Why Do Bad Guys Look So Good? Exploring the Darker Side of Menswear.

Bad guys on screen are given the best looks, and often the most admiring ones in real life. Psychopaths are defined by the cut of their cloth, from the obvious example of Patrick Bateman’s 1980s Valentino power suits in American Psycho to Klaus Kinski as a bounty hunter in his fringed head shawl, furs and high fedora in The Great Silence.

American Psycho Movie

That 1968 spaghetti Western saw him rocking a look that predated Malcolm McLaren’s Buffalo Gals by more than a decade, evidence that Kinski’s canon contains an inexhaustible supply of fashion inspiration. Take a look at his eponymous Fitzcarraldo – not a villain per se, more an amoral aesthete or anti-hero, trying to drag a steamship over the impassable mud banks of the Andes. It was an unhinged mission, executed in admirable fashion, wearing a fabulously impractical white suit that looks like next-season John Alexander Skelton.

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On the streets of the real world, a touch of danger and a long shadow – literal or allegorical – make for a strong look. Menace may come from an exaggerated silhouette, a soupçon of kink, or the nuanced refined camp that codified men in classics of film noir as gay (equating at the time to “degenerate”). Want to create an air of mystery? Buy a big ol’ diamond pinkie ring.

MM Margiela