Big Bull, Big B and the big double-breasted suit

The show, which revolves around the life of infamous stockbroker Harshad Mehta, portrayed by Pratik Gandhi, has also earned a spot in IMDb’s list of top 250 TV series of all time.

The at-times corny but overall entertaining Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story takes viewers back to the 1990s. It was a time when ‘Ilu Ilu’ was a hit song and the Lexus was something exotic and new, like Audi was when Ravi Shastri won it in Australia.

It was also a time when people wore double-breasted suits.

Mehta’s famous picture from his rollicking bull phase shows him standing by the Lexus on Mumbai’s sea face. He wears a greyish double-breasted suit, sunglasses and an expression that betrays a blissful ignorance of a fundamental truth of life – it can all go belly-up any moment.

Mehta is often referred to as ‘BSE ka Bachchan’ in the show, for which costumes were designed by Arun J Chauhan. There is no physical resemblance between the two men. But as Mehta posed by the sea in his power suit, he did evoke images of the superstar from the then-recent Agneepath. Bachchan too wore double-breasted suits in the film and stood by the sea as he played a gangster named Vijay Dinanath Chauhan. Just that, unlike Mehta, Bachchan had seen success and failure by then, even though he had yet to hit his late 90s nadir.

Film people dress very differently from bankers nowadays. However informal the world may have gotten, Jamie Dimon is not going to go to the JP Morgan Chase office dressed like Johnny Depp (unless he has smoked something offered to him by Depp). Film folk, on the other hand, virtually have no dress code except at black-tie events.

In the old days, however, things were more homogenous. Formal wear in Hollywood or Bollywood, Wall Street or Dalal Street more or less had the same definition. And the suits that Bachchan and Mehta wore reflected global trends.

In international finance the heavy hitters wore prestige suits, often double-breasted. Suspenders were their other staple. Michael Douglas wore quintessential ‘Master of the Universe’ clothes in the film Wall Street. In an article on suits over the decades, GQ once wrote, “On Wall Street, folks were dressing like Gordon Gekko in what would become known as “The Power Suit.” Basically the more conspicuous one’s wealth, the better. Padded shoulders, suspenders, banker stripes, pinstripes, double-breasted jackets, pleats, and an affinity for hair gel were all hallmarks of the “Greed is good” mentality.”

Leonardo DiCaprio had a similar wardrobe in The Wolf of Wall Street, in which he played Jordan Belfort, a rogue stockbroker from the 90s who made millions from unethical practices. Giorgio Armani, Wall Street’s favourite designer in the 80s and 90s, collaborated on the film, directed by his friend Martin Scorcese.

“The Wolf of Wall Street is set in the early 1990s, when showy clothing was a symbol of power. At the time, it was obligatory to look like a winner,” Armani said.

He could very well have been speaking of Mehta’s suits.

After the 90s the double-breasted suit became a no-no. It looked like an Ambassador car compared to the slim and chic 50s and 60s cuts that became fashionable again. Besides, the extra layer it added on the belly and its wide lapels did not suit average body types.

Fashions do not die completely, however, and over the last few years, the double-breasted suit is making some sort of a comeback, albeit with contemporary tweaks. Pedigreed labels such as Brunello Cucinelli and Kiton are trying to find a middle path between preserving the suit’s identity and making it sharper and lighter. Even then, it will take a while before the market is fully bullish about the double-breasted suit.