Enter the dragon
From when she first burst upon the public conscience in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in 2005, Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander has captured the reader’s imagination. A brilliant computer hacker, Lisbeth is described as short and skinny with short red hair dyed black. She has multiple tattoos on her neck, arm, ankle, hip and back, and piercings on her nose and eyebrows. Played in the Swedish trilogy by Noomi Rapace and in David Fincher’s Hollywood version by Rooney Mara, both actors brought the bisexual Lisbeth’s edgy Gothic style to life.
Two years earlier, in 2003, Abby Sciuto, a forensic scientist with a taste for Gothic fashion, made her appearance in the television show JAG, followed up with NCIS .
Felicity Smoak from ‘Arrow’
Straight ‘A’s
From Lisbeth’s dark and distressed palette to the nattily-dressed Felicity Smoak in the television series, Arrow . The skilled hacker from DC Comics played by Emily Bett Rickards is a far cry from the rumpled, crumpled, weird and wonderfully dressed geek. From peep hem and belted dresses to Marc Jacobs’ navy print cardigans and a leather trimmed skirt by Alexander Wang, Felicity proves that a love for bits and bytes doesn’t exclude you from a fondness for fashion.
- The Wachowski siblings techno-thriller The Matrix proved the real world was far more fashionable compared to the simulated one. In the pretend world, Keanu Reeves was programmer Thomas Andersen, who wore boring clothes; in the real world as Neo, he wore cool shades and well-cut overcoats. Trinity and Morpheus were colour-coordinated with Neo, while the others, as the trilogy moved into accelerated levels of silliness, wore clothes that veered wildly between classic, contemporary and cuckoo.
- While there is more to a Kingsman than his clothes, they do make him who he/she is. Based on a comic book, Matthew Vaughn’s spy thriller about a secret service based out of a bespoke suit unit, has secret weapons in everything from the brolly to the brogues. Contrarily Merlin, the tech support for the kingsmen, wears a jumper rather than a suit.
- Black Panther has a lot going for it, including its fashion forwardness. Shuri, the smart and sassy inventor in Wakanda, sports clothes that are at once playful and make a statement. Her white dress, for instance, is an elegant take on the lab coat. Her make up and accessories have the feel of practical beauty as well as something she would have created for herself, just like any teenager asserting her personality.
You are in Q
James Bond’s gadget guru, Q, does not appear in Ian Fleming’s novels. Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q in the maximum number of Bond films, was usually dressed conservatively in a suit. John Cleese, who played Q’s assistant in The World is not Enough and Q in Die Another Day, appears in a lab coat, and fairly unremarkable clothes. The latest Q, Ben Whishaw, in his fishtail parka over a jacket, wears what one would expect a nerdy person to wear. The feeling is reinforced with his “can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pyjamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.”
Lock it in
The high-functioning sociopath on 221B Baker Street has a neat line on clothing. While Conan Doyle’s Sherlock was all about deerstalkers, cloaks and meerschaum pipes, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock for the BBC show, wears a £1,000 Belstaff coat. In an interview, producer Sue Vertue told this writer, “I think Sherlock is a smart dresser. He wouldn’t follow fashion, but would go once a year to the tailor and get three suits stitched.”
Actor Jeff Goldblum arrives on the red carpet for the film 'Isle of Dogs' during the 68th edition of the International Film Festival Berlin, Berlinale, in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
Rockstar meets tech
Whether as the driven scientist Seth Brundle in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, chaotician Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park or David Levinson, the computer scientist from MIT in Independence Day , Jeff Goldblum rocks the role. In plaid shirts over tees or an all-black avatar, Goldblum personified loose-limbed grace and an irresistible, insouciant charm.
