If, like me, you count Point Break among your favourite films, you'll know all about the Ex-Presidents. If not, they're a gang of Los Angeles bank robbers who stage heists to fund their core activity – surfing – and hide their identities behind latex masks of former presidents of the United States. The film was made in 1991, so Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama hadn't yet been handed the key to the Oval Office bathroom. Instead, the robbers disguise themselves as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
Re-create the heist these days and as well as having masks of Clinton, Bush and Obama to choose from, you could throw in a few aspiring presidents too: a perfectly lifelike Hillary Clinton mask shouldn't cost you more than about £20 and if you're really prepared to stick your neck out, Donald Trump is now deemed notorious enough to have had a mask made produced in his honour too. If you appreciate irony, buy yours from Mexican firm Grupo Rev, who ran some up for Hallowe'en following El Donaldo's broadside against the country and its people.
Of course bank robberies, fancy dress parties and scaring Mexican children are one thing. But the likeness-in-latex trend now seems to be gripping the fashion world too.
Avoc Paris is a menswear label founded in 2013 which specialises in “inclusive fashion for a gender-neutral future” and designs “clothing made of architectural lines, structured materials and references to decorative arts and popular culture”. But it's only those final two words which can really explain why at last week's Paris menswear shows, Avoc sent its male models out in Donald Trump masks. Mind you, as one of the company's less highfalutin slogans is “Avoc is clowning”, and Trump is regularly labelled along the same lines, perhaps it makes perfect sense.
Not everyone was impressed. Alongside a picture captioned “This is uuuuge!”, fashion website Coco Perez wailed: “French menswear brand Avoc terrified the bejesus out of all of us … On the other hand, who'da thought Trumpy would look pretty good in a grey skirt, black sweater and black socks with white sneakers??? LOLz, just kidding. This is hideous. Hand over the brain bleach."
Not sure what brain bleach is, but otherwise that's fairly clear. Still, there's no smoke without burned latex so perhaps the Avoc masks were actually part of the look. On the face of it – sorry – they're just posh balaclavas anyway and with weather like ours, it's probably quite sensible to cover up and therefore perfectly sensible for a retailer to provide the means to do so. Perhaps, then, all the fashion houses will start producing winter masks based on the likenesses of popular entertainers, sporting icons or well-liked politicians. OK, scrub that last one. Still, I can't wait for the Gucci x Kanye West collaboration (with built-in headphones) or maybe a Top Man x Benedict Cumberbatch hook-up, complete with Sherlock Holmes-style sculpted deerstalker. Perfect for robbing banks in, no?
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