Joe Pesci Is a Soothsaying Style Icon
Save for the whole "helping a couple of innocent kids beat a ginned-up murder rap" thing, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Beecham County, Alabama, he was underestimated and under-appreciated. Even in his native Brooklyn, back in 1992, one gets the impression that he wasn't celebrated as he should have been. But if you plucked Vinny from his unaccomodating environs and dropped him into his hometown in 2023? The man would be acknowledged for what he is. He'd be lauded. He'd be admired as he always should have been. Not for the lawyering, necessarily, though it turns out he was pretty good. Instead, he'd be celebrated as a bona fide style icon.
Think about it. The leather blazer. The high-rise black trousers. The black tee and the chain. The hits of silver on his belt and the cowboy boots. The man had Western hipster sleaze on lock a good two decades before it started filtering into the ever-evolving tapestry of niche modern menswear. Before your favorite podcaster's favorite blogger started visiting Boot Barn on the sly, Vinny was doing it.
Vinny's just a character, of course. But that doesn't make his role in our narrative today any less real. Because it's not just Mr. Gambini who's an icon—it's the man who played him. Joe Pesci turns 80 today. And though, if you've bounced around the men's style internet long enough, you're sure to have heard about how Home Alone's Marv (Daniel Stern) and Harry (Pesci) delivered the big-outerwear-tiny-hat gospel to an audience that didn't fully appreciate it—yet!—it's time we recognize Pesci's full history of style soothsaying.
Let's start, then, with the Wet Bandits. In 1990 (and in the sequel in 1992), they read as classic, utilitarian, not-too-scary villains. The big coats, the fingerless gloves, Harry's beanie—these were supposed to be grubby, mangy, the kinds of items you'd find on guys who resorted to a life of burglary and contending with small assailants in hyper-fortified suburban Chicago homes. Then, right around the end of the 2010s, something shifted. Suddenly Harry's enveloping tweed overcoat looked like something you'd elbow past other shoppers to snatch off a rack at an influential boutique, not the sort of garment you'd toss in a trash bag before carting it off to Goodwill. The watch cap perched atop his head was a known quantity, having already been adopted by guys who had that one picture of Daniel Day Lewis in Carhartt saved to their phones, computers, and the cloud. And the wide-legged trousers were no longer dated but entirely of the moment. Harry looked, well...kind of really fucking cool.
Snap forward a couple of years in both timelines, and we're back to Vinny. It's 1992 and the man hasn't just prefigured the convergence of nicotine-stained rocker vibes and Westernwear, he's also anticipated—in a way—the emergence of the over-the-top, thrift-store-grab-bag aesthetic championed by the likes of Alexander Michele at Gucci. Did Pesci's character want to land in a wide-lapeled, burgundy tailcoat? Sure didn't. Does he look like he could almost saunter off a Milanese runway in that getup? Sure does.
Have you noticed that we're on an almost perfect 30-year delay between Pesci's character's sartorial prognostication and the way modern men are dressing? Here's where we might close that gap by a couple of years. In 1995, Casino hits theaters, bringing with it ill-fated made man Nicky Santoro. You can catch him in a black dress shirt with a gray blazer. A silvery sharkskin peak-lapel jacket with a swatch of oxblood beneath it. And the standout: a glimmering, golden getup complete with a tie pin. This is glorious, unabashed, fuck-you tailoring, and it's hard to shake the feeling that we're heading somewhere similar. The vibe might be slightly less combative, but it remains oppositional. Shaking off the still-powerful pull of lounge clothes, guys in 2023 are getting dressed up not as an act of obligation but a declaration of intent. It's a signal that you're striving for a little more—though hopefully that "little more" is a big night out, not a shallow grave in an Illinois cornfield.
So, how are we all going to dress a couple of years from now? Maybe it's time to watch 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997) and find out.
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