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The first rule of Fight Club? You do not talk about Fight Club—but we can sure as hell talk about the fashion in it. Today marks 20 years since the iconic film, which starred Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, first graced the big screen. The movie is still as memorable as ever, but it’s the costume design especially that’s seared into our brains. Apparently designers also can’t forget the stellar clothes: that seedy, sleazy-chic aesthetic is trending both on the menswear runways and in the wardrobes of celebrities like Justin Bieber.
Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, is Fight Club’s standout style star: he’s ripped, part of a dangerous underground fight club, and somehow has a penchant for ’70s-style camp collar shirts, which he styles with sleek leather jackets and cool aviators. When the movie was released in 1999, his getups read kitschy and kooky—today, they read modern and cool. In other scenes, Pitt forwent his flashy shirts altogether to show some skin. His look was only accentuated by a baggy pair of jeans—a silhouette that men’s denim is increasingly shifting towards, flared legs and all.
Durden’s slimy—but dressed up!—vibe has been embraced by Bieber, Post Malone, Harry Styles, and so many other Hollywood gents lately. And who can blame them, considering these same looks were everywhere on the Spring 2020 catwalks? At Amiri, loud, silky shirts played up the gritty Miami Vice feel; at SSS World Corp, the men were tatted up and shirts were unbuttoned to show their abs—a move Durden most certainly perfected in the film. At Casablanca, there was even a hint of a skin-tight white tank top—the ultimate Fight Club garment. So, while the film may now be considered an old classic, the fashion still feels all sorts of new. You could say it packs a punch all these years later.
