Adam Sandler Doesn’t Give a F*ck – and Neither Should You

The Academy Awards were just another Sunday night for Adam Sandler. Apart from his roles in recently nominated films like Hustle and Murder Mystery 2, Sandler has transcended beyond full-time actor and become an accidental fashion icon with his easygoing uniform, which at last night’s trophy show, included an Aviator Nation zip-up hoodie, a multicolored Hawaiian shirt, retro basketball shorts and a pair of Under Armour’s Curry 11s in January’s new “Championship Mindset” colorway.

While the actor stayed off the red carpet, show host Conan O’Brien catalyzed a staged bit with the hooded actor just a few minutes into the opening monologue, continuing the joke from last weekend’s Saturday Night Live 50 anniversary special – to which the actor suited up in a three-piece tuxedo and told Amy Schumer on the Red Carpet that his rare “stuns in a suit” moment is in fact “a terrible feeling.”  He continued: “Al Franken saw me in a sweatshirt last night, and he was like, ‘What are you doing?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t wanna let Al down.’ So I put a tux on.”

O’Brien took a similar stance as Franken, comparing his Sandler’s choice of attire to a “guy playing video poker at 2 a.m.”

“Nobody even thought about what I was wearing until you brought it up,” Sandler jabbed back at O’Brien’s staged quip from his aisle seat.

The actor’s outfit was the definition of peak “I don’t give a f*ck”-ness. As O’Brien said earlier in the monologue, “For such a prestigious night, it’s important that everyone is properly dressed.” Sandler was properly dressed – by no standards but his own – even though both his outfit and back-and-forth banter with O’Brien were written into the show’s script.

As the industry continues to champion personal style – alongside the recent rise of more “untraditional” method attire we’ve been seeing on the Red Carpet (shoutout Timothée Chalamet’s thematic A Complete Unknown press tour as Bob Dylan) – the Oscars prefers the traditional. In 2021, a leaked email from the Oscars producers revealed the show’s strong recommendations on dress code: “Formal is totally cool if you want to go there, but casual is really not.”

But, as Sandler’s Oscar’s outfit begs the question, in today’s era of the personal style push, who’s to say that someone else isn’t properly dressed?

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

“You know what, Conan? I like the way I look because I am a good person,” Sandler continued as his seatmates chuckled. “I don’t care about what I wear or what I don’t wear. My snazzy gym shorts and fluffy sweatshirt offended you so much that you had to mock me in front of my peers.” And he’s right: his light blue sweatshirt and colorblocked basketball shorts ultimately didn’t harm anyone – rather, his outfit likely evoked slight envy from his black-tie-abiding counterparts. Wouldn’t we all rather be comfy than corseted for a three-plus hour movie night – especially in today’s post-pandemic society?

Sandler’s lean toward loungewear at the awards show isn’t without precedent, however. Kanye West turned heads at the 2019 Met Gala – themed Camp: Notes on Fashion after Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay of the same name – when he showed up in a $34 black Dickies Eisenhower jacket to fashion’s favorite night. Similar to Sandler, Ye’s choice to go casual as opposed to opulent was a statement-making shrug off of aged-out industry standards and tired binary boundaries.

In a way, Sandler’s elevated errand-running garb actually looked camp directly in the eye, totally disregarding the on-paper dress code and, as a result, landing him atop an array of headlines this morning and making just as substantial of a splash as Bjork’s 2001 Oscar’s swan dress or Doja Cat’s 2019 Met Gala “wet” VETEMENTS dress.

Take it from Sandler himself, who headed out of the theater after the encounter with the parting words: “You are all welcome to join me for a game of five-on-five basketball at Veteran Park tonight, midnight.”