Let’s talk about the skirt. ⁠ ⁠ Earlier this month, Brad Pitt ambled down the red carpet at the Berlin premiere of his upcoming movie “Bullet Train,” wearing a pendulous, chestnut-colored skirt. ⁠ ⁠ Asked by a reporter why the skirt, a smirking Mr. Pitt bantered back, “Breeze”—Europe, after all, was in the throes of a punishing heat wave. But the outfit may have had another purpose: virality. (Through a representative, the actor had no comment on his outfits.)⁠ ⁠ After he wore the linen ensemble, the term “Brad Pitt skirt” hit 100, the highest possible score on Google Trends, the search engine’s measurement of interest. According to Twitter, following the Berlin red carpet, tweets mentioning Brad Pitt increased 63% compared with the week prior, as users both lauded (“Cheers, Brad”) and pilloried him (“I need publicity. Let me wear a skirt”). ⁠ ⁠ And publicity is a key result. By wearing a skirt, 58-year-old Mr. Pitt successfully got the phrase “‘Bullet Train’ premiere” into publications that otherwise likely wouldn’t have covered the shoot-’em-up action film. ⁠ ⁠ As a tactic, the tweet-stoking skirt was no outlier: Male movie stars are now continually going viral for convention-contorting red-carpet outfits. Read more about them at the link in bio. (🖊️: @jacobwgallagher, 📷️: Markus Schreiber/AP Photo)