Trend Forecasting: Sunscreen on the Nose, Bradley Cooper-Style

It's yacht season, sweeties, and nobody is having more fun with it than the motley crew of Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Oprah (freaking Oprah!) and Katy Perry. The foursome were recently spotted taking a cute lil' dinghy over to Barry Diller's yacht, Eos. (Perry and Bloom have also graced the decks of David Geffen's yacht, Rising Sun, of late; yacht war is the new class war.)

There are plenty of noteworthy details about this Italian boat excursion,Katy Perry's attempt to gracefully dismount the dinghy chief among them, but the part that got my trend-forecasting antennae up was Bradley Cooper's lewk.

"Emma, sunscreen on the nose isn't a bona fide lewk, it's just peak Dopey White Dad culture," you clamor, and listen; I hear you. Vacationing fathers have been improperly rubbing in their sunscreen since time immemorial, so what exactly is so notable about Bradley adopting the look?

The answer, my friends, is contained within the question. When Bradley does something—from a casual jaunt with Laura Dern to a henley-clad outing with Anna Wintour—it's news, baby. Bradley's too mature to be a Harry Styles-style (hehe) cover boy, drawing admiring headlines for every one-off fake mayo commercial he shoots, but he's still too young to be a handsomely reclusive, Clooney-esque figure. He was the toast of 2018, but in 2019, he's not yet toast (I'm actually an uncredited writer for the as-yet-untitled third Sex and the City movie); the things he does, and wears, are all perfectly in keeping with a newly single bachelor's jaunt through the world.

Sunscreen on the nose, un-rubbed in, is exactly who Cooper is at this precise moment in time; he's a borderline-lame dad who's obsessed with his dog (to the point of giving him an extensive A Star is Born cameo), but he's still cool enough to get invited to Google Camp with the likes of Oprah and Katy Perry. He's the spare man at the dinner party, but the champagne doesn't get uncorked until he's arrived.

A soupcon (or, in Cooper's case, heavy dollop) of sunscreen on the nose is the "ask me if I give a fuck" of men's summer fashion; it sees your Hawaiian shirt and Tevas and raises you one. It's arguably sleazecore-adjacent, but it's also responsible; nobody likes a burned nose, and any 44-year-old, Oscar-nommed actor needs to be mindful of his skin and his rep at once.

But what sunscreen could Brad be availing himself of? A tube of La Roche-Posay that Irina Shayk left in the medicine cabinet, or something more masculin, like Jack Black Oil-Free Sun Guard? Is he going full normcore and just swiping on zinc oxide? Bradley Cooper, leak your Top Shelf! Daily routines are the new nudes!