reenactor wearing a duster Western horsemen's dusters figured little in
Western films until
Sergio Leone re-introduced them in his movies
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966) and
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). According to
production designer Carlo Simi, Leone was fond of dusters. The two of them went to look for men's wear at the Western Costume shop in California, which was a very large
warehouse on the
Warner Brothers lot and was dispensing most costumes worn in Westerns filmed in the US. There, they happened upon some dustcoats for riding horse, which had already been shown in John Ford's
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The coats were white but the Leone team changed them to chocolate brown. In
Once Upon a Time in the West, the character of Harmonica, portrayed by
Charles Bronson, is looking at the dusters worn by the men of Cheyenne (
Jason Robards), who asks him if he's "interested in men's fashion." Harmonica responds, "I saw three of these dusters a short time ago; they were waitin' for a train. Inside the dusters there were three men ... inside the men there were three bullets." As Leone's westerns were "dramatically stylish," they also influenced with their costumes and choice of shots the world of
fashion.
Once Upon a Time was a massive hit in France, ranking 7th in the most attended films of all time. The film caused a fashion trend for duster coats in the French capital of such proportions that department stores, such as
Au Printemps, affixed signs on
escalators warning customers to keep their "maxis," as they were called, clear from the edges of the moving steps in order to prevent jamming and injuries. In the film genre of
heroic bloodshed of
Hong Kong films, the protagonists are often seen wearing dusters. In
Kirk Wong's 1988 gangster film
Gunmen, set in 1930s
Shanghai, the protagonist (
Tony Leung) wears a flowing Chinese robe similar to Leone's dusters. Director
John Woo's 1986
A Better Tomorrow, featured
Chow Yun Fat's character, nicknamed Brother Mark, wearing a duster. Following the film's release, many teenagers in Hong Kong came to wear dusters in emulation of Chow's character. In
colloquial Cantonese,
trench coats are called
Mark Gor Lau (literally, "Brother Mark's coat"). The fictional anti-hero
Omar Little wears dusters both as outerwear and as a silk sleepwear coverup in the
HBO series,
The Wire. The
Tenth Doctor played by
David Tennant wore a cinnamon brown duster coat on
Doctor Who. Van Pelt, the main antagonist in
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, wore a dark brown duster coat.
Harry Dresden from Jim Butcher's
Dresden Files wears a duster, as well as other cowboy-like attire. In the television comedy series "
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", a black leather duster is featured in several episodes that is prized by several main characters, who often argue over who looks better wearing it. In modern times, leather dusters are worn by
motorcyclists to prevent
road rash. ==See also==