Best dressed movie gangsters

There’s no doubting how suave and sophisticated Johnny Depp looks as infamous 30s gangster John Dillinger in Michael Mann’s new crime thriller Public Enemies. From his herringbone tweed suits to his fedora hats, Depp is the very picture of gangster chic as he rampages through America’s Midwest robbing banks with his criminal cohorts including Pretty Boy Floyd (Fighting’s Channing Tatum) and Baby Face Nelson (Snatch’s Stephen Graham). Yet it’s all far from unexpected.

Not only has Depp cultivated a fashion following thanks to his peculiar pirate style in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and his theatrical flourishes in Tim Burton collaborations most recently in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but cinematic gangsters are traditionally nicely turned out. And nothing seems to disrupt this commitment to looking good. It’s survived from the early days of the genre with tough men like Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and Paul Muni through to the modern efforts of writer/ directors Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie, irrespective of the gangster’s location, ethnicity or slot in his organisation’s pecking order. University professor and author Stella Bruzzi suggests in Undressing Cinema that “throughout the gangster genre clothes are equated with status, money and style” and it’s a neat and satisfying explanation.

And so as John Dillinger, one of the 20th Century’s most notorious hoodlums gets the big screen treatment, we’re taking a look back at some of his fellow fashionable felons, both fictional and real. They might have extensive rap sheets, but at least they’re not dodging the fashion police.