Alain Delon became the most stylish man of the 20th century – without even trying

If you haven’t had the pleasure of drinking in its spellbinding beauty yet, 1960’s Plein Soleil sets a benchmark for Italian summer style that’s entirely of its era. That particular buttery hue of golden light as it hits the lapping waters of Ischia, the bewitching beauty of Marie Laforêt and, most notably, the utterly devastating effect of a 23-year old Alain Delon as the wicked Tom Ripley – it’s a moment that’s become legendary in fashion.

This was the first film adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr Ripley – the character was played by Matt Damon in Anthony Mingella’s 1999 version, alongside Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. But it was Delon – in all his feline beguilement in the film, released in the US as Purple Noon – that defined men’s style in the 20th century.

The actor’s death at the age of 88 was announced this weekend, and with it an outpouring not just from film fans but from the fashion community, thanks to his status as a peerless style icon.

“I first encountered Alain Delon in the 1960s at Café de Flore,” confides Manolo Blahnik, the iconic shoe designer, of glimpsing the enigmatic actor at the famous Left Bank hangout. “He was this creature beyond beauty. He stunned people, not through wearing anything particularly extraordinary, but through his sheer presence,” says Blahnik, a devoted film connoisseur whose favourite film is the 1963 Visconti epic Il Gattopardo, starring Delon. Blahnik got to know him over the years. “If you watch Purple Noon, La Piscine or Il Gattopardo, there’s just something about him that envelops the screen. He was very cat-like in his physicality; refined, effortless, a natural kind of grace. It was never really about ‘this suit’ or ‘that coat’, it was a general way of wearing clothes and looking entirely at ease that was so particular to him.”

That Monsieur Delon is one of the greatest men’s style icons of all time is indisputable, but what’s remarkable is that on and off camera he never wore anything particularly remarkable or groundbreaking. Take Purple Noon; the young Delon dons fresh linen shirts in white, peach or sky blue, neat little shorts and the occasional tailored wool jacket, but it’s something in the alchemic combination of Delon in the clothes that makes it more than the sum of its parts; the sweep of hair, the glacial stare, his agile body weaving through a bustling market square.

To Alexander Werz, CEO at global PR behemoth Karla Otto and founder of his own AWvi lifestyle brand, this simplicity is what made Delon stand out. “A white shirt, a classic trench coat, the perfect pair of sunglasses; he worked with very simple ingredients in how he dressed and that made his natural beauty stand out all the more,” says Werz, who curates images of fashion icons on his Instagram account.

Other iconic imagery of Delon depicts him in myriad guises over the years; the trench coat and trilby in 1967’s Le Samouraï, as lethally sharp as his cheekbones. Or with Brigitte Bardot in the south of France, wearing an undone black shirt and Sixties patterned swimmers, the only accessory a necklace and his crystal blue eyes.

Or in a pristine wool coat in Venice in the 1970s, nothing particularly astonishing in terms of what he’s wearing, but enough to make even the city known as La Serenissima pale by comparison.

Delon had a penchant for great accessories – large-scale, almost cat’s eye-shaped sunglasses, to look his most mysterious – and a fondness for collecting watches. His collection, from which he sold more than 100 pieces at an auction in 2012, featured a rare Cartier Tank watch with lapis lazuli dial, as well as various other Cartier models, plus Breitlings, Rolexes and some rare Audemars Piguet and Piaget models.

Not that he was one to shout about it. One of the only times he made an endorsement of the luxury world was as the face of Dior’s Eau Sauvage men’s cologne, his image from the 1960s employed by the brand in 2009 after the actor gave his consent.

“Delon, both in terms of the man and in the characters he played, is part of every fashion editor and stylist’s mood board across the decades,” says stylist Catherine Hayward, who has finessed the wardrobes of Benedict Cumberbatch and David Gandy.

“Because fashion imagery is so saturated today with social media, the images of Delon from the early years have so much impact because they’re the antithesis of this curated approach. They’re just so him, and impossible to really replicate, despite legions trying,” she says. “I think what was so beguiling about him was that, in an era of rugged masculinity, he was exceptionally pretty, fine-featured and delicate, but he played such dark, dangerous characters. The combination is unnerving and otherworldly; the beautiful assassin.”

While he dated Romy Schneider and 1960s French pop star Dalida – and was photographed traversing airports looking like the epitome of glamour in shearling, or a simple polo neck with sweeping coat – the celebrity status wasn’t for Delon. “I am not a star, I am an actor,” he once said. “I have been fighting for years to make people forget that I am just a pretty boy with a beautiful face.”

To Manolo Blahnik, there’s something romantically and indelibly linked to the public perception of him as a child of summer, honeyed skin kissed by the sun, salt in his fairy-fine hair, and a crisp linen shirt thrown on.

“He was a French icon, but he was utterly universal. He captured something in people’s imagination, even if he wasn’t aware of it himself. Something beyond beauty. In my mind, he was always somewhere between Capri and the south of France in that golden era of Sixties cinema. I like to think of him there now.”