The Weeknd Is the Absolute Master of Monochromatic Fits

In the months leading up to the official release of After Hours, The Weeknd's fourth studio album, the Canadian singer born Abel Tesfaye debuted a dramatic new look. In late 2019, the pop star put in an appearance at the Toronto Film Festival sporting a mustache that inspired memes (and some truly excellent bachata remixes) online, and in anticipation of the album's release he dialed the '80s inspiration up a notch. When Tesfaye made the late show rounds in early 2020 to perform a medley of chart-topping singles, he started turning up in an outfit intended to mark a shift in The Weeknd's aesthetic identity, a stylistic evolution of the character that lives within the richly-textured XO universe he's carefully built out since the start of his career.

The After Hours persona Tesfaye introduced—a bruised, bloodied degenerate stumbling through the streets in a strong-shouldered crimson blazer, black shirt, black tie, and precisely-cut black trousers—played into the album's overarching cinematic narrative and slick, sometimes ominous sound. But it also riffed on a uniform that's long been a crucial component of Tesfaye's personal style. The singer's been wearing variations of the almost-all-black fit for years, and, as with any of his signature fluttery vocal flourishes, when he puts his effort into perfecting an element of his identity he tends to deliver—big time.

With his penchant for boxy, slightly oversized jackets, slim jeans, sleek high-tops, and leather combat boots, Tesfaye has long used his wardrobe (almost always involving head-to-toe black) to help augment the brooding, darkly sexy public persona he's cultivated as The Weeknd. At awards shows he doesn't stray too far from his comfort zone, opting instead to keep it classic in trim tailoring—heavy on the black, naturally—that always looks event-appropriate. There's something to be said (there is, in fact, a lot to be said) for finding what works for you and then sticking to it, and taken in the context of his previous personae, the singer's After Hours uniform is a decidedly excellent continuation of an aesthetic he's spent years refining.

In light of Tesfaye's recent turn as an Esquire cover star, we thought it only fitting to pay tribute to his masterful commitment to monochromatic dressing by taking a look back at some of his best blacked-out fits, courtesy of the musician and often delightfully absurdist tweeter who remains, as Allison P. Davis aptly dubbed him, the "modern bard of our most fucked-up times."