It’s one of the most iconic opening scenes of the ’90s. Mickey and Mallory Knox, played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, rock up to a dusty roadside diner, Robert Gordon’s “The Way I Walk” snaking out of the jukebox. Mickey’s in a black leather biker jacket and tiny red circle shades, yin and yang stud earrings glinting in his ears. Mallory’s in low-rise boot-cuts and a lacy red bikini top, a scorpion tattoo peeping out of her waistband. Then, they throw down, Mallory punching and glassing a guy to the sound of L7, Mickey plunging a knife into some random dude’s chest. It’s a hideous and violent few minutes. And yet, you can’t help but ask: Okay, but [tucks hair behind ear] who are this couple, and why are they so… cool?
Oliver Stone’s 1994 classic Natural Born Killers, based on a story by Quentin Tarantino, might have come out 30 years ago this year, but the style legacy of the film feels pretty now. Watching it back, this murderous and mutually toxic duo look like every other thrift store-addicted poly couple in East London—right down to their big motorcycle leathers, suede cowboy boots, and battered Levi’s jeans held up by many vintage belts. You can buy rings like their iconic silver snake ones on Etsy and I don’t need to tell you that weird, bug-like vintage shades are still everywhere. But what is it that makes Mick and Mal’s ’90s outlaw style so appealing? And why are we still obsessed with it today?
According to the film’s costume designer, Richard Hornung (who passed away in 1995) the secret is sheer sex appeal. Without that, they’d just resemble a couple of dirtbags with a hunger for blood. But the pair have hot bods and a certain freakish rizz. Mickey wears several shirts that are made of mesh so that his nipples are often visible. And a lot of effort went into the particular hang of his jeans (which are all genuine vintage Levis). “Half the thing that’s sexy about jeans is how they conform to the contours of your body as they age,” Hornung told the LA Times in 1994. “The crotch becomes paler and the front of the thighs become paler.”
But they also look effortless—and that’s the eternal and essential ingredient to good style. “I wanted to do an homage to poor white trash elevated to a sexy fashion statement, kind of like rebel heroes,” Hornung said in that same article. In other words, like Fight Club’s Tyler Durden a few years later, their fits were made to look like they’d been cobbled together on a non-existent budget—probably thieved and pillaged from various victims—elevated solely by their assembly in a fit.
When Natural Born Killers first came out, their thrift store style would have been a throwback to the boomer gen. The various tasseled jackets are a wink towards the psychedelic hippy era, and the many Levis jeans and aviator sunglasses are their version of late ’60s and ’70s style (which makes sense—these are two people who worship at the altar of Charles Manson). Now though, we recognie their style as a very ’90s interpretation of the ’70s—endless leather, the flashes of midriff, a proclivity for playfulness. It’s no wonder we can’t get enough of their looks: kids today are dressing like kids dressed in the ’90s when they wanted to look like they were from the ’70s. And on and on it goes.
Natural Born Killers has always been a divisive film. Is it a smart commentary on the desensitizing effect of a violence-obsessed mass media, or does it feed into that same problem? Is it a lush, cinematic fever dream, or a two-hour-long music video with a flattening effect? The critics can’t make up their minds. But one thing that we can all agree on? That Mickey and Mallory Knox are still some of the coolest killers that modern cinema has ever seen.
This story originally appeared on British GQ with the title ‘Natural Born Killers turns 30, and its dirtbag chaos style still reigns supreme’
