Crime suit, trend or cliché? Meanings of male formal dress between power, crime and gender

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

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.