Wall Street Style — Featuring The Iconic Gordon Gekko

Wall Street: the iconic style of Gordon Gekko.

Mon­ey, pow­er, and respect live here. Every­one on this street is eager to make their mark among the hordes of scrupu­lous financiers, invest­ment bankers, and stock bro­kers for a chance to stand out. Either become a well respect­ed tycoon on the street or move over and play loy­al sub­or­di­nate.

Com­pe­ti­tion is so fierce here, show­cas­ing a pow­er­ful sense of style is con­sid­ered a nec­es­sary weapon. This is exact­ly what I imag­ined of Wall Street, after watch­ing Oliv­er Stone’s clas­sic cor­po­rate dra­ma of the same name.

Gor­don Gekko epit­o­mized the wall street look, even though it didn’t real­ly exist at the time. The movie starred Micheal Dou­glas and a young Char­lie Sheen, each with their own unique take on style that defined menswear dur­ing the Rea­gan era.

Their suits were made effort­less­ly appeal­ing through use of con­trast col­lars, and but­ton sus­penders. In the 2010 sequel, “Wall Street: Mon­ey Nev­er Sleeps,” each of the clas­sic looks gets an upgrade with sleek­er, more under­stat­ed style bet­ter suit­ed to today’s 24-sev­en busi­ness world.

Gekko sport­ing pin­stripes on a 3 piece suit, with an semi spread col­lar. The pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of each piece com­bined with play on pat­terns and col­ors pro­vides a pow­er­ful mod­ern look.

Wall Street style of the 80’s.

The orig­i­nal “Wall Street” tells the sto­ry of Gor­don Gekko, an unscrupu­lous financier who is bril­liant­ly played by Dou­glas in an Acad­e­my Award win­ning per­for­mance. Gekko has ascend­ed to the top of the finance world by engag­ing in shady cor­po­rate raid­ing and insid­er trad­ing schemes.

His will­ing­ness to tell any lie, stab any back, and com­mit any crime to stay on top of the Wall Street pile has giv­en him a shark-like per­son­al­i­ty that is reflect­ed in the way he dress­es.

Gekko’s atten­tion grab­bing wardrobe with its bold col­ors, con­trast col­lars, and flashy acces­sories was the brain­child of cos­tume design­er Ellen Miro­jnick. Ellen hired not­ed tai­lor Alan Flusser to make his suits, and Alex Kab­baz to design the striped shirts with con­trast col­lars that would come to be known as the Gekko shirt.

Gekko sport­ing a very unique hor­i­zon­tal striped dress shirt. Deo Ver­i­tas offers shirts with this style if request­ed.

Gekko show­ing a more relaxed look, yet still wor­thy of com­mand­ing atten­tion.

Style on Wall Street inspired by sartorial history.

While Gekko’s style became the hottest thing in menswear soon after the movie’s release — any­one who lived through the 1980’s will remem­ber Wall Street’s sar­to­r­i­al impact on pop­u­lar cul­ture.

Every­one from politi­cians to mid­dle school prin­ci­pals were step­ping out in their best fac­sim­i­les of a Gekko shirt and but­ton sus­penders — Miro­jnick was actu­al­ly inspired by an ear­li­er fash­ion age.

Gekko sport­ing his quin­tes­sen­tial white con­trast col­lars, the sig­na­ture pow­er look of the 80s — a style that remains pop­u­lar today. Deo Ver­i­tas offers this style on all col­lars via our Shirt Design­er.

Gor­don Gekko decades apart.

The com­plete office look sans jack­et.

Highlighting the importance of tailored clothing in Wall Street.

The Edwar­dian era, which took place rough­ly from 1900 to the start of World War I, was a gold­en age for menswear. Young men known as dandies stepped out on the town in their pin­stripe suits with col­or­ful shirts and but­ton sus­penders.

Because col­lars were then sep­a­rate items of cloth­ing, these starched white acces­sories stood out bold­ly from the pink and blue striped pat­terns that were favored by the dandies.

The Gekko shirt is an homage to the Edwar­dian age, with its stark white col­lars in sharp con­trast to the blue striped pat­terns and mauve hues of Gecko’s immac­u­late­ly tai­lored shirts.

Stripes were dom­i­nant not only on suits, but dress shirts.

The friendship and contrasting styles of Gordon Gekko & Bud Fox.

The oth­er major char­ac­ter in “Wall Street” is Bud Fox, who is played by Char­lie Sheen. Bud is a young stock­bro­ker who longs to ascend the cor­po­rate lad­der, which he even­tu­al­ly does thanks to spilling insid­er secrets to the rapa­cious Gekko.

Bud starts out the movie in pret­ty stan­dard busi­ness attire. He wears ill-fit­ting wool suits in var­i­ous shades of greige, but after get­ting into Gekko’s good graces he becomes his sar­to­r­i­al Mini-Me.

His choice con­sist­ed of nat­ti­ly tai­lored suits and one par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable pair of loud red sus­penders that would look like they belonged to Ronald McDon­ald.

Fox was ply­ing his own sense of style on Wall Street, as evi­denced by the red sus­penders.

The sequel brings a refreshed style to Wall Street with Gordon Gekko & Shia.

The long delayed sequel, “Wall Street: Mon­ey Nev­er Sleeps,” finds an old­er, hum­bler, but still styl­ish Gekko try­ing to nav­i­gate the even more shark-infest­ed world of augh­ties Wall Street.

He is joined by Shia LaBeouf, who plays an ide­al­is­tic young trad­er named Jacob Moore who, being a prop­er mil­lenial, is try­ing to fund a project that will bring clean ener­gy to the world. Jacob also hap­pens to be dat­ing Gekko’s daugh­ter, who is played by Carey Mul­li­gan.

Gekko look­ing more casu­al off-set, and giv­ing the young Jacob some advice.

Miro­jnick, who designed the clothes for the sequel, delib­er­ate­ly gave the fash­ion a more mut­ed look to reflect the somber mood on Wall Street after the 2008 eco­nom­ic down­turn.

Gekko has a casu­al wardrobe in this film that reflects the more relaxed dress code of many mod­ern Wall Street firms. He even sports an open col­lar on sev­er­al occa­sions, which is in stark con­trast to the sharply dressed Jacob, who dons bespoke suits, Her­mes ties, and tai­lored shirts from Anto of Bev­er­ly Hills.

The old­er Gekko still look­ing as sharp as ever.

How­ev­er, Jacob’s cloth­ing choic­es also show that, while ambi­tious, he is much more eth­i­cal than Gekko and Bud were. While Jacob can mix pat­terns and sport a pock­et square with the best cor­po­rate raiders, he is more cir­cum­spect about his busi­ness deal­ings, which is reflect­ed in the mut­ed grays, mauves, and blues that make up his busi­ness wardrobe.

The sen­si­bil­i­ties of each dress are per­fect­ly suit­ed to each char­ac­ter, while pro­ject­ing pow­er with­out action or words.

While Jacob‘s style is pow­er­ful in its own right, Gekko’s age and wis­dom is well reflect­ed in his choice of dress. His style proves to be time­less, and inspi­ra­tional decades lat­er.