Penélope Cruz Turns to the Ralph Lauren Archives for a Playful Patterned Moment
She’s giving menswear a unique spin
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
Penélope Cruz has found her press tour uniform, and it has lapels. Promoting her new drama La bola negra across London, the Oscar winner has been cycling through a series of menswear-adjacent looks that feel less like a stylist's strategy and more like a genuine point of view — and her appearance at the 70th BFI London Film Festival gala at Royal Festival Hall was the clearest proof yet.
For the event, Cruz and stylist Anna Castan went straight to the archives, pulling a mod-inspired pantsuit from Ralph Lauren's Spring/Summer 2014 ready-to-wear collection. The base was classically sharp — a fitted single-breasted black blazer, matching flared trousers, platform heels — but the layering is what made it. Underneath: a windowpane-check shirt and an oversized plaid tie worn loose around the neck like a scarf, almost an afterthought, almost not. According to Harper's Bazaar, the original collection leaned heavily black-and-white with occasional neon accents; Cruz and Castan zeroed in on the achromatic, a choice that reads as a quiet nod to the film's title — la bola negra translates to "the black ball."
The Accessories Did the Talking
A black beret — swapped from the plaid version that appeared on the runway — topped the look, and jewelry from Garatti added precision where the outfit stayed loose: diamond climber earrings, a platinum bracelet, a few rings. Nothing overstated. The pieces functioned like punctuation rather than decoration.
This wasn't a one-off. Cruz has been consistent throughout the La bola negra press run, showing up in a gray suit with a striped scarf at a London screening and a tuxedo-style look during a separate press day. The throughline isn't menswear exactly — it's Cruz using tailoring as a vehicle for personality, not polish. Each look has something slightly off-script about it: the tie worn wrong, the beret worn right, the fit sharp but never stiff.
La bola negra opens in U.S. theaters October 16 — and if the press tour is any indication, Cruz will arrive to every stop in something worth talking about. The suit isn't a costume; it's a statement that she's showing up entirely on her own terms.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
