The End of Johnny Depp's Style

Today, Hollywood icon Johnny Depp turns 58. A lot of time has passed since her glory years, which took off in 2001 with Blow and ended in 2010 with Alice in Wonderland – his last truly iconic role. Before and after this golden phase, which includes the first films of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, The Chocolate Factory and The Libertine, there were many other incredible films – and indeed Depp's absolute fame (who in 2012 was the highest paid actor in the world) had made him a kind of cultural icon who brought together in himself a lifestyle made literally of sex , drugs and rock 'n' roll with an aesthetic between the bohemian and the bad boy - a strange fusion of style and lifestyle that today could no longer occur.

The phenomenon that was Johnny Depp in the first decade of the 2000s transformed the masculine style with immediately recognizable elements: the wide-brimmed hat, linen scarves, slightly blued Aviator glasses, boots, but also the inevitable vest accompanied by jewels and leather bracelets, the unseated hair, tattoos, tailored-but-rock outfits , the flow of romantic accessories and that extraordinary ability to create layering with worn leather garments, shirts and Victorian-flavored suits mixed with an outlaw aura, between the pirate and the 1920s gangster.  But that aesthetic, which was one with the character, lost its appeal both after the turbulent personal events that involved the actor, and because, in many ways, the era of bad boys is over perhaps forever.

Sex, cookies & rock ‘n’ roll

Johnny Depp, despite being an actor, is linked to the world of rock – it is no coincidence that he is a guitarist himself and a friend of many rock stars. Rock, in recent years, has totally lost the aura of rebellion that characterized it. Emblematic sign of the times was the recent controversy over Maneskin at Eurovision, with singer Damiano David accused of consuming cocaine who immediately claims that his drug band keeps away and immediately takes a medical test to prove that he is completely sober. At that moment it seemed very, very far away from the years when Jimi Hendrix made LSD on stage, when Jim Morrison was arrested during concerts and police entered Keith Richards' house finding rifles and heroin.

While not wanting to celebrate those excesses, which have now moved into the world of hip-hop and trap and which have often led to the ruin of many public figures, Johnny Depp included, today's world is no longer ready for "beautiful and damned" celebrities: the Millennial generation has seen too many icons fall and sometimes die early due to their dissipated lifestyle and calling out culture and of the new moralism from social media has established itself so much that it has exposed the madness of celebrities for the abuses, physical or substance-related, that in fact they were. The bad boy of bad boys himself, also friends with Depp, that is Marilyn Manson is currently facing rains of complaints and accusations of all kinds.  Another former Hollywood bad boy, Robert Downey Jr., has returned to prominence after cleaning himself up completely from drugs and alcohol by completely changing his public character: from bad boy to cool dad, with his strange flair, the shades and funny t-shirts.

Johnny Depp's style and lifestyle were two sides of the same coin: in many ways the general contours of the aesthetic that the actor made famous during the decade of his Hollywood dominance still survive; for the very large part, however, that rocker/romantic style has either been devoured by the easier and more relaxed proposals of streetwear or has sublimated into the rock-inspired fashion of Hedi Slimane and his followers, known online as Hediboys. Fashion has surpassed Johnny Depp, just as society has already placed him among the icons of the past, preferring the clean face of a Thimotée Chalamet, the responsible attitude of a Leonardo DiCaprio or the wholesomeness of The Rock.

What will be of his style?

The bad boy's aesthetic has survived, but it has become something independent of the life and behavior associated with that character, who as a romanticized figure has become condemnable. The supreme example is Justin Bieber who spread the tabloids of half the world with accounts of his exploits and then became a good husband and father of the family with a certain inclination for religion – but keeping all the significant exteriors of the bad boy, even with some updates on the fashion side. Another co-responsibility in sanitizing the aesthetic that Johnny Depp made famous were hipsters, who took tattoos, romantic-vintage clothing and all the details of Depp's style mixing them with veganism, healthy principles and replacing whisky with matcha soy latte, Harley Davidson with vintage bicycles and cocaine with protein powders to go to training in the gym.

Spiritual heirs to Johnny Depp's style today are rappers, whose stories abound on the edge such as that of A$AP Rocky arrested in Sweden, or those of the murders of young stars such as XXXTentacion and Pop Smoke and in whose music there are often references to an edgy lifestyle that is however excused and endured less and less. It's no coincidence that one of today's most celebrated hip-hop artists, Tyler, The Creator, doesn't drink or smoke and goes to sleep early in the evening while other great icons like Kanye West and Travis Scott are quiet family fathers with crazy outfits. Johnny's time is really over.