrusted Omega watch. “Everybody has actually come round to actually assist me inform a very good story. I’m feeling like my greatest self,” he says.
