Hulk Hogan Used Clothing As a Key Part of His Brand

Terry Gene Bollea, otherwise known as Hulk Hogan, the celebrity wrestler who died on Thursday, was not just, as many of his obituaries have noted, the most famous face of his sport. He was also, for a time in the 1980s, the face of a certain kind of American masculinity — gleefully big-talking, body-slamming, bulging-muscled — that seemed to literally embody the self-mythologizing spirit of the country. He was a hype-man as much as a he-man.

He may not have worn red, white and blue (though he did try those togs on later in his career) but he burst onto the scene — or, rather, everyone’s TV screens — in coordinating red and gold, with a bandanna wrapped around his platinum locks, horseshoe mustache dangling — Superman by way of the Hell’s Angels.

Ronald Reagan was calling on Russia to tear down the Berlin Wall, the U.S. was touting its role as a global superpower, and in the ring Mr. Hogan was facing off with the country’s foes (opponents created to represent historical enemies): the Iron Sheik (Iranian), Nikolai Volkoff (Russian) and Yokozuna (Japanese). And winning!

It was a pantomime of national triumph in the form of a cartoon warrior who teetered the line between caricature and camp. Mr. Hogan even inspired an actual cartoon, “Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n Wrestling,” in which good wrestlers triumphed over evildoers every Saturday morning on CBS (even if his reality later proved more complicated.)

This was the era of big hair, big shoulders, and bigger action heroes: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. T. Of all of the musclemen that were really showmen, however, Mr. Hogan was the most visually indelible, in part because it was impossible to separate the man from the look. He dressed the part both in and out of the ring; on and off the screen.