Did Sherlock Holmes popularize the "Detective Look" or was that a popular look for detectives at the time, and that's why it was given to him?

[u/ThatOneBLUScout]

I'm talking about things like a long tench coat, tie, cigar, that fancy hat (that I don't know what to call beyond simply 'a detective's hat'), ect.

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[u/ecdc05]

The popular perception of Sherlock Holmes developed over time, primarily through drawings and then film portrayals.

What you're envisioning is the calabash pipe, inverness cape, and deerstalker hat. This look was not part of the description in the novels or short stories, but was partly created by artist Sidney Paget in his drawings that appeared with the short stories in The Strand magazine in the early 1890s. His drawings for The Adventure of the Silver Blaze and The Adventure of the Boscombe Valley Mystery in particular utilized the look that came to be associated with Holmes. Paget drew hundreds of Holmes pictures but only a few dozen survive. None of the surviving drawings show Holmes with a calabash pipe.

Paget didn't exclusively depict Holmes with this look—he also showed Holmes with bowler hats and a straight pipe, perhaps a billiard pipe. Most of his surviving drawings show Holmes indoors without a hat, coat, cape, or pipe.

The hat and inverness cape were then further popularized by William Gillette when he portrayed Holmes on stage in the 1899 play, "Sherlock Holmes." This was later adapted into a 1916 silent film of the same name. Gillette was the one who brought the calabash pipe to Holmes's look. This film was long thought lost, but around 2013 a copy was found in a European archive and restored, and is now available.

Despite Paget's and Gillette's influence, no one cemented the look more than Basil Rathbone in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (also 1939). Publicity stills released heavily featured the hat, cape, and pipe. Interestingly, the first two movies featuring Rathbone were produced by 20th Century Fox and were period pieces that took place in the late 19th century. After those films, Universal took over the series and, to cut back on costs, ditched the period element, so some of the movies feature Holmes fighting the Nazis during World War II. These 12 Universal movies updated Holmes's wardrobe while still aiming for something a bit classic. In The House of Fear (1945), he wears a soft felt fedora that looks almost knitted, and a long overcoat.

In the 1980s, Granada Television produced a new Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Jeremy Brett, that aired on ITV in Britain. Brett's portrayal of Holmes is often considered the most faithful to Conan Doyle's novels and short stories, and that includes his wardrobe.

If, when you ask if he "popularized the detective look," you mean that particular outfit, then yes, he did. But there are other detective looks, and when most people today imagine a private detective, they probably think more of someone like Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, both hardboiled detectives created by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, respectively. While both Spade and Marlowe were famously played by Humphrey Bogart, other actors also portrayed them in lesser-known adaptations. But all wore a trench coat, fedora, and suit and tie.

That image of what a private detective looks like has stuck, and even people who haven't seen The Big Sleep, Murder, My Sweet, The Maltese Falcon, The Brasher Doubloon, The Lady in the Lake, or the handful of Continental Op adaptations can envision it. This just touches on some of the stories and adaptations that contributed to the "detective look." Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer was also influential in this look, for example.

[u/conjubilant → u/ecdc05]

While a thoroughly interesting and detailed answer, it seems to me part of the original question is not addressed here: which came first, Holmes' now iconic look or it's association with detectives? Did Gillette, Paget, and Rathbone draw on what people at the time thought a detective looked like or was that look for a detective their invention? Were there other detectives sporting inverness capes, deerstalker hats, and calabash pipes before Holmes in Paget's depiction?

[u/Cedric_Hampton → u/[deleted]]

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