When Hailey Bieber strutted into the Chateau Marmont on Thursday night, all eyes followed. Which is not an unfamiliar dynamic when the Rhode rainmaker enters a room, even one populated almost exclusively by other famous people, as was the case as GQ’s 30th annual Men of the Year party got underway at an intimate dinner in the Chateau’s famed Room 64. The dinner included the night’s headliners: Bieber plus her fellow Men of the Year cover stars Stephen Colbert, Sydney Sweeney, Seth Rogen, SZA, Oscar Isaac, and Pusha T and Malice of Clipse.
Still, in this town, heads don’t usually whip around at warp speed for anyone. But you could feel the moment register for everyone at once when dusk fell over Sunset Boulevard and Bieber, dirty martini in hand, stepped out onto the penthouse terrace wearing a beaded black Gucci gown—custom-made for her by Demna, she said—with an open back that revealed a bedazzled G-string. Someone had clearly studied the invite: In a nod to 30 years of Men of the Year, the evening’s dress code was ’90s Hollywood Red Carpet. And Bieber was setting the bar stratospherically high with her homage to the polarizing Tom Ford-era Gucci thong that would have broken the internet (had social media existed) when it rocked the runway in 1996.
Soon, the dinner crowd piled into the elevators to head downstairs for the main event in the hotel that garnished its reputation as a scandalous society playground in—guess when?—the ’90s. Before Jake Lenderman (aka MJ Lenderman) packed the lobby for a wistful rendition of ’90s Counting Crows anthem “A Long December,” he admitted that he’d never played in front of so many famous people.
Noted Walton Goggins, who started haunting the Chateau halls in ’94 or so, “There is no place that holds the psyche, that holds the memories in Los Angeles like the Chateau Marmont. It belongs to the ages…I have stayed in maybe 25 of these rooms, but I never checked in as a guest, ever, until a couple of years ago,” he added with a wink behind his dark Neo-esque shades.
Every lap of the party was like an exercise in pop culture Mad Libs. Hailey Bieber linked up with Kendall Jenner and Tyriq Withers near the caviar bar in the garden; Offset confabbed with fellow ATLien Young Thug; Noah Baumbach posted up at the bar with Alexander Skarsgaard; Amelia Gray squealed as she ran up on Gabriette, Zack Bia, and Iris Law; Nettspend fanned out with Shaboozey and Alton Mason; Kun dominated the dancefloor; Pusha T waded through a crowd of admirers (including Anderson .Paak and A$AP Ferg) to dap up André 3000, who was kicking it with a skater crowd of Tyshawn Jones and Evan Mock; the cast of I Love LA passed out shots to everyone in their exuberant orbit.
Eventually, everyone tumbled outside into the garden, the Gen-Z River Phoenixes crowding by the bar as a quizzical John C. Reilly, black bowler cap perched on his head, looked on.
“Man,” he said, “I thought the theme was 1890s!” —Samuel Hine
Click here to read the rest of GQ’s coverage of Men of the Year 2025.
