“Guilty of stealing my heart,” reads the slogan on the Luigi Mangione t-shirt, a sartorial tribute to the 26-year-old who has been charged with the murder of a health insurance CEO and become the subject of an internet frenzy.
Mangione was arrested following a manhunt after he allegedly shot UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson in New York, crimes which his attorney has said he will plead not guilty to. The shooting has captured the nation, for its brutality and for the anger and frustration many are expressing toward the American health insurance system.
Though it’s been less than a week since his capture, Mangione has been made into a martyr and turned into a sex symbol online. And while fascination with criminals and killers is nothing new, Mangione has struck a chord somewhere slightly more surprising: the online fashion sphere.
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“Luigi Mangione STUNS in a blue Bali shirt,” one user wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Another shared what they purported to be Mangione’s favorited items on the online shopping platform, Grailed. The wish list was made up of pieces from cult, high end fashion designers including Rick Owens, Raf Simmons and Balenciaga, according to the post on X.
The obsession goes deeper. The popular Instagram account Style Analytics highlighted Mangione‘s influence. In an Instagram reel, the data-driven fashion insights page reported on the “weird trend this week is all of the people searching for and buying the same jacket as the United Healthcare shooter.”
The jacket in question is a hooded khaki trucker jacket, and searches for the style have risen by 130 percent in the week following the shooting, and 700 of the jackets have sold at the retailer Macy’s, according to Style Analytics.
Molly Rooyakkers, who runs the account, told Newsweek, “The fascination with Mangione’s fashion choices largely stems from the intense scrutiny of every detail surrounding his actions.”
“This ranges from the ‘clues’ he shared on social media to widespread speculation about his motives, the specifics of his arrest, and even the backpack he carried,” Rooyakkers added. “Every element linked to him and his actions is being meticulously analyzed online—including his fashion choices. Leading to people interested in the case to purchase the same backpack or jacket out of, perhaps, solidarity or admiration.”
It doesn’t stop there. Self-described Internet It Girl Christina Caronda posted a video to her Instagram, where she tried on outfits which she said she would wear to the Luigi Mangione trial.
Captioned, “YOUR HONOUR, I CAN FIX HIM,” the video has been watched over 3.7 million times at the time of writing. Cardona tries on a series of outfits, ending with what appears to be a wedding dress, while “Criminal” by Britney Spears plays in the background.
A representative for Cardona did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
She’s not the only one. Multiple videos like Cardona’s have been shared on TikTok, and they range from outfit suggestions on what to wear for jury duty at Mangione’s trial, and to visit him in jail.
Newsweek spoke to a woman who posted one of these videos, who asked to remain anonymous as she was worried about how her employer might react. Explaining why she believes that Mangione has become so popular, the woman said, “It’s easy to see that America’s working class is disgruntled with capitalism. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Luigi Mangione is so captivating.”
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The woman described her interest in Mangione as philosophical, and said he represents the stage of progress Americans currently find themselves in.
But it may go deeper still. “Mangione has been adopted as a kind of folk hero/Robin Hood-type figure, which lends him a certain taboo allure. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s good-looking,” Rachel Monroe, author of the book Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession, told Newsweek in an email.
“From Jack the Ripper onward, there’s a long history of people becoming fascinated by, or even attracted to, famous murderers—they’re like the ultimate celebrity bad boys,” Monroe said.
And Mangione is “not a typical murderer,” Amanda Vicary, an associate professor of psychology at Illinois Wesleyan University, told Newsweek.
“Combine the fact that he’s young and good-looking, with the fact that’s giving off this sort of American hero-taking-on-the-big- corporation vibe, with the bad boy aggressiveness you see in other killers, and you’ve got the perfect combination to be drawing in women,” Vicary said.
“Mangione killed an executive, arguably to draw attention to the struggles of the average person. He has a different sort of appeal. A bad boy, but one who fights for the greater good,” she added.
And as for women’s fascination with crime? It “Isn’t going away,” she said. “Anytime you have a relatively good-looking criminal getting a lot of attention, there will be people attracted to him.”
“In this case we see the embodiment of the romantic hero,” Jo Turney, an associate professor of fashion at the University of Southampton, in England, told Newsweek.
“We are so keen to believe there are ‘heroes’ or people who can and are willing to stand up for those without a voice. It is the ordinariness of his dress that offers this hope, whilst conforming to the ‘man alone’ and the Romanticism this engenders, that marks this as special,” Turney said. She highlighted that the ordinariness of his clothes “plays into comic book narratives of ordinary people gaining extraordinary powers in the fight between good and evil.”
Turney said that while she has not really seen many instances of criminals sparking fashion trends, “here are of course, unofficial uniforms for those who portray themselves as disenfranchised, such as [Dylan] Klebold and [Eric] Harris who certainly set this trend following the Columbine School shooting.”
She noted that their clothing style continues to be adopted by “alienated white youths,” across the globe.
Both Turney and Vicary agree that the spotlight on Mangione is not going anywhere. Though Turney noted, “Whether the popularity of Mangione’s style continues will depend on his actions, his charisma, and the outcome of the trial.”
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