マイペース、マイ・スタイル！　～日本語がぺらぺらになるには～

イギリスで
a tall dark man と言えば「美形」の一典型を表し、
handsome （ハンサム）をくっつけて
a tall, dark and handsome man とすることもあります。

白人を指して dark と言う時は
「髪の色」が黒か濃い褐色であることを意味します。

髪がダークな人々は、
「目の色」も褐色であることが多いでしょうが、
「肌の色」は褐色である必要性はなく、
「白いお顔に黒い髪」というわけです。


Tall, Dark, and Handsome Stranger was a pulp fiction trope, particularly in mystery novels. Romance novels still play it straight sometimes. This then led to a Tall, Dark, and Handsome casting trope for leading men: Clark Gable, etc. This is also one of the defining attributes of the Latin Lover stereotype.

Historically, "dark" referred to the man's hair and often eyes, not necessarily his skin color. If the man had "dark" skin too, it was meant to refer to a "healthy" or "bronzed" i.e. tanned complexion at best, as opposed to being too pale or "pasty", and connoting an active lifestyle, getting out in the sun and doing proper manly stuff like horse-riding or hunting. By default he was assumed to be white due to society frowning on interracial relationships, to put it mildly. So while the phrase could literally apply to a black man, it's unlikely to be used this way unless it's in a modern work, and thus a slight subversion.