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fashion and aesthetics.
a celebration of Hugo Strange’s style over the years ♥
hugo has the freedom of not actually having a costume, other than of course his counterfeit batman cosplays. so we’ve been treated to lots of different interpretations of what an eccentric, affluent psychiatrist would wear. let’s go over the many ways you can style hugo strange and his surroundings.
the early years
under construction because i need to get pics lol
the pre-crisis eighties
ditto
batman: prey gets a whole section to itself because they went off.
i am extremely fond of cocaine decor and late-eighties/early-nineties fashion, so this is hands down my favourite design for hugo in terms of the styling and aesthetics. hugo’s outfits are incredibly extra and his apartment is also filled with ugly-gorgeous details. with every new angle of his apartment, we see more ridiculous and ornate touches. he has an abundance and it is not enough. it can never be enough.
i love this outfit. it is hideous and makes no sense to me.
he cleans up nice :) also, i adore how many times they give him anime glasses in this comic. it's actually pretty rare hugo's glasses get this exact treatment, where rather than more complex reflections you just see blinding white light where his eyes should be. i guess it helps that he has such thick lenses in this comic.
and, of course, his loungewear is so sleazy and good. he looks so himself in his smoking jackets and dressing gowns. it feels right somehow that we mostly see hugo in bachelorwear while his desires are so very libidinal.
as though to establish his authority, his outfits when appearing on television or for press conferences are a little more conservative compared with the lavishness of his other clothes - they speak of the time but are hideous in a more generic way, if that makes any sense. i am a little bit obsessed with that white suit, though.
hugo’s apartment
my favourite thing about this hugo is the ridiculous decor of his apartment. it is so of its time that it is painful and i love it so much. i don’t have much to say because frankly i don’t know enough about interior design. i would 100% live here, ideally as his human sex doll. i would never get bored.
this sofa looks like it makes squeaky noises.
i really like his flooring! what is up with the amount of different carpets and tiles?
i have to show you the male gazey kidnapping scene to talk about his bedroom. warning that prey hugo is, unsurprisingly, a violent misogynist.
we don’t get many clear shots of his bedroom - however, he does have a picture of a skeleton hung up beside the bed. that’s fun and i do relate. also, even on an upper floor it seems like a bad idea to have your blinds open while you’ve got a kidnapping victim tied to your bedposts, unless hugo is known for these kinds of antics already (which i wouldn’t be surprised by).
(i wonder what he’s drinking in this scene. i don’t drink regularly, so the signs and customs of different drinks are not something i’m familiar with. based on the plants on the label, gin or absinthe maybe? absinthe would fit with the vibes beautifully. are you more likely to drink it straight from the bottle? i guess you can really drink anything from the bottle if you try hard enough. readers, help me out!)
i’m disappointed in his bed being so bare. the headboard is a boring choice, not quite as excessive as some of his other decor. it fits his character, which is that he is painfully sexually repressed and pays very little attention to actual intimacy. but i wish it looked more comfortable because i’m a sicko.
he does however have mood lighting and was apparently using it while beating his victim with a baseball bat.
accidental hanky code cocktail rings
hugo is occasionally (in parts 2 and 3) drawn wearing a ring on one of his ring fingers (on either hand - we’ll get to that). as he’s not married and isn’t indicated to have been married, i had assumed that these rings were some kind of signet or organisational rings - something to indicate his alma mater or privileged background so he can flex about it.
upon closer examination, however, they appear to be decorative rings, rather than signifying a specific group or status. this is backed up by the fact he wears clearly different rings with different gemstones at different times, so it’s likely he changes them out based on mood. (this fact also diminishes the idea that he feels himself to be ‘married’ to his manikin.)
notably, hugo is never seen wearing a ring at public events or gatherings, including when he is on tv. he solely wears them at home while monologuing at his manikin or at cort, indicating that they symbolise, like cocktail rings typically have, nighttime, opulence, excess. to have his ring fingers bare while he’s out socialising also prevents confusion about his marital status to any potential suitors, an important motivator as he is perpetually and pathetically lonely.
symbolically, the change in rings and hands is interesting, albeit possibly accidental - it could be a continuity error, especially because the rings are close enough in design for us to surmise they’re meant to be the same one, even if the details are different. but if it’s an error, it’s an interesting freudian slip!
the first ring we see him wearing is a ring with a blue gemstone on his right hand. he’s wearing it while ‘sharing a drink’ with his manikin and not anticipating any guests.
the second ring we see is a new ring on a new night, in part 3. a ring with a ruby, or some other red gemstone. he is wearing it on his left hand this time, so on the hand a wedding ring would ordinarily be per american customs.
i love this because we see he is wearing it after having an awful date with the mayor’s daughter. by wearing a ring on his left hand while cort is conscious to see it, he indicates that a) he is sexually unavailable (to a man) - seems rather defensive, hm? - and b) his obsession with batman is marriage-like in its sincerity. there is of course also colour symbolism in a red ring being used while he’s got a live (and male) mind to play with, instead of a blue one for the passionless trysts with his lady manikin.
now i am 90% sure this is a continuity error rather than an intentional hint, but in the same scene, hugo is seen wearing both no ring at all and a different ring, square shaped rather than circular, on his right hand.
both rings also change hands! this is almost definitely just a fuck-up (a reassuring one - i obsess over continuity in my own comics but didn’t notice this inconsistency until many, many rereads of this comic!) but i like the idea that he slips it onto the other hand or changes rings after putting cort in a hypnotic trance. as though indicating subtly to the unconscious cort that he is once again open to advances.
this analysis was a great excuse to look at his hands and imagine his fingers in my mouth. delicious!
hugo’s fashion in the modern comics
among the many crimes of the corporatisation of mental health is that modern-day hugos will don some pretty dull corporate looks to match. whether he is working at arkham or as a therapist for rich clients, the stereotypes of what a therapist’s wardrobe looks like have evolved from the dapper, old-school eccentricity inspired by the old psychoanalysts, and if he wants to command authority he’ll have to change to match. modern hugo designs will use a well-tailored(? sorry i’m bad at judging this. dieworkwear don’t @ me!) but boring suit to reflect this. this unfortunately transfers to his formal suits, too.
the above is just a couple of examples - in the 2000s up to the present, there are many more hugos who opt for patternless suits and plain, solid colour ties in traditional colours. the dissonance against his chinstrap beard and circular, frequently tinted glasses makes for a fun contrast of the old and new, like the unethical and archaic nature of his methods is bursting through the seams of the corporate uniform. to me, though, i just see a man starving for some weirdness, some drip. please let him have some.
obviously the best outfit for hugo to be in is... his birthday suit.
catwoman
perhaps controversially, this is one of my favourite designs for hugo despite not being the most interesting of fashion choices. the clothes themselves are generic, but i always love hugo in a three-piece and a trenchcoat, and i think the combination of features along with the broader, dad-bod design for him, works well in combination. he’s cute! also he has a pipe. he would smoke a fucking pipe.
red hood and the outlaws
i like that he has kind of dark academia vibes in this outfit! the little rolled up, unbuttoned cuffs, the sweater vest. hugo suits dark academia very well because he’s all the absolute worst parts of the institutions of knowledge.
harleen
i know at this point hugo is working at arkham (the labcoat appears to be standard scrubs for arkham), but his vibes with that tightly groomed goatee are solidly ‘tenured professor who loves the sound of his own voice, dresses casually to add allure, and will fail 90% of students in his class consequence free except the ones he sleeps with’. the plain black t-shirt is also faintly terence fletcher of him and i do adore that choice. stjepan šejić made everyone hot in this comic, including hugo, though i don’t know if making hugo hot was ever his intent. i desperately want to suck him off under his desk.
batman: the knight
hugo’s suit is reflective of the prior mentioned issue of him getting more boring to be more professional lol, but i really like his therapy office. (i had wondered if it was actually a part of wayne manor, but based on the exterior shots and the fact that bruce brought his own bag, i don’t think it is.) it is pretty much the opposite of a reassuring therapy office, imposing and dark. as he seems to treat a lot of students at gotham university, this is probably a university building, or at least adjacent to/affiliated with the university. it does add to the atmosphere beautifully. besides of course the ‘knight’ symbolism in this series, artists love pairing hugo with ancient artifacts. i guess he’s just that type of guy, to derive meaning from the past and to want to own it for himself, as though it might help him make history.
batman ‘66
this is hands down the worst hugo design. like, it makes sense that they gave him hair because he’s silly and giving him a stupid combover makes him sillier. the clothes are just kind of boring? 0/10.
i owe the gotham costume designers my life!
how could i make a section like this without acknowledging the gorgeous tailoring on show from gotham’s live-action hugo, worn so well by bd wong. beautiful patterns and careful contrasts. i wonder if the costume design was inspired by mads mikkelsen’s hannibal, who dons many similar combinations of patterns that ostensibly shouldn’t work together, especially for a rather prescriptive ‘one pattern per outfit’ menswear rule of thumb, but they do and it’s glorious and gives me so much fashion(/gender?) envy. the beard and glasses just… work in combination with the suits. you have to have the full set of distinctive fashion choices to allow them to cohere beautifully. i somehow managed to take several caps where the lighting reveals the seam of his bald cap, but that’s not the focus. look at this fashion.
i also really like his labcoat design in this version. by nature, labcoats are hard to fuck up, but i like the silhouette he cuts in it and the side buttoning suits him nicely for his many bloody experiments. he looks so fucking good covered in blood.
his outerwear is cute and fanciful too! i love the satisfying interplay of colours that aren’t just… grey tones and one accent colour. it fits hugo’s eccentricities SO MUCH better than the boring business suit.
