In the mysterious world of Gotham Chic

What do you think of when you see a luxurious black car? The Bat-mobile. And what do you think of when you see a woman wearing a tight leather jumpsuit? Catwoman. And these are just two examples of how the imagery of Batman, a character invented by Bob Kane in 1939, has been able to reign over pop culture for over eighty years and to dominate the most recent trends with the latest of his films, The Batman by Matt Reeves, released just last month. The allure of Batman and his city, Gotham, is the allure of total black, of organic and shiny surfaces, of the vast anthropized horizons of the metropolis with all its adventures. A macro-philon that has had the great merit of transporting the excitement of superhero life into the context of the big city, in the world of finance and the elite, which, precisely in honor of the Caped Crusader, we could call Gotham Chic and which has actually united in an almost secret and transversal way the world of design, lifestyle, fashion and, in general, the collective imagination.

Michael Keaton & Tim Burton on the set of Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)

Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Keaton & Tim Burton on the set of Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992)

Val Kilmer & Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995)

George Clooney & Chris O'Donnel in Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)

Christian Bale & Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)

Ben Affleck in Batman vs. Superman (Zack Snyder, 2016)

Robert Pattinson in The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022)

It's not just "total black", but a special aesthetic that mixes elegance, organic shapes, colors and textures with aggressiveness, audacity, romantic edginess - without forgetting that background, Gotham, which is the invisible protagonist of all the stories of the Bat-verse. It is a different way of understanding the concept of chic, in which elegance becomes pure hedonism, imposing itself with all its connotations of urban and social sophistication, exclusivity and secrecy - it is an architecture of aesthetics or rather an urbanism of style that, like the Gotham of the comics, brings together the solemnity of the noir metropolis, the sublime of Art Nouveau architecture, the sense of the past of neo-Gothic architecture. A type of aesthetics that, beyond fashion itself, has been used as a language (but the language of colors is something universal) in a myriad of different fields: from the all-black and minimalist model of Braun BN0172, to perfumes such as 6 Place Saint Suplice by Saint Laurent and Coco Noir by Chanel, passing through the design of Rick Owens' furniture, up to the world of beverages with the iconic all-black bottle of Bulldog Gin. 

Givenchy SS22 Multi-Pocket Leather Jacket

Heliot Emil SS22 Allata Dress

Rick Owens Furniture

Bulldog Gin Bottle

Coco Noir Perfume by Chanel

Braun Gents BN0172 Classic Watch

Bulldog Gin, among the many brands that have adopted this "dark" aesthetics, is perhaps one of the best examples of how color-coding can communicate the imprint of an entire lifestyle impersonated by that black bottle, which bases all its charm and its mystique on the sleekness of a sophisticated nightlife lived at the limit. The interesting part is the triangulation of associations that is created between the black laqué color, the imagery of the night, the sophistication and excitement of the boundless metropolis and the adrenaline-filled sense of recklessness or pleasure - which we can find, for example, in the field of fashion, in the work of designers such as Julius Juul of Heliot Emil, Matthew Williams and Rick Owens himself who, as we said, has also exploited this aesthetic for his famous furniture line co-created with his wife Michèle Lamy. In music, something similar has happened with artists such as Kanye West (who last July inaugurated his collabo with Balenciaga by posing in a photo, now deleted, similar to the poses of the Dark Knight) but also Gesaffelstein or Woodkid, both creators of musical and visual works in the round, capable of combining boldness of sound, hyper-technical aesthetics and an imagery that had to do with the dimensions of the night, heroism, audacity. 

There is also one last aspect, the most elusive and indefinable, that determines the Gotham Chic aesthetic. It's a factor that we could define as coolness, which doesn't derive from something specific but is simply there. Returning to the example of the Bat-verse, in fact, we could see how all the external aspects of the story keep changing: from Batman's costume and design to the psychology of the villains, to the general aesthetics of Gotham, to the tone of the story up to the form and function of the gadgets and the Bat-mobile.

Gotham City in Batman (Tim Burton, 1989)

Gotham City in Batman Forever (Joel Schumacher, 1995)

Gotham City in Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997)

Gotham City in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)

Gotham City in The Batman (Matt Reeves, 2022)

In the midst of so many changes and styles, what remains unchanged is precisely wthe coolness of the atmospheres, of the very myth of that collective entity that is Gotham City, a symbol of all the cities of the world, of the characters and the imagery to which they belong, to something that fascinates the human soul universally and therefore makes coolness itself universal. The appeal of Gotham Chic began centuries or millennia before the birth of Batman - it's always been there, but only now are creatives learning how to define it, circumscribe it and above all use it. In a single word, it's the eternal appeal of the night.