Crime suit, trend or cliché?

From the office desk to the bedroom, the men's tailored suit traverses everyday times and places, assuming multiple meanings. Due to a deep-rooted cultural heritage, most people recognize in formal men's clothing the sign of authority and power, associating gallantry and the traditional idea of "respectability" with a specific way of dressing; others, like some fashion and cinema creators, attempt to break this rigid ideological representation. Directors and designers reinterpret "the social uniform of men" not only as office attire but enrich it with erotic, criminal, and mysteriously perverse suggestions. In the latest men's collection by Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent, for example, the theme of sensuality and sexuality evoked by the men's tailored suit is central. The "terrifying and languid suits," as Mark Holgate describes them in the review of the runway show on Vogue Runway, express in their classicism a delicate eroticism and a subtle femininity manifested through transparent shirts worn under jackets, with fluid cuts. In this regard, Vaccarello employs the high fashion technique of flou associated with women's fashion, combining materials with varying textures, such as leather, with softer ones like organza. On that occasion, the Belgian designer explained to the press that he was inspired by a nocturnal, mysterious man, halfway between Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Julian Kay in American Gigolo: thus, the formal attire hides the secrets of perversion and can become a tool of seduction.

The crime-suit in contemporary fashion

In line with Vaccarello for Saint Laurent, the designers at Dolce&Gabbana have always expressed their interest, both in men and women, in the erotic-criminal dualism elicited by the men's tailored suit. In some seasons, the suit acquires a more aristocratic and refined allure: we notice this in tuxedos worn with silk shirts or fur coats reminiscent of "a young Helmut Berger in a Visconti film," as the designers mention regarding the Sleek show, FW24 men. In other collections, however, the Dolce&Gabbana man resembles more the Sicilian "masculu," the mafioso wearing pinstripe suits and rosaries around the neck as in the brand's latest campaign shot by Steven Meisel. Even some emerging brands have explored the aesthetics of the crime-suit: this is the case of French designer Louis-Gabriel Nouchi, who in one of his recent collections explicitly drew inspiration from the broker-serial killer portrayed by Christian Bale, having models walk the runway with faces bloodied. From the Punk Nostalgia of Enfants Riches Dèprimès to the "new masculinity" of Egon Lab, as written by Tina Isaac-Goizé, the codes of men's suits interest new generations of designers who, with different backgrounds and perspectives, can reinterpret them in contemporary contexts. Willy Chavarria reinterprets the men's formal attire with seventies silhouettes, juxtaposing it with the Mexican aesthetic of "cholo boy," a term identifying a specific subculture of Latin American (Mexican to be precise) criminal gangs. In this context, artists like Mahmood and Bad Bunny, both often dressed by Chavarria, have embraced the "bandit" aesthetic on several occasions: in the song Monaco, the Puerto Rican rapper, besides using a sample from The Godfather soundtrack, sets the music video in a typical Italian restaurant in New York frequented by bosses and gangsters among whom, not surprisingly, Al Pacino appears.

The crime-suit in cinema

Certain film genres, from noir to thriller, have made the aesthetic of the hitman in formal attire their trademark, such as The Killers by Don Siegel, a 1964 film that inspired Tarantino's cult movies like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, to John Wick by Chad Stahelski in 2014. We recall an emblematic scene from the film Goodfellas (1990), in which young Henry Hill, raised on "bread and the mafia," impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, presents himself to his mother who, in despair, reproaches him for dressing like a gangster. This cinematic fragment helps us understand how men's formal attire found its space and specific visual expression in criminality. In Japan, in the tradition of gangster movies, great importance was given to the collaboration that began in the mid-1990s between director Takeshi Kitano and designer Yohji Yamamoto: the two creators reimagined the aesthetics of Western criminals by connecting Yamamoto's post-atomic minimalism with Kitano's raw violence imagery. Furthermore, some works in Michael Mann's filmography like Collateral and Public Enemies, exhibit a particular aesthetic sensitivity towards "the assassin's uniform." In the former, hitman Vincent, played by Tom Hanks, wears a clean, sober gray suit that nevertheless hides the decay of his crimes and his criminal identity. In the gangster drama of 2009, Mann tells the story of well-known American felons like John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson during the Great Depression. Faithful to historical facts, the director constructs an aesthetic around the characters perfectly aligned with the clothing codes of that time: suits with vests, wide-brimmed hats, and leather gloves, essential to leave no trace on the weapons used in their crimes. Formal clothing becomes in these narratives an undercover uniform that creates an aura of mystery around the characters, but also of melancholy and loneliness as in Le Samuraï by Jean-Pierre Melville.

Fashion and cinema have tried to stain the impeccability of men's suits by revealing their dark nature, but then why in the collective consciousness does formal attire, especially on a male, identify more as a gentleman than as an assassin? The answer lies in the fact that, as the French sociologist Bourdieu said, our society has exerted a sort of symbolic violence, that is, the imposition of the aesthetic category of the respectable man in jacket and tie, so validated and internalized that it can never be fully deconstructed. In the cited filmography, especially in the '60s and '70s, killers in suits blended in with the common man because for a long time, most men, due to what is commonly termed "great resignation," dressed this way: today, however, formal attire indicates an exception, suggests institutional rigor, and underscores social aristocracy. Filmmakers have realized how the aesthetics of the crime suit has become a cliché: perhaps this is why Michael Fassbender, protagonist of the recent film The Killer as a cynical professional criminal, prefers to blend into the crowd by dressing like an anonymous, sloppy German tourist. A "suited man," today as it stands, could be an easy suspect: a disheveled male, on the other hand, is just one among many.