Brad Pitt’s dress has a commercial agenda.

After wearing the linen ensemble, the term “Brad Pitt dress” reached 100, the highest result on Google Trends, a search engine interest measure. According to Twitter, following the Berlin red carpet, tweets mentioning Brad Pitt increased by 63 percent compared to the previous week.

And publicity is a key outcome. Mr. Pitt, 58, successfully introduced the phrase “Bullet Train” to the premiere by wearing a dress that otherwise wouldn’t have covered the shoot-’em-up action movie.

As a tactic, the Twitter stocking dress was never more so: male movie stars are now constantly going viral for their convention-contorting red carpet outfits. “Moon Knight” star Oscar Isaac sparked an online kerfuffle when he wore an embellished dress to a European press event in March. At the “Grey Man” press tour earlier this month, Ryan Gosling wore a red Gucci jacket, white socks and a leather tie—an online commenter couldn’t decide whether he looked more like Michael Jackson or a bellhop. Shaggy-maned Chris Pine has become menswear meme Lately trending lacy shirts and candy-stripe pants.

While empathy isn’t the sole purpose of these actors, it’s not unpleasant.

Wendy and Nicole Ferreira, the sister styling team that makes up Mr. Pine, wrote in an email that “we don’t want the attention.” Still, he added, the spread of the virus is “a major form of media and advertising.”

In the year Mark Avery, Mr. Gosling’s stylist since 2015, said the virality was not the goal, but he has endured a barrage of online backlash. “I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t say I’d be doing a bit of Googling in the first couple of days after this. [Ryan] He walks the carpet.” “It’s stupid” or “What are you thinking” instead of “It’s boring!’ “I’d rather read about my presentation to a client,” cheers the speaker.

Tom Fitzgerald, who has run the celebrity site Tom & Lorenzo with his partner Lorenzo Marquez since 2006, “knows that if they wear something worth talking about, they get more coverage,” Stars understands. The pair noted that when the site launched, a post about a woman would get three times as much traffic as a post about a man. Today, those traffic numbers are equal.

“Most of these people—especially some of them—are having a moment, you see them everywhere,” says longtime celebrity stylist Ilaria Urbinati, who has worked with a roster of Hollywood stars including The Rock and Donald Glover.

On social media, Ms. Urbinati has an instant feedback machine for her work. When she posts photos of her client Chris Evans on Instagram, she gets hundreds of likes and emojis. “People are commenting on the dress … people are paying attention to the details, they’re enjoying it – it’s like a whole thing,” she says.

It’s rare that actors’ costumes garner this level of attention, let alone entire articles. In the year In the late 2000s—before fan Instagram accounts and celebrity-style blogs took hold—most men wore black and associated with the originals. If they were loose, they would change into a t-shirt or jeans. (Instagram account @nightopenings is a repository of this infrequently.)

“Events like the Oscars and the Emmys? Those were all very boring tuxedos,” Mr. Marquez said. Brand names were fairly predictable, too: lots of Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana. Joining was the aim.

Sometime around the mid-2010s, priorities changed. Celebrity stylists entered the picture, tasked with recasting their clients as sartorial risk-takers. In a flash of paparazzi, Jared Leto wore a teal blazer, Chadwick Boseman in a brocade opera coat and Billy Porter strutted down the red carpet in a Christian Siriano gown. “Young stars, black stars, queer stars are out there pushing the envelope and getting no response,” Mr. Fitzgerald said, “and they’re getting credit for it.”

Hollywood elders have taken notice. The prosaic Prada clothes had to go. In their place? Linen dresses and an oversized aubergine fit.

The Ferreira sisters wrote, “The floodgates to menswear have opened up and this has given celebrities the opportunity to let their red carpet choices reflect their unique personalities.”

Returning to the carpet after a hiatus from the pandemic has left some stars and stylists vulnerable — and even ironic. “People are having fun with what they’re wearing,” Ms. Urbinati said. “You can wear fuschia Birkenstocks on the carpet with a fuschia dress.”

Dressing stars can also be beneficial for brands. Tom and Lorenzo said that readers are hungry to know the exact brand of shirt worn by Chris Evans. And as these 40-plus actresses reinvent themselves as fashion risk-takers, they’re putting out more and more obscure designers – this red carpet one-up. “I always challenge myself to find brands that not everyone wears,” Ms. Urbinati said.

Mr. Pitt may have set a new standard for a dull gown. It was designed by Hans Nicolas Mott, a completely unknown New York-based designer who can’t be found in any stores and operates a “referral-only” business, according to GQ. The mystery designer has no publicly available email, website, phone number or address, so The Wall Street Journal could not be reached.

Still, Tom and Lorenzo anticipate that the frenzy of the carpet will return to subtle formal wear in time as the crowd wears out from the look of “Look at Me.” “We’re going back to a more conservative red carpet, but now it’s party time,” Mr Fitzgerald said.

Write to Jacob Gallagher at jacob.gallagher@wsj.com