In Real Life The Mafia Dress Like Shit

You know what’s a strong look in a Mafia movie? That bit in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta turns up at that shrink from The Sopranos' house and pretends to be Jewish. You know what’s not a strong look in Mafia movies? Every other single outfit worn by every other single mobster absolutely anywhere ever.

And it carries through to real life as well. Did you see any of the footage from the huge wave of Cosa Nostra arrests in New York last week? There’s this myth that Mafiosi are well dressed, as if fat dudes squeezing themselves into off-the-shelf suits or immigrants in shellsuits is worthy of its own style blog. And this is an idea people have of Mafiosi solely. Nobody expects sartorial excellence from the Yardies or the Triads or the Russian mob or the Teignmouth Mandem or whoever. But the Mafia have managed to incorporate this mystique that they roll out dressed like the Rat Pack about to spitroast Angie Dickinson at any given moment. They don’t.Look:

JOHN 'SONNY' FRANZESE AND JOHN FRANZESE

The one on the left looks like the landlord of a failing pub in the Midlands that has struggled to cope with the increasing gentrification of the surrounding area, and the one on the right looks like his methadone-weary layabout son. Maybe it's not though. Maybe it’s the two moneymen behind Deep Throat who’ve recently been locked away for decades due to their roles as underbosses in the New Jersey Mafia. Who even walks like that guy on the right, anyway? He looks like he’s got a massive itch under each armpit that he doesn’t want anyone to know about.

SEBASTIANO 'SEBBY' SARACINO

Why the fuck would you wear that hat? Why would anyone wear that hat? Why would Sebby Saracino, who had just entered the witness protection program at the time the photo was taken, wear that hat? Theoretically, he could have worn anything he wanted and had it paid for by the American taxpayer, but he opts to pair his 'dinner with the regional manager' suit with a woolen cap that engulfs 2/3rds of his head like a hungry grape. Hats are important. If you're covering the part of your body that thinks for you with something like that, imagine how bad your shoes are gonna be.

GIANNI NICCHI

In reality, 29-year-old Sicilian Gianni Nicchi is one of the rising stars of the Cosa Nostra. In this photo, though, he looks like the Laughing Cavalier after injecting the grease from 50,000 arancini into his veins and hitting up GoDaddy.com to buy a domain name he can host all of his custom maps from Bioshock on. What even is that material his jacket's made out of? Pleather? The interplay between that and the cat-scratch pole sweater is like one of those books for pre-schoolers where each page has a hole cut in it so that kids can "feel the lion's furry belly" or "stroke the shiny beak of the albatross".

PAOLO MESSINA

In fairness, it's not just the mob guys who deserve flak here: look how homeboy on the right has made his own balaclava on some Etsy.com shit. If anyone reading this has ever walked through an allotment (as you do) they'll have come across hundreds of guys dressed exactly like this. People whose bodies have clearly given up the fight while the brain is still convinced that there's meaning in dedicating your existence to planting lots of Jerusalem artichokes and occasionally drinking lemon tea from a flask. Their bodies slowly waste themselves away until they're rolling around in clothes that are far too big for them, like a kid with progeria playing dress-up in a turkey farmer's wardrobe. Still, this guy looks happy. I guess that's because shortly before this photo was taken he was surrounded by 20kg of high quality cocaine.

DOM PASSANTINO