Wall Street Style: Can You Really Dress Like Gordon Gekko - Men's Style Question & Answer
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today I'm going to be answering the question, "Antonio, what do you think of Gordon Gekko's
style from the movie Wall Street?"
This was a question posed to me by a viewer, and so I'm going to be taking a few minutes
today and I'm going to give you my opinion.
Now, before I get started, did you know that all those costumes and everything developed
on the set, actually Alan Flusser did that?
If you're not familiar with Alan Flusser, he's one of the best writers ever on Men's
Wear, published a lot of great books.
I've never had the chance to go to his costume shop in, I believe, New York City but I would
think that my premium sponsor, Kirby Allison's Hanger Project, that's a great job of innocence
bringing something like that to the web.
Now, Kirby, he's down in Dallas, Texas and I brought him on as a premium sponsor because
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This guy has gone to Italy, he's gone to France and he has sought out the best neckties, the
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He also happens to make some of the finest hangers that you can put your clothing on
because Kirby is all about the best.
So I invite you to go check out Kirby Allison's Hanger Project.
Say hi to Kirby for me.
With that, let me go ahead and pull up the viewer's question.
He's asking, "Antonio, I was wondering, what do you think of the shirt-style by Gekko from
the movie Wall Street?
How wearable is that clothing for a regular office job?
Should only the collar be white on a blue shirt to make it less formal?
I've seen that Thomas Pink is selling this type of shirts.
Do you recommend that I go out and purchase one?"
So it sounds like the gentleman, he's in a white-collar job, maybe in the finance industry.
He has seen the movie Wall Street, maybe Wall Street 2 and he's wondering, "Okay, could
I pull this off?
That's a really sharp look.
I like it."
Okay.
As I talked about before, Alan Flusser actually designed all of those outfits for the movie
and when he did that, before that stuff really didn't exist in reality.
In fact, I've seen the number of -- I've seen pictures of men imitating this.
It's one of those things reality copying Hollywood; Hollywood copying reality whereas the circle.
But when I look that, what I see and the feeling, the emotion that I got from this clothing
is that of aggressiveness, of strength.
It's very memorable.
It's almost overpowering.
So if that is the message that you want to send, then go for it.
What made Gordon Gekko's clothing so striking, so strong?
1.
Strong Contrast
The gentleman talked about in there but he would use, let's say, a blue shirt and then
he would have a white collar with white contrast and cuffs.
Now, this could exist and in some cases, I've even heard of this existing quite a few years
ago whenever, well, let's just say, where do you think the blue collar came?
The blue collar came from because women got tired of washing their husbands' white collar
stuff all the time because it stained easily.
And so if you work in the fields, you wore darker clothing that was colored by indigo,
but white colors were very hard and they used to be interchangeable.
It was very possible to actually have a light-colored shirt with interchangeable collars and cuffs
and just change those out.
You have to get that custom-made to get that nowadays but that's a little bit of history.
But I think and when I see that contrast, to me it's very sharp and it draws attention.
2.
Accessories
If you go look in the movie, you're going to see pocket squares, the cufflinks, other
little details that these guys are using, very high end, very well made and those were
sending a very clear message whenever the man puts his hand on the table and you can
see his multi-thousand dollar cufflinks that, "Yeah, I'm here to intimidate you."
3.
Clean Lines
The fit was immaculate on almost all the clothing, not so much on Wall Street 2.
Wall Street, the first one, yes, the fit was down and all the details that went into the
lines.
You could see from when Michael Douglas would take off his jacket and you could see the
suspenders to the fit of his shirts, to the fit of his trousers, the break on the trousers,
Alan Flusser did a really good job with that clothing.
That right there says this man pays attention to detail.
4.
Colors
A lot of bold colors, not just the contrast but the use of gold, the use of very strong
blues, so very good use of colors.
What is my opinion?
Well, that clothing was a costume so my opinion is if you dress like this, to me it's a little
bit too much.
I think it's a costume.
That's where I think it should be left.
Now, some men, they want to send the message that "I don't care what you think.
I'm going to dress how I want."
He's one of my inspiration, one of my heroes.
But I think Gordon Gekko wasn't he based off of -- wasn't this stuff based off of the 1980
tycoons and all of the stuff that was going on at Wall Street which is still going on
today?
I think Michael Milken had a little bit of influence on them.
If you don't know who Michael Milken is, you can do a little bit of research.
But I don't know if that's who I want to draw inspiration from.
But to each his own and I wish you the best.
If you want to learn more about men's style, gentleman, I've got my A Man's Guide To Style,
my amazing self-study course.
I say it's amazing because it took me three years to put this thing together and I am
very proud.
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good information, how-to buy guides whether you're buying sweaters, shoes, shirts.
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Go check it out; a link to it down below.
I will see you guys in the next video.
Hopefully, that answered the question.
If you've got questions, you know where to send them.
Just send it to me to my email or use the Men's Style Q&A website which I've set up
for you.
Take care.
Bye-bye.