Stylish Films: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Tarantino's first movie might be his best movie - it's definitely the most stylish. RIP Michael Madsen!
For three decades, Quentin Tarantino has had one of the most legendary careers in cinematic history. He has created 9 feature-length films with another one on the way and won two Academy Awards. His movies all have a signature Tarantino touch, characterized by non-linear plots, liberal use of profanity, blood and gore, and popular-music-filled soundtracks. All of these cinematic elements, including the one that I want to highlight here, have been discussed at length by several outlets. Here, I want to focus on the clothing in one film. Tarantino's first film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), set the standard for all of the quintessential Tarantino elements that followed, especially with the effortlessness in style and ease from the whole ensemble cast.
Reservoir Dogs is a heist film. The catch here is that it doesn't show the heist at all. We don't even know what the inner workings of the heist look like. We surmise that a group of men, using code names (they don’t know each other at all), are robbing a diamond warehouse. The pages in the script flip back and forth in time to the days leading up to the heist, showing us how the mission came together, and the devastating effects of what happens after.
Each of the six men involved in carrying out the diamond heist wears a black suit, black dress shoes, a white shirt, a black tie, and black wayfarer sunglasses. The black suit has been seen as a sartorial symbol for the 9-to-5 work life; a basic that never goes out of style. For a long time, companies sought to shed their mundane reputations by allowing employees to lose the tie, throw on a vest instead of a jacket, or even - dare I say it - wear jeans to work. In my first job out of college working in finance, the idea that we could wear jeans to the office on Friday was looked upon as a grand honor. The catch was that you still had to wear your dress shoes and a tucked-in dress shirt. It felt wrong. I couldn’t wait to move on and ditch the suit for good.
In 2025, with fashion much more democratized than ever, the suit has been seen as a return to form, even a sense of rebellion. Kanye West forced all of GOOD Music to adopt the same uniform during the “Rosewood” era in 2010 before the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Hedi Slimane played with skinny black suits during his time at Dior, Saint Laurent, and Celine. When the Cleveland Cavaliers wore Thom Browne suits in every road game during the 2018 playoffs, it felt reminiscent of Tarantino’s famous heist boys from the early ‘90s.
At the time of the film’s release, the suit was associated with corporate America, big business. In some cases, it was associated with the mafia, but the kinds of suits made popular by the mafia were more akin to costumes than proper business attire. Suits were for Wall Street guys, insurance salesmen, and members of the C-suite. We hadn't associated the suit with organized crime like professional heist men yet. It was the bad-boy answer to the little black dress.
The way that the characters comport themselves while wearing traditional business attire is also part of the film's charisma. The men are loud and foul-mouthed. They're dangerous criminals, not above killing another man. They're professionals, but rebels at the same time.
No one captured this professional killer mentality like Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blond character. Maden died last week at the young age of 67 years old, leaving behind a cinematic legacy that includes Donnie Brasco and the Kill Bill series. In Reservoir Dogs, he plays Mr. Blonde, a sadistic and unpredictable antagonist. As one of the members of the heist crew. It’s talked about that he “shoots up the place,” leading to the heist going sideways to begin with. He wears his suit a bit looser than the rest, and speaks with a sense of ease, like the whole world is just one big holiday, yet we know he will kill senselessly to get what he wants. In the best scene in the movie (SPOILER ALERT), he kidnaps a police officer and dances to Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” while torturing him with a razor blade. The whole scene feels so cold and calculated. It’s an early moment of genius in a career full of these moments for Tarantino.
The black suit was Tarantino's first big sartorial moment, one that is directly carried over into his most popular film, 1994's Pulp Fiction. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. The duo play two hired hitmen who both wear similar black suits when en route to complete a hit for their boss, Marsellus Wallace. On the way to the hit, they banter about McDonald's food in foreign countries. This mirrors the famous first scene in a diner at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs, where the men argue the nature of tipping service workers.
All of Tarantino's films since Reservoir Dogs have had a signature style. We can talk about Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt with their contrasting late-sixties chic vs workwear in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood or Uma Thurman’s black pants and white blouse in Pulp Fiction, but those suits in his first film are always going to be the most influential with regards to not only his filmography, but the greater cultural conversation. The movie is cool as hell, too. I must have watched it a dozen times by now.
Peace and Love
