Villains don’t just wear capes. They wear leather, dagger-shaped pendants, and tailored blazers. They’re no longer just movie characters, they’ve become fashion’s new icons and people are dressing the part. Villain style is high-fashion with an edge. It’s defined by sharp tailoring, sleek silhouettes, high-neck dramatic cuts, dark colors and unique accessories. In villain fashion, clothing isn’t an aesthetic it’s an identity.
To achieve this look there must be a fusion of presence and precision. It’s not just the silhouette sharpness, it also includes having a commanding presence. Slicked-back hair and rich tones (black, burgundy, steel), create looks that are deliberately eye-catching. Villain fashion doesn’t whisper, it commands a room, and lately fashion has been listening.
Fashion’s favorite antihero isn’t just fictional, they’re front row and in Prada’s case, on the runway.
At their 2012 Milan Men’s Fashion Week show, Prada cast real-life villains: Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, and Tim Roth. It wasn’t just shock value, it was storytelling. Prada used fashion the way a director uses costume, signaling identity before a word is spoken. Each look felt like it belonged to a character with layers of secrets and schemes.
Prada’s broaches, double-breasted blazers and slick back hair characterized the powerful prowess at first glance. This was the art of dressing like a villain: clothing as performance and power.
Rick Owens has long embodied this aesthetic with sleek silhouettes, elongated lines, and a dominating palette of blacks, grays, and whites. His platform ‘Kiss’ boots, combat ‘Hollywood Megalaced Mega’ boots adorned with multiple laces, and thick-sole sneakers look like they’re made for stomping across a dystopian cityscape. His architectural, almost sculptural, designs give an alienness to his clothing that distorts and elevates the body like a villain in control of their own evolution.
This carries out down to the attitudes of his models. Owens’ models rarely smile as they stomp down on the runway. In his Paris SS25 show where models appeared as if they just emerged from the sands of Dune with heads painted white, alien-like makeup draped in sand-colored fabrics. Then came Paris FW25 show where models walked in extravagant phoenix-like feathered-out platform boots and serpentine silhouettes.
From the untrained eye one would not be sure if models were dressed to play a villains in a feature film or walk the runway for a ready-to-wear collection. A catalog of looks modern Frankenstein or Severus Snape, Owens doesn’t just design clothes he creates villain multiverses on the runway.
Balenciaga plays into dystopian dominance with grandoise shoulders and silhouettes that feel designed for a different planet. Balenciaga’s SS25 show opened with a massive fur coat, reminiscent of Cruella de Vil. Some looks didn’t just reference villainy, they embodied it. Straight-faced models wore blackout visors that were less eyewear and more like armor. Echoing Venom’s with sleek and inhuman menacingly power, these shield lenses erased the eyes, the most human feature, and replace them with robotic darkness.
We’ve seen this direction from Balenciaga before. In FW24, spiked leather jackets and shoulder-heavy tailoring, distort the body, feeling more creature than clothing. In Balenciaga, even discomfort becomes part of the design – garments that protect the wearer by making them untouchable. As GQ put it, for Balenciaga “protection and discomfort are often two sides of the same coin”. The cape-like paneling, armored shoulders, and precision tailoring don’t just look good, they they make the wearer feel invincible.
Alexander McQueen is fashion’s haunting gothic romantic villain. SS25 brought Dracula and Black Swan to the runway. High necks and beautiful black lace gowns saturated their 2025 collections. Gowns of thorn-embroidered mesh, feathered skirts, and heels that looked like a swan mid-transformation bled elegance and villainy into even delicate pieces. McQueen’s Black Swan trades ballet slippers for feathered open-toed heels and leotard for liquid-black gowns. Their FW25 show sported a white fur coat with thin scattered black dots of fur, almost exactly alike that of villain Cruela De Vil, showing Mcqueen is not afraid to make the villain enchantingly gorgeous.
Chrome Hearts, on the other hand, gives us the rockstar edge with dagger pendants, silver stacks of chains and dark leather. Chrome Hearts flirts with the role of villain at a streetwear level. Its silver dagger rings, “F*ck You” engravings, leather pants, sterling silver belts, and cross-motif shirts invite even casual dressers to tap into their darker side. The brand has long been worn by rockstars like Guns N’ Roses, but its villain evolution was solidified when Bella Hadid wore custom Chrome Hearts to the 2018 Met Gala: a sculpted latex corset, a cathedral-length veil and leather padded shoulders adorned with a cross motif. It’s not just the runway, stage, or red carpets, at University of Miami Chrome Hearts makes its way into campus and the club. Chrome Hearts adds edge to even everyday looks through zip-ups with dagger hardware and layered silver chains over black tees.
The numbers don’t lie, villain fashion is officially here.
According to Data But Make It Fashion, villain-inspired looks dominated London Fashion Week 2025. Padded shoulders appeared in 44% of runway looks, sheer dresses made up 33% of Dilara Findikogu’s collection, and deep burgandies trending among multiple fashion houses.
Balenciaga’s popularity has risen year after year, cementing its role as the fashion house of future villains. And with ‘Quiet Luxury’ dropped 25% in online popularity the month coming into 2025, fashion is ready for villain to take center stage.
Why are we so drawn to the dark? The villain aesthetic speaks to control, rebellion, and unapologetic presence, a rejection of being palatable or pretty. It’s style as self-possession.
Balenciaga’s Creative Director Demna Gvasalia believes “we create relationships between body and fabric, the way we make shoulder lines and armholes, the way clothes have an ability to change us,” wrote Demna in show notes at a Balenciaga show.
Clothes have the ability to mold the way people view us and how we view ourselves. It is an unspoken identity. There is a power in harnessing the rights to rewrite the narrative of how were viewed.
Academic Journal, Anchoring the (postmodern) self?: Body modification, fashion and identity. In Fashion Theory written by Paul Sweetman, refers to fashion as “A reflection – in imposing an exterior demeanor, clothes are semiotic devices, machines for communicating.” (2017)
There is a symbiotic relationship in how clothes change us and we utilize them as devices of communication. They change us and continue to become reflections of this ever-changing self. People are drawn to dark fashion because it gives them unspeakable creditability and identity. It tells who a person is without a single word. It is a mode of communication of value and character. It’s refreshing and inspiring to change your avatar everyday.
So maybe you’re not plotting a hostile takeover or running a criminal empire. But you can still walk like you could. Villain fashion isn’t about being bad, it’s about being bold. It’s about knowing what you want, dressing for power, and refusing to back down to taking up space and receiving stares.
Because in a world obsessed with likability, there’s something revolutionary about dressing like the one who doesn’t care what you think. Whether you find your weapon in a Chrome Hearts ring, a Rick Owens boot, or a perfectly tailored Prada coat — the most important thing is how you wear it.
move. This villain looks like a CEO but moves like a threat.
or necklace can carry the whole look.
words_sara johnson. photo_valeria barbaglio & julia campbell. design_lizzie kristal.
This article was published in Distraction’s Summer 2025 print issue.
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