Behind the Scenes of GQ’s Exclusive 2025 Men of the Year Dinner

On Thursday night at the Chateau Marmont, Quenlin Blackwell and How Long Gone were doing final mic checks on the red carpet for GQ’s Men of the Year 2025 as a spirited pregame got underway in the hotel’s famed Room 64 penthouse suite. “I promise we're going to have the fastest dinner you've ever had to keep things moving tonight,” GQ global editorial director Will Welch joked, raising a glass to this year’s Men of the Year cover stars, Stephen Colbert, Sydney Sweeney, Seth Rogen, Hailey Bieber, SZA, Oscar Isaac, and Pusha T and Malice of Clipse.

Presented by Capital One, the dinner brought together the many collaborators who appear in the pages of the 30th annual Men of the Year issue. Over cocktails on the terrace, Colbert embraced photographer Tyrell Hampton—who photographed all seven Men of the Year cover stories—before Hampton ran over to snap a pic of Bieber posing in her backless Gucci dress against a dusky Hollywood sunset. The theme of this year’s party was ’90s Hollywood red carpet, which Walton Goggins took seriously, pulling up in a dramatic black trench coat that he described as “a little Brad, a little Samuel L, a little Keanu.” As one of the era’s defining supermodels, Carolyn Murphy, who arrived with Men of the Year honoree Will Arnett, fit right in. By the bar, Rogen huddled with his The Studio co-star Chase Sui Wonders while Tom Ford creative director Haider Ackermann posed for pictures with Isaac and Patrick Schwarzenegger, both of whom were wearing his designs. “There's an elegance in everyone that I'm dressing, there's a gesture, there's a swag. And they make it their own,” Ackermann said.

While Goggins shared war stories from three decades of partying at the Chateau (the location of two of his own weddings), everyone took their seats. At their end of the table, Pusha T and Malice traded Grammy nom congratulations with SZA—and met her proud parents, who joined their daughter for dinner. Fresh off a flight from Stockholm, Alexander Skarsgård pulled up a chair next to Noah Baumbach just in time to catch Welch’s toast, where he spoke to the camaraderie and friendship that was filling the room: “We are professionals and we all know on a night this, it's like a content Olympics,” Welch said. “But I think and hope that the reason GQ is thriving after 68 years—and Men of the Year is at three decades—is because we try to do things a little differently, and try to take a community approach and actually get to know each other a little bit, and support each other and have it be an ongoing relationship.” In that spirit, the lively dinner commenced. The red carpet beckoned downstairs, but few of the guests were in a hurry to leave just yet.