How tight can trousers get before they start cutting off the blood supply to your brain? It’s a question doctors might want to consider after Andrew Tate was arrested, standing proudly in a ballet fourth position, in Miami, wearing black slacks so ankle-grazing they could only be considered the type of capris beloved by It girl Hailey Bieber. As if his attitude towards women wasn’t causing enough outrage, he had to ruin pedal pushers, too.
Tate, alongside his brother Tristan, was arrested in the US as the UK’s CPS announced a series of 38 new charges against them, including rape, arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, and offences relating to indecent images of a child. British officials are now seeking to extradite the pair to face the charges and several preexisting allegations, which their attorney has dubbed “madness” and baseless.
It’s significantly frustrating, given the extent of the crimes of which he’s accused, that it’s taken so many years for Tate to be properly tried. He’s now been photographed in handcuffs at least four times, wearing everything from a black shearling jacket five sizes too small, champagne-hued velour tracksuit bottoms, and the latest low-buttoned purple shirt that comedian Grace Campbell joked “a mannequin in Dorothy Perkins would spit on”.
Tate buttoned the blouse in question showing off his collection of diamond chains – and, lest we forget, his pristine waxed chest. The garment, so tight that he wouldn’t have been able to lift his arms, even if his hands weren’t bound together by law enforcement, was paired with dark aviators that left him looking less Top Gun and more like Pitbull’s evil twin.
The final horror to finish off the look was predictable and profound: Sockless loafers. Right behind the actual cops were the fashion police.
Over on Instagram, endless accounts offered fashion advice: “Those Capris and silky top would be elevated with a kitten heel,” one person suggested. “He looks like he’s cosplaying Audrey Hepburn and he doesn’t have the chin to pull it off,” added another.
“Not exactly an alpha male outfit,” a user noted on X, as (potentially AI-doctored) images emerged of an outfit available for a bargain price in Asda. Meanwhile, in a thread of Tate wearing various sheer patterned blouses beloved by mums the world over, one person questioned: “Has Andrew Tate ever been photographed wearing men’s clothing?”
Of course, people should be allowed to wear and be anything, regardless of whether they are male or female. But others, such as Tate, think there are roles and norms to play into, which is why his overly feminine wardrobe choices is so at odds with his loud proclamations of strict gendered roles and lamentations over the feminisation of men.
So, of course, it’s all the funnier that he’s out on the streets looking like someone’s divorced auntie. “If only his crimes could be as breezy as those capri pants, maybe we’d finally get a summer break,” one person wrote on X/Twitter. “Tack on a lewd and lascivious for that slutty little ankle boys,” another added. “Bro [is] out here in some britches.”
It’s long been a theory of Tate’s critics that the reason the influencer shows such hatred towards women – wanting to degrade and control them – is that, at his core, he is jealous of the opposite sex.
The patriarchy hurts us all and, maybe, he’d like the empathy and allowance for emotion that women offer each other. Looking at his latest outfit, it’s clear he’d enjoy some aesthetic aspects of girlhood at least. But he might have to put his prison-issued jumpsuit on a hot wash before he gets the tight fit he favours on the inside.
