Just days after performing his heart out at the Oscars, Ryan Gosling is, once again, on the campaign trail—this time for his upcoming film The Fall Guy. The movie has been in the works for the past four years, and at SXSW yesterday, fans were finally treated to a sneak preview of what’s to come (a lot of explosions, as it turns out). But something else caught everyone’s attention at the screening: the Barbie star’s jacket.
Gosling wore a classic white T-shirt beneath a denim jacket and jeans—a fitting and stylish nod to his Canadian heritage. And over all that, he layered a crisp nylon varsity jacket—a movie merch varsity jacket no less.
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It was a stylish new spin on a tried-and-tested blockbuster marketing tool. Look to any Instagram moodboard, and you’ll find countless shots of famous actors and filmmakers in promotional gear: Quentin Tarantino in an Inglourious Basterds bomber, Steven Spielberg in an ET trucker cap, and, yes, Ryan Gosling in a Greta Gerwig Barbie T-shirt. The guy has a history of taking part in this sort of media set piece. But the last time Gosling pushed a movie-related jacket, it sent a million fanboys into meltdown and took on a life of its own IRL: we’re speaking, of course, of the scorpion jacket from Drive. Just last year, GQ‘s very own Jack King talked to the guys who still wear it, with one individual highlighting Gosling’s intoxicating stardom as the reason he picked up the Drive jacket in the first place.
Granted, Gosling’s Fall Guy jacket isn’t quite as hype-y as the costume of a menacing but handsome hitman. Or at least not yet, anyway. With solid early reviews and a high-octane energy that hearkens back to massive ’90s hits, this rare bit of merch might soon land on the wishlists of eBay grail hunters everywhere.
The merch market is big—and it’s growing even bigger. According to a recent report by Business Research Insights, it was valued at just over $29 billion in 2022, and by 2030, it’s projected to skyrocket to around $128 billion.
And as far as turbocharging the desirability of movie merch is concerned, nobody does it better than Ryan Gosling. The Drive jacket might just have found its sequel.
This story originally appeared on British GQ with the title ‘Ryan Gosling is attempting to one-up that infamous Drive jacket’
