The Thomas Crown Affair Featuring Michael B. Jordan

In the ’90s, Rene Russo wore fresh-off-the-runway fashion by Celine’s Michael Kors, who was then a budding star. Can Jordan’s remake pull off the same style coup?

Michael B. Jordan, Academy Award winner and very muscular movie star, posted the poster for the upcoming remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, a film he directed and in which he also stars as the titular character. And on Wednesday, Amazon MGM Studios released the teaser trailer for the movie, which will arrive in theaters in March 2027.

The minute-and-a-half-long clip features everything you’d expect from an MBJ film: tons of action scenes, some glamour shots of his upper body, and a stunning love interest, which in this case is Adria Arjona.

It also features most of what one would expect from The Thomas Crown Affair: the interior of a beautiful museum, which here looks like the Great Hall steps of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; a prized art piece, which here seems to be one of, or a reference to, Vincent van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings; and some heist-adjacent behavior. There is, however, one key piece of the puzzle missing: the fashion.

This is the fourth version of The Thomas Crown Affair. The original film was released in 1968 and featured Steve McQueen as the title character, Thomas Crown, a self-made millionaire who, presumably out of boredom or in search of an adrenaline rush, robs a bank. McQueen starred opposite Faye Dunaway, who portrayed a beautiful and seductive investigator contracted to find the elusive heistman. Then came a 1987 version—not from Hollywood but from Hong Kong, starring Michelle Yeoh as a female version of Crown. And then, in 1999, came the best of them all: Pierce Brosnan as Crown and Rene Russo as Catherine Banning, a femme fatale insurance investigator (yes, basically an oxymoron!).

In the spectacular and undeniably splashier ’90s version, Brosnan’s Crown steals a Claude Monet painting from The Met, which leads to a game of cat-and-mouse with Russo’s Banning. This version of the film is a bona fide fashion extravaganza—not only because both Brosnan and Russo look great in various states of dress, or because the latter was a model before she started acting, but also because Russo wears some spectacular clothing.

There is the one ball scene in which Russo and Brosnan dance, her in a slinky, semi-sheer black dress by Randolph Duke’s revival of Halston, and then there is the balance of her wardrobe: some chunky turtlenecks and some terrific tailoring. It’s basically a quiet-luxury fever dream. Other than the evening gown, it was all mostly designed by Michael Kors as part of his debut collection for Celine, the French label that would later become the arbiter of chic under Phoebe Philo’s creative direction in the 2010s.

Ever since Philo started at Celine in 2008, the contemporary equivalents of Russo’s Banning—meaning high-earning, fashion-inclined women—have all aspired to wear Celine. What The Thomas Crown Affair did for the brand in the ’90s was cement it as the destination for glamorous, practical fashion. That is, after all, Kors’s claim to fame: a sophisticated take on American sportswear. What the film has done for Celine and fashion since is cement a moment in fashion history, one that has remained a staple on mood boards over the years.

The story goes that Russo, who had met Kors socially, called the designer up to dress her for the film. Kors did one better, offering her the samples from his fall-winter 1998 collection for Celine. Such a thing would be hard to pull off these days—the 2020s counterparts to movie stars like Brosnan and Russo have tight brand-ambassadorship contracts and partnerships rather than casual, personal relationships with designers. This begs the question—will Jordan’s remake match the indelible stylish energy of the ’90s film on which it’s based?

Above: Three ensembles from the Celine, fall-winter 1998 collection by Michael Kors that Rene Russo wears in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

The odds point to yes. The film’s costume designer, per IMDb, is none other than Ruth E. Carter, who entered the canon of great film outfitters with Spike Lee’s Malcolm X and became the first Black costume designer to win an Academy Award for her work on Black Panther. Moreover, Jordan looks great in a suit, as has been confirmed on the red carpet and in the teaser trailer for the film. The actor wears custom Prada often and has lately been on a spectacular fashion run while working with stylist Jason Bolden, most recently wearing a vintage Spider-Man T-shirt and Jacquemus pants in Shanghai for the premiere of the latest Marvel film. When he won his Oscar in March, he was wearing a custom Louis Vuitton suit.