Delivered by Intellect to: Fashion Institute of Technology (stnyfitny) IP: 143.55.7.21 On: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 23:27:56 FFC 11 (2) pp. 155–168 Intellect Limited 2022 Film, Fashion & Consumption Volume 11 Number 2 www.intellectbooks.com 155 © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/ffc_00045_1 Received 23 March 2022; Accepted 15 May 2022 REBECCA BAUMAN Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY ‘Now you are one of us’: Mafia fashion on-screen ABSTRACT This article examines the role popular media have played in disseminating images of mafia fashion. Through the representation of criminal apparel on-screen specta- tors are encouraged to identify with the societal transgressions of the mafioso, engendering an abiding fascination with mafia style. By looking at Italian and Italian American productions from early silent cinema through contemporary tele- vision crime series, menswear becomes a primary means of harnessing spectatorial desire and identification that embraces enduring associations that link southern Italian identity with criminality and style. In the analysis of these texts it becomes apparent how costuming communicates a series of semiotic properties that reflect the complex interplay of masculine identities in an environment based on violence, power and appearance. INTRODUCTION In Alberto Lattuada’s 1962 film Mafioso, the protagonist Nino is initiated into Cosa Nostra in a distinctly sartorial way. The local mafia chieftain’s right-hand man, Don Liborio, invites Nino to stop at an open-air carnival with the invita- tion, ‘I’ll buy you a cap’. Nino selects a coppola, the short-brimmed hat tradi- tionally associated with male peasant apparel in Sicily. As he positions the hat on his head, Don Liborio approvingly muses, ‘now you are one of us’. The naïve Nino interprets the cap as a symbol of cultural belonging and masculine friend- ship. However, as the narrative soon reveals, the mere donning of the coppola signifies Nino’s unwitting and irreversible descent into organized crime. KEYWORDS dress masculinity organized crime cinema Italian ethnicity mafia movies film costume gangsters