How to Mix Sportswear and Suits (with Joel Kinnaman)

Sharp Staff / May 12, 2015

On The Killing, Joel Kinnaman solves complex murder cases. Who better to crack the mystery of mixing sportswear and suits? Here’s how to blur the lines and prove to yourself once and for all that sportswear and suiting are not mutually exclusive.

Photography by Kourosh Keshiri

Styling by Gaelle Paul for Walter Schupfer Management.

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Wool and leather varsity jacket ($620) and cotton T-shirt ($60) by Rogue; cotton blend pants ($90) by Perry Ellis; leather sneakers ($130) by Banana Republic

The Swedish star of Netflix’s The Killing is happy, in a quietly brooding sort of way

Joel Kinnaman is intense. He takes long pauses between questions and answers with a voice that’s low and gruff. Trivial queries about personal style are dismissed easily but firmly. It’s not that he’s unhappy to talk. He just doesn’t want to mince words. He prefers to speak with a purpose.

It’s a trait that has served the 35-year-old well. He’s quickly made a name for himself playing similarily intense characters. As recovering drug addict Det. Stephen Holder on Netflix’s The Killing, Kinnaman was regularly met with a barrage of dark storylines and twisted characters. It’s the kind of job he enjoys because it makes him…happier? “I have this feeling like the darker the material, the more light-spirited I am when I go home,” he says. “I like to let it consume me, and when it’s done and I let go, I feel happier.”

If that’s true, Kinnaman will have a lot to be happy about this year. In addition to two grim films (Run All Night with Liam Neeson and Child 44, about a serial killer in Stalin’s Soviet Union) he will costar in Suicide Squad, a villain-heavy film set in the DC Comics universe. Before moving to the US in 2009, Kinnaman was already a bona fide movie star in his native Sweden, with a Guldbagge Award (a Swedish Oscar) to his name for Best Actor in his breakout film, Easy Money. Since then, he’s been building his career in North America by moving seamlessly between television and film.

Eventually, there’s a break in his dark, intense demeanor. It comes in the form of a laugh. A laugh that, while just as low and gruff as his voice, has warmth to it. It happens after I point out his continuous proximity to dark stories. “Yeah,” he says with that laugh. “I get all this shit out at work and am really quite content in life.” Go figure. – Bianca Teixeira

Merino wool-cotton blend knit hoodie ($195) by Rogue; cotton shirt ($100) by Kenneth Cole; acetate sunglasses ($455) by Persol; Oyster Perpetual Datejust by Rolex

Viscore blend double-breasted suit ($600) by Tommy HIlfiger; cotton shirt ($100) by Kenneth Cole

Cotton shirt ($45) by GAP; wool-linen blend suit jacket ($1,000, sold as a suit) by Tiger of Sweden

Viscose blend double-breasted suit ($600) by Tommy Hilfiger; cotton shirt ($100) by Kenneth Cole; leather sneakers ($130) by Banana Republic; acetate sunglasses ($450) by Tom Ford

Wool blazer ($300) and cotton sweatpants ($100) by Tommy HIlfiger; cotton shirt ($100) by Kenneth Cole

Viscose blend suit jacket ($600 part of a suit) by Tommy Hilfiger, polyester-nylon blend anorak (price upon request) by Perry Ellis; cotton T-shirt ($60) by Rogue