The pitchman and ex-football player says he’s a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. But when it’s time to suit up, he goes for Hugo Boss and Zegna and looks to icon James Bond for fashion pointers.
You know Isaiah Mustafa from those wildly popular Old Spice television commercials — a bare-chested, fresh-from-the-shower Adonis who extols the virtues of body wash in stentorian tones. The man has charm, the man has six-pack abs and, ladies, he even has “two tickets to that thing you like.” He’s “the man your man could smell like.”
But on a sweltering autumn day in the San Fernando Valley, Isaiah Mustafa is wheeling two garbage cans the length of his driveway, a task that’s complicated by the energetic pair of Rhodesian ridgebacks careening across his path.
Mustafa greets the reporter parking in front of his Van Nuys abode with a nod and the words “Hey, man” in a voice that does not boom like a thunderclap. His handshake does not feel chiseled from granite. The former pro football player turned actor is not, at any point in the conversation, “on a horse.”
Instead of a towel around the waist, the 36-year-old is wearing straight-leg AG Adriano Goldschmied jeans, John Varvatos distressed leather shoes and a plaid Caulfield Preparatory button-front shirt with sleeves rolled up to the crooks of his elbows. On his left wrist is a silver Omega Seamaster watch. On the inside of his right forearm is a tattoo of a spider the size of a computer mouse.
These things are worth noting because that stint in the steamy showers of our collective conscience has proven so popular that Mustafa’s career is taking off, and we’re likely to see a lot more of him than we are of his towel-clad, sail-boating, horseback-riding, smooth-talking alter ego. Since the commercial debuted at the beginning of this year, he’s signed a talent deal with NBC and is slated to appear in two films scheduled for 2011 release —the Jennifer Aniston comedy “Horrible Bosses” and the next installment of Tyler Perry’s “Madea” franchise.
Another pro footballer turned actor, Terry Crews, has followed him as an Old Spice pitchman. But the Emmy-winning commercial made Mustafa the embodiment of men’s grooming, and we wanted his take on style.
When it comes to fashion and style, the world sees you as a blank slate, so what do you wear when you t