Why conmen like Tom Ripley are so preoccupied with fashion | 410S71F | 2024-03-29 14:08:01
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Style is of important significance to Tom, in each the novel by Patricia Highsmith and subsequent variations, together with that 1999 film, but in addition 1960's French New Wave retelling, Purple Noon, and the upcoming black-and-white Netflix model, Ripley, starring Andrew Scott within the titular position. The fashion of the 1999 movie — Jude Regulation's polo shirts, white trousers and boat footwear, Gwyneth Paltrow's high-waist bikinis, broderie anglaise tops and peasant skirts – continues to be referenced by designers in the present day (it gained costume designer Ann Roth an Oscar on the time).
And whereas Matt Damon's character is definitely au fait with style, he's without the means to access it in the identical approach that the opposite characters are: he has one shirt he washes out nightly, a threadbare twine jacket Dickie presents to exchange, and one pair of gown footwear that he has to put on to the seashore. In some ways, the film is at pains to emphasize that, although Tom is sweet at what he does, he's not fairly ok — in any case, Dickie, Marge (Paltrow) and Freddie Miles (Philip Seymour Hoffman) all figure him out. Yet it's with style that he manages to move in these circles. In truth, it's how he accesses them in the first place, having borrowed a Princeton jacket for a piano recital when he first encounters Dickie's father, who errors him for a scholar and pleads with him to fetch house his wayward son.
In the novel, Tom is obsessed with clothes, spending hours touching Dickie's shirts and jackets or fingering the jewelry on his dressing desk, saying that doing so "reminded him he existed". His spectacles function a method to change between characters – like a villainous Clark Kent and Superman — whereas his choice to put on Dickie's monogrammed velvet slippers and signet rings after he has (spoiler alert) murdered him, alerts Marge and Freddie to the very fact something isn't right.
Style is usually used by literature's anti-heroes as a big software of their arsenal to deceive. It's Jay Gatsby's "lovely shirts" — so lovely, that they make Daisy cry in The Nice Gatsby — however which signify his excessive wealth by way of social climbing; Gone with the Wind's Scarlett O'Hara dressing in a pair of previous curtains to attempt to (unsuccessfully) trick Rhett Butler into considering that she's properly off after the Civil Warfare; and Patrick Bateman's Rolex watch, Oliver Individuals's glasses and Nike dunks that permit him to go undetected as a psychopath among Manhattan's elite in American Psycho.
And it's not simply on the page that grifters and tricksters utilise clothes to impersonate others.& Anna Delvey, the so-called "pretend heiress,"& who conned New York into believing she was a German socialite, used designer pieces as a decoy for the very fact she had no money and didn't pay for something. The woman within the Celine wide-rim glasses couldn't probably be a conwoman, might she? In the meantime, convict Elizabeth Holmes, the college dropout behind Theranos, an organization that claimed to detect illness by way of just one drop of blood, modelled herself on Steve Jobs in a uniform of black polonecks so that she can be taken critically by tech bros and the world at giant.
"The best way we gown does, to an extent, have an effect on how individuals see us, however it's context-dependent," explains Dr Dion Terrelonge, a trend psychologist. "It's about alignment and the way we fit in with individuals's expectations. We wish to assume we don't decide others based mostly on what they're sporting, however we do. It's not a damaging judgement, necessarily; it's about deciphering and categorising. It helps us navigate the world."
Whether or not you wield that energy for good or for evil is the differentiator. "Once you put on an item of clothing that you simply affiliate with a sure individual, way of life or behaviour, then you definitely're much more more likely to take on these issues," explains Dr Terrelonge. "When individuals copy other individuals's fashion, they're making an attempt to align themselves with them and their way of life. It's strolling 100 miles of their footwear. It's shorthand for, 'that is the type of individual I'm' — you look the part."
For conners, it's "pretend it til you make it" or "gown for the job you need" writ giant. As Tom famously says in his remaining speech in the film, "I assumed it was higher to be a pretend any person, than a real no one."
This text originally appeared on Harper's BAZAAR UK.
</div> </div> The publish Why conmen like Tom Ripley are so preoccupied with fashion appeared first on Harper's Bazaar Australia.
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