There is a dress code that is associated with the rascals opposing the Brazilian style to the Portuguese one. They are two different sides of the same coin.
When thinking of a scoundrel wich is the image that comes to mind almost immediately? It's the kind of guy with cynical smile that has a golden tooth cover by a mustache, the Zezé Camarinha type, uses the suit of anthracite with bright colors and the hair licked with grease or gel. Uses the shirt open almost to the belly botton, the Latin male look and finishes off this "vision" with a gold necklace with the cross of Christ and wears also a ring of gold in the little finger of the right hand. A portrait that surprisingly many women consider to be very attractive. This is the rascal of the Portuguese lower classes. The current, more bourgeois, wears Armani suit, with black patent leather shoes, shirt and tie with strips and a whiter smile. Where can we find them? I leave it to your imagination. Guess!
Across the Atlantic, the style is more refined. The Brazilian scoundrel is more chic, wears a white suit with imported Japanese silk shirt, on the top of his head a Panama hat and shoes in two colors to finish off the image of this Tropicaliente men. According to Gilmar Rocha in a study entitled "The aesthetics and performance in the clothing of the scoundrel" this anachronistis style, and I quote "the aesthetic concern with his appearence represents their principal symbolic investment, since we are talking about a type of man who often has no assets, nor properties, except the clothes on their backs, as they say. " For the scholar the importance that clothing has for a rascal converge for the construction of an aesthetic representation of a character who has his costume is a major mechanism of symbolic efficacy of his social identity. She even argues that there was even a trend and over time this kind of look that was the hallmark of a scoundrel, in a later period, it was intended to create a greater distance between the the picture of Tropicalismo and with the sophistication of fifties, the suits had to be black instead of the imaculated white. A twist on the color does not change the code itself, which meant in terms of non-verbal language, it was the lifestyle of someone who does not obey the rules imposed by society, which was associated with bohemian, music, women and illegal gambling.
The clothing was found a reflection of this strange way of living to say the least. The fact is the scroundrels represents metaphorically, "variations of style and variety of ornaments that dress up the character. It is extremely rich in symbolism and social meanings. He denounces the status changes through which it passed to his identity. " In contemporary Brazil we can appreciate this code on the tissue, as they call it themselves, only in the samba schools, as the rascals of our day, no longer uses clothing as a way to reassert its status, quite the contrary. He uses a current decoded image and somehow blends itself with the urban fabric.
