What's the Wall Street guy dress code in movies? The style evolution of the "wolves of Wall Street" on the big screen, from Christian Bale to Leonardo DiCaprio
These days see the debut of Devils, the short-series produced by Sky Original starring Alessandro Borghi and Patrick Dempsey. From the novel by Guido Maria Brera (2014), the series is a typical thriller in the high finance world: a game of power, money and perversity that fits well in the tradition of the Wall Street Films, all the movies about the rise to fame and moral dilemmas of the brokers who rule over the world's biggest markets.
In these films, a significative part is played by the costume design. The dress code of the perfect broker is a real uniform. Masters of elegance, the "wolves of Wall Street" are the fathers of the yuppie style (referring to all those young professionals who crave for individual success and dedicate themselves to a life of luxury and consumerism, opposite to the values of the hippy culture) and they stand in the name of the American Dream (and the mythology of "If I made it, you can make it"). They are living a curious contradiction: despite representing the conservative values of toxic masculinity, these guys indirectly paved the way to the concept of New Masculinity: they wear suits of the finest brands (Giorgio Armani, Valentino), braces, gold tie-clips and luxury watches and they rather wear Italian shoes. Their hair is always slicked back and the richest ones allow themselves with a gold pinky ring.
In its history, cinema is full of this kind of characters, from the adorable Mister Banks in Mary Poppins to the clients of Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers, Michael Douglas in Wall Street, Christian Bale in American Psycho and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street. As years - or decades - went by, the perfect broker's style had a few changes itself.
The broker dress code is a staple point in the tradition of men tailoring (women are missing in this picture, except for films as Working Girl with Melanie Griffith and The Associate with Whoopi Goldberg). Over the years, this style has changed fits and colours (the more bastard and rich you are, the more bright you dress, while the newcomers wear grey suits and white shirts), but the biggest law above it all is the one of immortal elegance. Some may see some remnants of the old concepts of “Toxic Masculinity”, weirdly co-existing with an approach to fashion that's typical of the new gender-fluid generations.
Despite its contradictions, the yuppie style survived almost 40 years of fashion history. Who knows if it's going to survive to Alessandro Borghi and Patrick Dempsey.
