THE JOURNAL
Barry Keoghan (centre) in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026). All photographs by Robert Viglasky/Netflix
Thirteen years after it first aired, and four after its final episode, Peaky Blinders is back. A new feature film, The Immortal Man, lands this month, with Netflix also developing a sequel series centred on a new generation of Shelbys, the fictional family based on the real-life criminal gangs of early 20th-century Britain.
Not everyone is convinced that expansion is a good thing. Some argue that the further the franchise moves away from its original Birmingham hardman roots, the more its cultural edge softens. But it makes this a useful moment to look back at what the show actually did to men’s style.
In the short term, it did quite a lot. For a few years, the Peaky look spread everywhere. Barbers were flooded with requests for severe undercuts, weddings were full of waistcoats and boots, and one major department store reported a 25 per cent rise in flat-cap sales at the height of the craze. With a little distance, the impact is easier to measure – and not always in the ways you might expect.
01. It got men interested in tailoring again
Before Peaky Blinders, tailoring had drifted into a slimmer, sharper silhouette – but it wasn’t necessarily something most men were buying into. Then came thick Donegal tweeds, chalk-stripe wool suits, heavy overcoats and waistcoats worn like armour.
“The first thing is, it got men dressed up again, which was great, and it got them into suits,” says Brent Pankhurst, barber and founder of Pankhurst London. “It also got men thinking about grooming, about their appearance.”
The stylist and writer Peter Bevan agrees. “When it first dropped in 2013, everything was super skinny. And once tailoring gets too tight, it just doesn’t look good. The show brought it back to something much cooler – tailored but not restrictive.”
What men responded to was how solid it all looked – thick wool, heavy coats and cloth that felt closer to workwear than business wear. The appeal wasn’t elegance so much as weight: rough wool, herringbone and brushed tweeds that felt tougher. Less boardroom, more pub-after-dark.
02. It offered a clear template
Professor Andrew Groves, director of the Westminster Menswear Archive at the University of Westminster, says the show gave men clarity. “Peaky Blinders offered a very legible form of masculinity at a moment when male dress felt directionless,” he says. “It combined working-class codes with tailored formality. Waistcoats and heavy tweeds gave men a script.”
In short, it made dressing up easier. You didn’t need to invent a look; you just followed the silhouette. Strong shoulders, higher-waisted trousers, boots instead of sneakers. A uniform that felt confident without looking corporate.
03. It tapped into our love affair with the dressed-up hard man
Part of the reason the look travelled so far was that it felt culturally familiar. Britain has always had a soft spot for the sharply dressed outsider; the bloke who looks dangerous but polished at the same time.
“Part of what it said was about class,” says the TV writer and cultural commentator Stephen Armstrong, who writes for The Guardian and the Sunday Times. “British class culture has quite often had a streetwear-upwards element. Working-class cultures tend to filter upwards through society.”
The show’s characters weren’t aristocrats. They were working-class figures dressed with purpose, a combination that sits somewhere between gangster chic and social mobility. As Armstrong puts it: “We love a stylish hardman.”
Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026)
04. The haircut became the fastest-spreading part
The tailoring mattered, but the haircut was what really took off. It was easier to copy, and barbers saw the effect immediately. “All the time,” Pankhurst says when asked whether customers requested the Shelby cut. “Cillian Murphy looked great with that haircut.”
The problem was what happened next. “What I hated about it was the skin fade. Barbers watered it down, and everyone ended up looking the same.”
05. It proved men respond to story as much as clothes
Groves argues that the show’s influence worked because it wasn’t just about aesthetics. “Peaky Blinders showed that menswear is highly reactive to narrative,” he says. “Give men a story about power, violence and belonging and they will buy the uniform.”
That helps explain why the look spread so widely. You didn’t need to care about menswear, you just needed to want a piece of the story.
Barry Keoghan and Cillian Murphy on the set of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026)
06. Eventually, it tipped into fancy dress
As with any strong look, there came a point where the copies outnumbered the originals. “Everybody wanted to be a barber,” Pankhurst says. “Barbershops on every corner.”
Once the look hit, er, peak ubiquity, the edge went out of it. The full Shelby uniform began to feel less like a style move and more like a theme night. Time to hang up the flat cap.
07. The legacy is subtle, but still visible now
The enduring thing isn’t the haircut or the three-piece suit,” Groves says. “It’s the idea that menswear can draw authority from the past to stabilise the present.”
Pankhurst sees that shift daily. Men are still dressing up – just differently. Wider trousers. Softer structure. Longer hair. “People are more individual now,” he says. “There’s a bit more character.”
In other words, Peaky Blinders may have given men permission to dress up again but what followed was a move towards something looser, less literal and more personal.
Could a TV show still do this today? It’s tempting to think not. In an era of endless streaming choice – everyone watching something different, algorithms shoving us down separate tunnels – it feels harder to imagine a single show reshaping how men dress. However, Armstrong disagrees. The issue isn’t media fragmentation, he argues, but the ingredients.
“What you really need is a combination of highly stylistic programming, huge reach and class,” Armstrong says.
In other words, if another show arrives with a strong visual identity rooted in recognisable culture, it could absolutely happen again. Whether the expanding Peaky Blinders universe keeps that original spark is another question entirely.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is in select cinemas from 6 March and Netflix on 20 March
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