Chace in Esquire Magazine - August 2010
Jeremy Langmead
Studiously casual and effortlessly cool, Manhattan's Upper East Siders have got insouciant style locked down. Who better than the debonair Chace Crawford, king of the Wasps in girlfriends' favourite Gossip Girl, to illustrate how it's done.
You might not be familiar with Gossip Girl, but chances are your girlfriend knows all about it. It's a US TV series that follows the troubles and travails of a bunch of well-cred, well-dressed New York Upper East Siders whose shenanigans involve everything from bed-hopping and pill-popping to blackmail and kidnap.
It's all dealt with in a palatable palette of designer clothes and luxurious locations. Oh, and obviously, everyone in it - female or male - is extraordinary good-looking.
Nate Archibald - the show's Waspy hight-school graduate who flits between two beautiful heiresses - is played by the despicably handsome Chace Crawford. This 25-year-old Texan actor should be utterly dislikeable: female fans fought over him in London as he left a Mayfair nightclub recently; his floppy fringed hairstyle has been emulated by teenage boys all over the world (it rivals R-Patz's when it comes to hair headlines); he gets to hang out in the front row of fashion shows; and he gets to shag (or at least pretend to shag) his very beautiful co-star, Blake Lively.
Try as we might, Esquire was unable to make him look even remotely ugly in the pictures for this fashion story, and however unpleasant we were during the interview, Crawford remained charming, witty and personable. He even said Esquire was his favourite men's magazine: "Because of the success of the show, I've paid more attention to the way I dress and have developed my sense of style. And Esquire has helped me with that," he says.
Although his character mainly gets to don preppie clothes, chosen by the show's stylist Eric Daman, Crawford is finding out the labels that work for him. "I like Ralph Lauren Rugby, John Varvatos - he's really bad-ass - Diesel jeans, and I wear a slim-fitting, one-button black suit from Dolce & Gabbana. And I'm really getting into watches." He's sporting a giant Panerai for the shoot, and wears and IWC Big Pilot in the show. "Next up, I want to get an Audemars Piguet. I'll have to see if they'll do a deal."
Although visiting celebrities always like to say how much they like being in London, Crawford seems to have sussed out the places in the capital that work for him. "I usually stay at the Dorchester, or the Soho Hotel, and my favourite place to eat is the Punch Bowl in Mayfair [co-owned by Guy Ritchie]. Oh, and there's somewhere called the Troubadour. I saw The Killers do a jam session there. It was hot, sweaty and brilliant."
Fortunately, Crawford enjoys a drink and is becoming something of a connoisseur: a single malt such as Macallan 15; a few shots of Don Eduardo tequila; or a Ketel One and soda when he needs "to drink clean". It looked as if he'd had more than a few of those when, the night before Esquire's photo shoot, he was papped coming out of Mahiki and climbing into a car with a bevy of determined looking blondes. It appeared greedy fitting so many girls into one car in one night, I point out. "Honestly, the truth is," explains Crawford, "that I met a friend of my sister's there for a drink and as we were leaving these other girls just followed us into the taxi uninvited. It was kind of awkward, with the photographers and everything there, to chuck them out and so we drove around the corner and then politely asked them to leave."
The actor is in town to promote his first movie since hitting the big time with Gossip Girl. Directed by Joel Schumacher of St Elmo's Fire and Falling Down fame, Twelve is dakr story about a new designer drug that infiltrates the uptown party set - a kind of New York version for the recently banned miaow miaow. Crawford, who co-stars with 50 Cent, describes the film as a Less Than Zero for a younger generation. The budget was low, the whole shoot lasted only 23 days, and Crawford had to lose weight and "pale up" to play an educated drug dealer whose life takes a tragic wrong turn.
His life, meanwhile, only seems to be taking the right ones - apart from a recent arrest in Texas when police discovered a joint in his car, Otherwise, the hardest thing he has to contend with is the unbearable weight of being so darned good-looking - something he says he only recently became truly aware of. "Some of my friends now are a bit funny when I'm hanging out with them and their girlfriends. They just give that look that says: 'Chace, don't even try.' They've no reason not to trust me, but they still give me that look." Yep, we know the feeling - it's really tough.