James Dean, was a man of few words. He needs little explanation when it comes to discussing his status as a style icon. He was without a doubt the king of cool.
Dean’s first television experience came in a 1950 Pepsi commercial. His first big screen debut came five years later in Elia Kazan’s East of Eden. His role as the tormented outcast Cal Trask was nothing but a prelude to achieving full-blown stardom in Rebel Without a Cause. The brooding young actor gained international fame for playing Jim Stark, a teenager who, as the title implies, can’t seem to stay out of trouble. Dean had a classic look with slicked-back hair, jeans and a tight white T-shirt that was topped off not with a black leather jacket but a red windbreaker, and of course, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. It may not seem radical by today’s style icon standards, but his rebellious look marked a definite departure from dominantly preppy and buttoned-up mid-century styles.
Life imitated art with James Dean carrying that shameless image into his everyday life. A taste for fast cars was suitably accompanied by fame and fortune that allowed him to buy luxuries like the Porsche 356 Speedster, which he later traded in for the more exclusive - and faster - 550 Spyder model. Not surprisingly, Dean had a habit of racing his high-priced investments. It was the natural complement to his all-American bad boy persona. But as luck would have it, life in the fast lane ultimately led to an untimely death at the young age of 24.
Dean’s legacy, however, outlived his short time on Earth for one simple reason - he embodied the essence of cool. He was one of the first male actors who got as much attention from women as he did from men. Although James Dean’s sexual past remains a mystery to this day, one thing is clear: Everyone either wanted him or wanted to be like him.
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