Cataloging sartorial devils

In the Guardian, a suprisingly sturdy thinkpiece by Gareth McLean on... the hoodie? "Prejudice or not, our uneasiness towards hoods doesn't come from nowhere. Hooded figures are everywhere in art, literature, religion, cinema, cartoons—and most of them don't appear offering ice cream. The big daddy of them all, the Grim Reaper, comes cloaked and hooded, as do the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, various minions of Satan, and harbingers of evil from all creeds, religions, mythologies, science-fiction universes and fantastical worlds of dungeons and dragons. "Hooded figures" appear in crime reports, horror films, nightmares. The imminent Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith shows Anakin Skywalker, in preparation for his crossing to the Dark Side, donning a cloak and hood in imitation of the trendsetting but evil Emperor. It's the Hooded Claw who imperils Penelope Pitstop. It's the Reaper-esque Ringwraiths who pursue Frodo in Lord of the Rings. It was a hood that led Donald Sutherland's John Baxter to unfortunately confuse a murderous dwarf with his drowned daughter in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. And if baddies don't have actual hoods, they have hooded eyes: peer into their darkness at your peril. For thousands of years, we have been bombarded with images of menacing hooded figures. Crabby youths wrapped in cotton/polyester-mix tops are just the latest entry in the catalogue of devils; they can't hold a candle to the Ku Klux Klan." [A whole bunch more at the link.]