Men name their style icons - but Pitt, Cruise miss

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Ask men to name their 10 most stylish peers of the past 50 years and it's unlikely handsome movie stars favored by women like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise will show up.

But Sean Connery? He gets major points because when it comes to style, men judge success, confidence, maturity and class more than good looks, according to GQ Magazine.

The magazine has come up with a list of the top 10 most stylish men of the past 50 years, which features former boxer Muhammad Ali, actor Jack Nicholson, basketball player Michael Jordan and President John F. Kennedy.

The others to make the list are actors Connery, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Johnny Depp and Al Pacino, as well as quarterback of the New England Patriots Tom Brady.

Three-time Super Bowl champ Brady, at age 30, is the youngest. Jordan and Depp are in their 40s, and the rest -- excluding Kennedy, of course -- are all over 60 years-old.

"This is the list of men that men would like to be. You have to be more than just a handsome face," said the magazine's style editor Adam Rapoport.

"Style goes beyond clothes. It is about how you carry yourself -- and there has to be some weight to the guy, some integrity, some gravitas. Everyone in this list had to have a genuine sense of personal style."

GQ editors chose the 50 most stylish men from five decades of cover subjects for a special 50th anniversary issue of the magazine that caters for men.

The list, which included actors, politicians, musicians and sportsmen, was then narrowed to the top 10, which appears in the issue on newsstands this week.