Gangster Style Suits - What You See in the Movies

Posted by Aaron Sarfati on Jul 20, 2023

In my first article on Gangster suits, I focused on 1930s movie gangsters like James Cagney. Now as we well know, times do change and so do the gangsters, the gangsters ethnicity that are usually portrayed in gangster movies as well as the style suits that they wear in them. Every ethnicity has always had criminals in them and they have been portrayed in movies as long as there have been movies to watch. Every generation has new organized crooks in gangs and young Turks from the streets that rise in power through their ruthless ways. In most of the more modern movies you may have seen Gangsters portrayed Al Pacino in "Scarface" and by Wesley Snipes that were every bit as brash, bold and nefarious.


In the movie Scarface after Tony Montana does his first major drug transaction and kills the Sadistic Colombian Seller with the chainsaw in the motel. He brings back the money and cocaine to his boss Frank as well as being introduced to him. Frank starts telling him that Tony Montana is going to go far as a thug with his guts and convictions and that he will soon be able to afford $550 dollar suits which happened to be the price of designer Italian suits back then and which gangsters in Miami Florida were wearing at the time. It's not long after that you would see Tony Montana wearing the expensive suits open collar Italian shirts on a daily basis that gangsters in his line of work would wear and be in the clubs decked out in Miami. You know, when you are big time gangster, you need to wear big time gangster suits and Tony Montana was no different and soon enough had the eyes of the police on him as well.

In the 1991 movie "New Jack City", Wesley Snipes plays a drug kingpin named Nino Brown who literally takes over an entire apartment building and turns it into a giant high tech crack house. Nino Brown being the modern day gangster is shown in the movie wearing gangster suits and looking just as brash and in your face as previous actors portraying gangsters were wearing but this time the styles are completely different.

Nino Brown would be seen wearing what would be bright color Zoot Suits in all kinds of styles,colors and patterns as well as matching crocodile shoes on his feet. Now you would think that a gangster wearing loud color suits like this would be a no-no but hey, these are criminals and they don't think quite like other people do, so he wears these bright color gangster zoot suits and bright color crocodile shoes with the big gold rope necklace on top making him the envy of everyone in the poor neighborhood that he controls and on the most wanted list of the police. Now dressing like a gangster in the manner that Nino Brown does is never cheap.

First of all Gangster suits like the zoot suits he wore cost money and then you would have to get that flashy looking suit tailored and all the matching color items like the matching color crocodile shoes and matching color dress hat. But since gangsters have tons of dirty money to spend, this wouldn't be an issue whatsoever. In one scene you would see Nino Brown wearing a bright red color Zoot suit with matching crocodile shoes and red hat and then in the next scene Nino Brown would be wearing a royal blue gangster suit with the matching royal blue crocodile shoes on his feet and matching hat. Now dressing like this wearing zoot suits will get you attention that you just can't easily shake and as we well know he gets his in the end of the movie but not before he ruins the lives of dozens of other people first. But to be brash bold gangster it takes a brash bold personality and Nino Brown had it in spades in "New Jack City".