The rise and fall of writer for the San Francisco Chronicle Paul Avery in Fincher's Zodiac is easily charted through his clothes. We begin with ascots of varying colors and designs; mainly jewel tones like bottle green and navy blue and a surprising canary yellow. All against emerald and mustard-toned button downs sometimes sitting underneath a satin vest of similar hues that probably belongs with a flashy three piece suit tucked away somewhere in his wardrobe. Paul Avery is doing well. He's the Chronicle's top crime writer and after the Zodiac case breaks in 1969, the anonymous killer eventually writes to Avery directly showing Avery's importance and status at the newspaper. Played so elegantly by Robert Downey, Jr. (pre-Tony Stark during his "comeback phase") Paul Avery is notorious. He's brash, he chain smokes, drinks straight liquor at the bar after work. He's social and confident and cocky and he outshines Jake Gyllenhaal's Robert Graysmith as Graysmith becomes enthralled with the case and eventually proves to be more helpful than Avery himself. Paul Avery is depicted as someone who thrives off of his social status. If he's well respected, praised, and admired at work then he's doing well. As soon as the Zodiac case blasts off across the state of California, and more and more chaos clings to the Chronicle and those around it, Avery begins to slip away from his spotlight.
As the Zodiac case begins to grow bigger than Paul Avery ever expected it to (he laughed at Graysmith's fascination), Paul Avery begins a noticeable decline. He starts to do away with the jewel-toned silk shirts and ascots and dons more of a grungy 70s look with denim and corduroy shirts in safe shades of blue, layers of beige cargo jackets and army vests (a nod to his service in Vietnam), and light wash jeans. Jeans at the office. The story focuses itself on Robert Graysmith and his ad nauseam search for the Zodiac killer. Eventually Paul Avery fades from the main story line as well as the lives of the characters in the film. When Graysmith pays a visit to Avery to request some old Zodiac documents from the retired reporter, we see Avery's rock bottom: living on a dirty house boat, drinking at 9am, silk shirts no where to be found. His only priority is far from Graysmith's and he becomes horrified at the state of decline of Avery. And so do we. His unhinged behavior: fighting with lead detective Dave Toschi (an extremely handsome Mark Ruffalo wearing true 70s plaid blazers), barking and disrupting office moral at the Chronicle, and preying on Graysmith and his introverted and shy tendencies all lead to his demise in the film. This isn't to say that cargo jackets and jeans are the uniform of demise but when you started with silk shirts and ascots, its hard not to associate the two with success and failure.