PAPER Magazine has found a new way to tell boyfriends how to dress: make him dress like Johnny Knoxville instead. In a piece titled Make Your Boyfriend Dress Like Johnny Knoxville, the magazine presented the Jackass star as an alternative to the familiar urge to dress a man like JFK Jr.
The framing leaned on a very specific version of Knoxville, the one who became famous through Jackass on MTV and then carried that notoriety into the film franchise. PAPER described him as a modern-day equivalent of Buster Keaton, a performer whose appeal came from danger, slapstick and the kind of bodily commitment most people would never try for themselves. That is a long way from a standard style column, but the point of the piece was blunt: “The last thing anyone thinks about when they hear the name Johnny Knoxville is his clothes.”
That is exactly what made the suggestion work. The magazine’s case was built on the details that followed: Knoxville in aviator sunglasses or Ray-Ban frames, nautical hats like captain and sailor caps, a leather wristband that fit early 2000s taste, and an outfit formula that often started with a graphic T-shirt, sometimes one with a band or innuendo text. PAPER also pointed to the rest of the uniform — fitted shirts, long-sleeve Henleys, flannels, thick flashy belt buckles, baggy jeans, pocket chains, studded belts and rainbow suspenders — as the pieces that gave his look its identity in the aughts.
That mattered because the comparison was not just about clothes. It was about era. In the early '00s, and throughout the years when Jackass aired on cable TV and helped skyrocket the careers of its cast members, Knoxville’s style was inseparable from the stunt-driven persona that made him recognizable in the first place. The magazine’s contrast with JFK Jr. made that sharper: one was polished nostalgia, the other was messy, loud and tied to a television era that thrived on extremes.
The friction in the piece is also what makes it memorable. Knoxville is not usually remembered as a fashion figure, and the story itself says as much. Yet PAPER turned that absence into the premise, arguing that his wardrobe — equal parts performance gear and early-aughts swagger — can be read as its own kind of style language. The result is less a conventional fashion endorsement than a reminder that a look can travel farther when it is attached to a persona strong enough to survive the stunts.
For readers wondering whether the Johnny Knoxville reference is meant as irony, the answer is no. The point is that his clothes, once an afterthought behind the chaos of Jackass, are now being treated as the thing worth copying.
