‘It never crossed my mind that I could positively influence people,’ he adds. But what he wasn’t prepared for was the positive side the scores of parents thanking him for ‘being a positive role model just by being myself’. There was, he concedes, inevitable negativity on social media.
But even if it had been, if I’d seen a skirt and pulled it on, it is what it is.’ The irony of it was that it wasn’t a skirt. ‘So when the cover came out and it looked like a skirt, I didn’t even know what. ‘I thought I’d just pulled some shorts on,’ he says with a laugh. Those world-shaking culottes are a case in point. But where the likes of, say, George Best offset the plunging paisley shirts with a demonstrably old-school attitude to booze and women, Calvert-Lewin seems comfortable enough in his masculinity to push at its boundaries. act like it’s alien but really and truly it’s been done way before I was wearing these suits.’ It’s a good point. And it’s like we’ve gone backwards in a sense. ‘I feel like, in a way, men were more flamboyant then. ‘I always say people like Sammy Davis Jr and Jimi Hendrix,’ he says, doe-like hazel eyes peeking through his signature spray of bouncy curls. He describes his style as ‘a bit throwback, a bit retro’ but who inspires it? He has changed into his civvies now, a stonewash blue Adidas short tracksuit with yanked-up white Noah socks. ‘It’s like the perfect marriage,’ he says, in reference to the Italian fashion house and the German sportswear brand teaming up. Photographs by Maya Skelton ADIDAS x GUCCI jacket, £2,490 trousers, POA trainers £575 () (Maya Skelton)Įven so, when he first started embarking on a more considered fashion journey (most notably through his collaboration with Harry Lambert, stylist-provocateur to the likes of Josh O’Connor and Harry Styles and star of this week’s My London) it is work on illustrious collaborations such as today’s that he had in mind. Without the dramatic change in stature there would probably have been no move to Everton as a 19-year-old no goal on his senior England debut in autumn 2020 no climb to becoming one of the most talented (and coveted) young centre forwards in the country. Though he was sidelined from playing in the academy at his boyhood club Sheffield United for a period, it was this physical transformation that turned him from a goal-scoring midfielder into a spring-heeled, aerially dominant striker. There was, thankfully, gain to go with the pain. ‘At 15, I basically felt like an old man.’ ‘I remember being at school and having back ache all the time sitting on the plastic chairs.’ He leans forward and mimes a geriatric stoop.
‘I grew so fast in such a short space of time that I ended up with a stress fracture in my lower back,’ he says, remembering the six months when he shot up from a compact 5ft 8in to a rangy 6ft plus.
In the quiet corner of a corporate hotel lobby, Dominic Calvert-Lewin is acquainting me with the very literal agony of his adolescent life. Photographs by Maya Skelton ADIDAS x GUCCI polo top, £730 track jacket, £1,600 track pants £830 () (Maya Skelton)
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