The next time you get thrown in the slammer forget your grandmothers useless advice about wearing clean underwear. When busted for whatever illegal activity of your choice you hope to look as good as Whitey Bulger in this classic, actual mug shot from 1953. Fashionably un-aware Bulger gets him a spread in Esquire Magazine in 2011.
(via Esquire.com)
If the New York Times wanted to avoid burnishing the legend of Whitey Bulger, who was wanted for 19 counts of murder until the FBI arrested him on Wednesday, they picked the wrong front-page photograph: a mug shot from 1953 that may be the most stylish diptych in the history of criminality. Bulger is 23-years-old. He’s wearing a collared shirt and a wide-checked zip-up flannel coat. In profile, he looks just like James Dean. The crazy thing is the shot was taken when James Dean was still a nobody, working in TV. On the right, staring straight at the Boston Police cameraman, he’s inexplicably wearing an outsize fedora. As a whole, the mug shot is a strange amalgam of Jim Stark and Roger Sterling. He’s the rebel with a cause, the real tough from whom the Hollywood toughs were ripping off their style.This was the first of many Bulger mug shots. There was one from the mid-80s where Bulger exudes the confidence of a man who knows he is under FBI protection. He’s in a crisp, businesslike, decidedly-80s suit, complete with a wide tie. For the profile shot, he doesn’t even bother to turn his body. He just tilts his head to the side. (He’d had practice by that point.) And in the shot taken yesterday, 58 years after that first one, he’s wearing a timeless white Henley and blue jeans. These mug shots, laid end to end, tell the story of twentieth-century style.
No man gets dressed up for his mug shot, as Nick Nolte and James Brown — who both went for the same disheveled-tropical look in theirs — can attest. That’s because nobody expects to get caught. So the mug shot, as it turns out, is an honest assessment of a man’s innate style. You may not posess Bulger’s stone-faced swagger, but you can still learn something here: Though you should never plan to be arrested, dress every night as if you’re going to be.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/#ixzz1Qau1npAc
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