Role Model Brought Cowboy Swagger to the UK in Our Favorite Everyman Brand

Whether you know him as Tucker Pillsbury or People‘s newly-minted Sexiest Man Alive centerfold, Role Model has been hard to miss this year. When he isn’t in head-to-toe Saint Laurent, the 28-year-old singer is prone to wearing vintage, the more patinated the better. But on the second night of his London show at Eventim Apollo, he ditched the luxury labels and moth-hole-ridden thrift gems for a who’s who of western classics from Buck Mason, America’s next great everyman brand.

Historically speaking, the UK might not boast the same legacy of cowboy exceptionalism as the US, but Role Model looked right at home sashaying across the stage in Buck Mason’s cropped work jacket, cotton-and-wool western shirt, and high-rise blue jeans, a cowboycore riff that skews less East Coast easy rider, more West Coast wrangler. It’s an aesthetic that’s worked for him for years, much to the delight of Instagram users like @rolemodeloufits, who meticulously document the Maine-born singer’s every stylistic swerve.

Role Model’s jeans should be of particular interest to denimheads on both sides of the pond. For the most part, Mr. Model sticks to vintage Levi’s and jeans with an ’80s-esque silhouette—higher rises, straighter legs—and as GQ visuals editor Bowen Fernie points out, he tends to look great in ’em. His Buck Mason joints are about as close to vintage as 21st-century denim gets, but you don’t have to put them through three cycles in the washer to get the musty smell out.

“Every detail affects how a pair of jeans ages over time, from the way they wash to how the whiskers develop within,” Buck Mason co-founder Sasha Koehn once told GQ. “We wanted to create jeans that didn’t just look like our favorite vintage references, but actually wore like them, too.” And unlike Sally, who’s susceptible to disappearing when the wine runs out, a great pair of jeans is forever.