There are many fashion items a good looking chap like Brad Pitt can pull off, but leather pants are a step too far for us.

By Emmet Purcell

Brad Pitt is a handsome, handsome man. Even when he was getting punched to within an inch of his life in Fight Club and crawling in a pool of his own blood, he still managed to look better than rest of us even on our best day, wearing a full tuxedo and daubed in Lynx Africa bodyspray.

Perhaps Pitt’s good looks have recently clouded the actor’s judgement however, as he committed one of the cardinal fashion sins this week – stepping out to the Paris Premiere of his CGI animation flick Megamind with his glamourous wife Angelina Jolie in a charcoal overcoat and black leather pants combination.

Before you get too excited, it was Pitt, not his wife, wearing the leather pants. Brad Pitt is 46 years old and wearing leather pants.

A great Winter overcoat forever tainted at the Megamind premiere

Many men have flirted with leather pants in the past thirty years, most notably Eddie Murphy’s ridiculous outfits that bring laughs for the wrong reasons upon viewings of his iconic Delirious or RAW stand-up shows from the mid 1980s. Or even time Ross from Friends got his rightful comeuppance a few years back.

A quick Google search brings horrifying results, however, and we’re not simply talking about the obscure leather fetish websites that dot the web – many of our heroes have donned leather pants at one stage or another. The Beatles did it. Less surprisingly, Boyzone did it. Even less surprisingly, Kanye West has already done it. Yet they all looked ridiculous.

If Brad Pitt can’t work leather pants in this day and age, then now is the moment to call time on this fashion faux pas forever. To be perfectly honest, it’s one of the main reasons the ‘Dressed in the Dark’ section was created in the first place – to name and shame any that dare single-handedly bring back leather pants. Can we all just agree to leave the leather to Shakira and the likes and forget these ‘fashion statements ever existed in the first place?

The answer to that question is yes, by the way.