Fashionable Evil

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Not quite evil. Or at least, not enough for the audience to worry too much. The essence of this prop is evil in a Camp sort of way, often bordering on 'dark' but safe fetishism. This often just means cooler and sexier costumes, and slightly more aggressive characters. Especially handy if you prefer a Dark Prince to a White Prince.

Occasionally, Fashionable Evil occurs because Generic Cuteness permeates the entire setting, like a ghostly hell dimension suffused with fluffy purple things and Cute Monster Girls instead of actual monsters. The setting also supplies its own Anti Heroes, and since evil is the Informed Ability, these characters can be antagonistic if not outright malicious when needed.

Usually not result of Villain Decay, as their popularity is predicted, especially if the story itself uses a non- Big Bad centered conflict. See also Dark Is Not Evil. Don't confuse with Evil Is Stylish.

Examples of Fashionable Evil include:

Comic Books

  • Spider-Man villain the Rose. While four individuals have used this alias, all of them fit the Trope, a crime boss who wears a clean white suit, a tie, formal gloves and shoes, and a rose in his lapel, the only part that stands out being the velvet full-head mask and dark glasses.

Film

  • 101 Dalmatians in both the animated film and the live-action reboot has Cruella DeVille. She looks great in furs, even running a fashion company in the live-action version, and his a big ham. Roger even makes fun of her for it in the animated version, creating a Villain Song during one of her visits. Do not underestimate her; if she wants your puppies to use in a skin coat, she will resort to kidnapping to get it done.
  • The Devil Wears Prada has Runway editor Miranda Priestley, ladies and gentleman. Always fashionable, punctual and competent regarding the editing job, and a terrible person to have as an enemy. If you work for her? Good luck with meeting her expectations. Andy comes to realize that while Miranda is a difficult boss and certainly manipulative, she is not evil.
  • While hiding in Atlanta, Frank Abegnale in Catch Me If You Can slips into this on realizing he can pay for nice clothes using the stolen money from Pan-Am. He gets fitted for a James Bond outfit, and yells at someone for spilling a drink on his Italian shirt at a pool party. Sure the guy is not pure evil, but as Carl Hanratty points out later, embezzlement is still a huge crime.
  • Downplayed with Birdie in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. During the fight that Claire has with Andi, she corrects Claire that Andi is wearing Valentino, not Gucci heels. She is problematic and doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut on social media, but she seems more oblivious and ditzy than evil.

Literature

  • Zigzagged with Cruella DeVille from The Hundred and One Dalmatians. She is certainly fashionable but has no qualms about murdering innocent puppies to get what she wants. It's lampshaded that she's not exactly good friends with anyone and is married with her husband for convenience.
  • In The Devil Wears Prada book, Miranda wears clothes that are worth more than her assistants' rent. Andy mentions that Miranda always looks nice, and grudgingly admires the many coats and suits she has to send for dry-cleaning.

Web Animation

  • Helluva Boss
    • Episode three, "Spring Broken," features Verosika Mayday, Hell's top idol and Blitzo's ex. (Millie and Moxie are confused about the last part.) She is catty and petty, but boy does she rock those heels when singing.
    • Then we have Stolas in "House of Asmodeus". He is a demon prince, evil obligations and all, but he cleans up nicely when Blitzo calls him up for an impromptu date. Blitzo even comments on it with surprise.

Western Animation

  • The animated spinoff 101 Dalmatians: The Series had Cruella, naturally, but she was much less intimidating compared to her film counterparts. Indeed, more than one episode shows her facing slapstick with or without the puppies' help. It got to the point where the puppies were more annoyed than scared when she insisted on staying with Anita and Roger for a few days to quit her smoking habits.
  • Danny Phantom has Ember, the performing ghost. She is good at hypnotizing people with music, but given her fashion sense, it's no surprise that she wins them over without the magic. The guys seem to like her midriff and heels.
  • Donita Donata in Wild Kratts has this as her shtick. She's a fashion designer that likes using alive or dead creatures in her latest runway experiments. One particularly creepy episode had her using a People Puppet machine on Martin after she captured him, so that he would walk on the runway in her outfits. He was able to fake it, but then she did it for real. In another, however, her Evil Plan to use monarch butterflies in a fashion line was thwarted by the fact that butterflies die after laying their eggs and completing the life cycle.
  • Miraculous Ladybug
    • Chloe as the Alpha Bitch always has the newest items in fashion. She lends only the knockoff versions to her "friends" and keeps the good stuff for herself.
    • Hawkmoth, aka Gabriel Agreste, is literally this trope. He runs a fashion company, pimping out his own son as a model, and uses his resources to collect the Miraculous and resurrect his wife.
  • Teamo Supremo
    • Deconstructed with Tiffany Javelin, pop star juvenile delinquent. While she has the image of a bad girl with a pierced belly-button and ripped jeans, she would rather wear her normal clothes and hair. Her manager is the one ripping up her clothes and verbally berating her to commit crimes, saying she'd be nothing but boring "Sally Smith" without this guidance. When Crandall and Hector expose the duo to the fans, Tiffany cries and surrenders to the cops, saying that she hates being this evil persona. She pulls a Heel Face Turn in her second appearance, which is why her manager locked her up to replace her with a robot. Tiffany looks much happier with no makeup and her hair down, in casual clothes to boot.
    • Played straight with Coco Caliente aka the Sinister Stylist. Her reason for giving everyone a Gag Haircut is out of revenge for Mauricio roasting her for a "bad hair day" at an awards show. The entire state laughed at her, so she wants to give everyone in the state a bad haircut while she remains fabulous. When Teamo confronts her and her team of "beauty school rejects," she laughs, saying that she was winning awards for her acting and style game before they were born. Crandall lampshades that entertainment awards don't allow you to make fun of other people or ruin their hair.