The first thing to know about Ryan Reynolds is that he’s married to living style icon Blake Lively. But the second most important should be this: Ryan Reynolds loves to accessorize. Newsboy hats, watches, statement eyewear—the obsession has taken various forms over the years. But it can all be traced back to the early aughts, the golden age of men’s jewelry.
The Moment: A pioneer of the comedian-to-action hero pipeline, Reynolds spent the 2000s transforming his image from goofball to leading man. Having finally made the jump from TV to movies as the star of National Lampoon’s Van Wilder in 2002, Reynolds met singer-songwriter and fellow Canadian Alanis Morissette at Drew Barrymore’s birthday party the same year. The pair started dating and by 2004, they were engaged. Reynolds subsequently started bulking up for his first superhero gig playing vampire hunter Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity. The film flopped, but it set Reynolds up for the box office success he’d start to have near the end of the decade with the release of Definitely, Maybe (2008), X Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and The Proposal (2009).
In 2010, Reynolds finally earned the coveted title of People‘s Sexiest Man Alive, cementing his status as a Hollywood hunk. But his meteoric rise to stardom had some emotional fallout. Reynolds and Morissette broke off their engagement in 2007 and the following year, Morissette released an album about the split called Flavors of Entanglement. “Public romance? I’m going to be avoiding that in the future,” she declared during a promotional interview with Entertainment Weekly.
The Look: The height of Reynolds’s jewelry era tracks closely with his three-year engagement to Morissette, and that’s (probably) not a coincidence. Consciously or subconsciously, couples often dress alike. Mirroring each other’s style can be an unspoken way of communicating the strength of your bond to the world. And in some cases, celebrities have used fashion as a sly means of stoking, confirming, and dispelling dating rumors. In this instance, it’s clear that Reynolds was borrowing inspiration from Morissette’s wardrobe, trading frat guy fits for a bohemian rocker look. Case in point: the abstract, slightly bejeweled silver pendant he wore to the 2003 MTV Movie Awards.
