Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.12: “Lost Horizon”)

Vitals

Jon Hamm as Don Draper, ad man at the pinnacle of professional success… and personal disillusionment

New York City, Summer 1970

Series: Mad Men
Episodes:
– “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10), dir. Jennifer Getzinger, aired 4/19/2015
– “Time & Life” (Episode 7.11), dir. Jared Harris, aired 4/26/2015
– “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12), dir. Phil Abraham, aired 5/3/2015
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Considering its significance, the final business suit that Don Draper (Jon Hamm) wears on-screen in Mad Men makes a rather ignominious debut, though it does get a shining moment of glory as Don – the erstwhile Dick Whitman – gets a glimpse of what he really wants his life to be.

In “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10), three episodes before the finale, our slick ad man is summoned to settle an office dispute between Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) and Peggy Olson (Elizabeth Moss) after brainstorming a “future-of-the-company” speech with Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm). The day ends on an even duller note as Don is forced to provide conciliatory advice for the considerably twerpy junior copywriter Mathis (Trevor Einhorn), recalling his own fumble with Lucky Strike as a client ten years earlier.

Just two episodes later in “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12), it’s early September 1970 and one-time rival McCann-Erickson is living its advertising dream of counting Don Draper among its creative ranks. Don begins the workday with a reassuring “heh, look where we are now” exchange with Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) before joining his confederates to listen to the research about an upcoming pitch for potential client Miller beer.

Don should be living his best life, at the ostensible top of his profession and somehow positioned to keep getting even higher. Yet, as Peggy Lee serenaded us in the opening moments of this final season, Don can’t help but wonder “is that all there is?”

“Having seen a McCann box lunch brainstorming session, it’s pretty clear that he’d rather reign in hell than serve in advertising heaven,” wrote reviewer John Swansburg for Slate.

In a shot that television critic Todd VanDerWerff describes as the single shot that explains the entirety of Mad Men, Don lets his attention drift from the meeting. While his fellow shirt-sleeved drones are content to listen to tired research, the fully suited Don gradually looks toward the window, turning his back on his can of Coke that represents the show’s dream client – Coca-Cola – unable to take his eyes away from the potential freedom of a jet flying across the New York skyline.

The subtle moment is sold by the mastery of Phil Abraham’s direction and Jon Hamm’s nonverbal acting. As Abraham told Vanity Fair: “We worked on this unease, this unsettling moment that Don experiences where he sees the guys flip the binders over at exactly the right time and they all take out their pens. The research guy is droning on, and [Don] turns, looks out the window, and sees a chance for flight—What am I doing here?—and he leaves.” Perfect shot, indeed.

As though some cosmic force – and no, it isn’t Bert Cooper yet – is telling him to leave her with positive vibes, Don ends their conversation with parting words of encouragement: “Knock ’em dead, Birdie.”

A final moment of positivity between two former spouses.

By the time we catch up with him in the middle of the night outside Cleveland, he’s ditched his tie and the cosmic forces are now more apparent – taking the form of the apparition of Bert Cooper (RIP!), who announces weather reports and – of course – ads over Don’s car radio. “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car of the night?” quotes Bert from On the Road, when Don likens his own sojourn to “riding the rails”.

The rails take Don to Racine, Wisconsin, where he hopes to find his latest paramour, brooding waitress Diana Baur (Elizabeth Reaser), and the answers that finding her may answer for him about him. However, he only encounters her zealot ex-husband Cliff Baur and his new wife Laura. Don tries to pass himself off as “Bill Phillips”, the researcher from the dull Miller Beer meeting – and then a debt collector in search of Diana herself – but his “shiny car”, the Cadillac Coupe de Ville, is one of the status trappings from his soon-to-be-prior life that betrays his gambit.

“The champion shape-shifter has lost his touch—even his seemingly quick-witted backup lie, that he is a collection agent… is quickly found out,” Swanburg mentioned in his Slate review.

The last time we see Don looking like a successful Madison Avenue ad man. By the end of the next episode, his suit-wearing days would be behind him and even his luxury coupe would be in new hands.

We leave Don as he embarks on his new adventure… not at McCann-Erickson, but in search of himself.

What’d He Wear?

Don’s Final Business Suit

We see plenty of new suits from Don Draper’s wardrobe in 1970, but this suit shows the most extensive fashion transformation from the show’s 1960 setting. Since “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12) all but completes the on-screen arc of his professional life in advertising, it’s significant that our first and last glimpses of Don at the office feature him in a gray semi-solid suit, white shirt, and duo-tone striped tie.

Compare Don’s final suit with the suit he wore in the show’s pilot episode, which premiered 11 years ago this month on July 19, 2007.

While Mad Men‘s other characters’ office wardrobes evolved to reflect the rapidly changing fashions of the turbulent decade, Don remained stylish, timeless, yet ultimately conservative in his sharp, two-piece business suits. ’60s counterculture may have tried to push “the man in the gray flannel suit” out of the world, but Don Draper wasn’t ready to go anywhere.

“I like the idea of Don being rooted in these gray suits,” Mad Men‘s costume designer Janie Bryant explained to Vanity Fair for an April 2015 article. “For me, I always go back to the gray suit because that is Don’s armor from himself and from the world.”

Joan and Don share a final ride up to the office in “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12).

Don thus makes his last appearance in the office in a gray subtly self-striped suit. His McCann-Erickson colleagues encourage him to remove his jacket for the meeting, but one look at the shirt-sleeved drones tells Don that his satisfaction is best served by leaving it on.

Although Don wears a number of suits during this final season, this one most reflects the bolder and wider trends of the 1970 setting. The two-button jacket itself is his preferred single-breasted, notch-lapel style with the familiar white pocket square neatly folded into the breast pocket, but the era-specific details are emblematic of the early ’70s, from the wide notches of his broad, swelled-edge lapels to the wide hip pocket flaps and long single vent.

The flat front suit trousers also show their early ’70s influence with frogmouth front pockets and wide belt loops to accommodate his thick black leather belt. The trousers also have jetted back pockets – with a button through the left-side pocket – and plain-hemmed bottoms.

Don wears the traditional footwear of the American businessman, a pair of black calf leather derby shoes. Don’s derbies have a split toe box and four or five eyelets for the black laces. He wears them with high black dress socks.

Still wearing his shoes, Don is interrupted from his usual mid-day office slumber in “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10).

Shirts and Ties

In both “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10) and “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12), Don wears this gray suit with one of his usual crisp white cotton shirts, which had been established as his preference as far back as the show’s pilot episode when he was shown to have a desk drawer in his office full of them.

Don’s white shirt has a semi-spread collar, front placket, and breast pocket for his Old Golds… as he is decidedly no longer a Lucky Strike devotee after they dropped his agency’s account in the show’s fourth season. Don’s shirts at the office are invariably equipped with double (French) cuffs, and he wears a set of silver embossed rectangle links in “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10).

“The Forecast” (Episode 7.10)

Don wears exclusively striped ties with this suit, all withs tripes that follow the traditional American “downhill” direction of running from the right shoulder down to the left hip. The stripe patterns are also more complex than the typical rep or club stripe with their multiple colors and alternating widths.

In “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10), Don wears a tie striped in light gray, navy, and yellow that appears to be a vintage Calvin Klein item per the navy-stitched “CK” on the blade. This theory checks out as far as historical accuracy goes as Calvin Klein was founded in 1968, two years before the setting of the episode.

“The Forecast” (Episode 7.10)

The final season of Mad Men found Don going beyond his comfort zone of all white or off-white dress shirts and exploring the possibilities of stripes and light blue shirts with his business suits.

For a dinner with Pete Campbell and now-client Ken Cosgrove in “Time & Life” (Episode 7.11), Don wears a light blue shirt with a set of gold-framed cuff links in the French cuffs. His tie is “downhill”-striped in gray and navy with narrow shadow stripes in the alternating color above each bolder stripe.

“Time & Life” (Episode 7.11)

The classic white shirt returns for Don’s final appearance at the office in “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12), and he wears a set of silver onyx-filled rectangular cuff links. His tie continues the “downhill”-striped tradition of the others with maroon and light gray stripes that alternate in thickness as they cascade from the thick four-in-hand knot down to the blade of the considerably wide tie.

“Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12)

Don’s Accessories

“The Forecast” (Episode 7.10) finds our favorite ad man strolling into the office on a warm early summer day, the perfect weather to swap out his usual felt fedora in favor of a blue-gray short-brimmed trilby made from fine Milanese Pinzano straw. This particular hat with its black striped band was part of the ScreenBid auction that ran after the show’s production ended, as reported here by the Los Angeles Times.

Summer hat in hand, Don strolls up to his office at SC&P in “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10).

As confirmed by Preston Fassel in his March 2016 article for 20/20 Magazine, Don’s sunglasses of choice are the American Optical Flight Goggle 58… rather than the commonly reported Randolph Engineering aviators. Developed for U.S. military pilots in – you guessed it – 1958, the AO FG-58 offers its wearers a squared “navigator” frame as opposed to the rounder frame of the traditional aviator-style eyewear. Just over a decade after their introduction, the AO FG-58 was the preferred eyewear for the flight crew of Apollo 11, the NASA mission that landed the first humans on the moon.

When Don embarks on his own great American road trip in “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12), his AO Aviators make their return, shielding his eyes from the sun as he barrels across the heartland.

Even Don’s snappy sunglasses can’t hide his dubious inspection of a heartland hitchhiker.

These functional AO sunglasses aren’t the only accessory that Don keeps after “freeing” himself of his clothes and car, the trappings of his previous life as an unsatisfied ad man. From the first episode of the fifth season through the final scenes at the Big Sur commune, Don continues to wear his Omega Seamaster DeVille. Of course, a classic Omega luxury watch isn’t the sort of thing you just give away. (Then again… neither is a Coupe de Ville, and we see how that works out.)

A Christie’s auction from December 2015 sold four watches that had appeared on the show, including Don’s Omega from the final seasons. Per the auction listing, “the watches were leased to the show by vintage watch specialist Derek Dier, who has supplied watches to the movie industry, noted musicians, actors, writers, artists, international dignitaries and Fortune 500 CEOs. Mad Men Property Master Ellen Freund worked with Dier to select the watches.”

The Christie’s page further describes the watch as: “Signed Omega, Automatic, Seamaster, De Ville, Ref. 166.020, Movement No. 23’943’081, Circa 1960.” The stainless wristwatch with its black dial, date indicator, and black textured leather strap eventually sold for $11,875.

What to Imbibe

Even the most casual Mad Men viewer could likely tell you Don’s drink of choice: a heavy pour of Canadian Club from a bottle in his office, or an Old Fashioned cocktail for nights on the town.

“Draper drinks rye,” Joan Holloway told Draper’s then-secretary Peggy Olson in the pilot episode, to which Peggy responds: “Rye is Canadian, right?”

You may laugh at Peggy’s ignorance of the subject, but at least she’s trying to figure it out. A decade later in “The Forecast” (Episode 7.10), the young copywriter Mathis tries to needle his way onto Don’s good side by gifting him a bottle of Chivas Regal 12. A fine blended whisky for sure, but it reveals that Mathis knows little about his boss. While Don has been known to keep various Scotch whisky (including Chivas) in his office from time to time, the only time he drinks Scotch on-screen was a desperate night in Rachel Menken’s apartment in the first season that found Don downing a dram of J&B.

So close, Mathis.

The following episode starts with Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove waiting for their dinner meeting with Don to begin. After being dismissed from Sterling Cooper & Partners, Ken had taken a position with their client, Dow Chemical, where he has since promised to make SC&P jump through hoops to keep his business. Unlike Pete, Ken has no qualms about not waiting for Don before drinking the evening’s wine selection, Château Margaux 1953, “often considered the best there is,” according to Ken.

What to Drive

It’s not necessarily #CarWeek, but Don’s Caddy gets so many glamour shots in its penultimate episode, that I feel behooved to give it a little more love than just a few sporadic mentions scattered throughout this post.

Don Draper drives from New York to Racine in the 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville that he has been driving since the fifth season premiere. This silver ’65 Coupe de Ville replaced Don’s earlier Caddy that he purchased in the show’s second season when a salesman convinced him that it was the car he needed for proving his success to the world.

Don’s shining Cadillac Coupe de Ville, parked outside the Baur home. Once a symbol of his prestigious status in the New York ad world, it now represents his best shot at freedom from it.

1965 was the first model year of the redesigned third generation Cadillac Coupe de Ville, though it continued the 129.5-inch wheelbase of its predecessor and the 429 cubic-inch V8, though the engine would be increased in size to a 472 cubic-inch V8 for the 1968 model year. The Coupe de Ville would undergo another redesign for 1971.

1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville

Body Style: 2-door convertible

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 429 cid (7.0 L) Cadillac V8 with Carter 4-barrel carburetor

Power: 340 hp (253.5 kW; 343 PS) @ 4600 rpm

Torque: 480 lb·ft (651 N·m) @ 3000 rpm

Transmission: 3-speed automatic

Wheelbase: 129.5 inches (3289 mm)

Length: 224.0 inches (5690 mm)

Width: 79.9 inches (2029 mm)

Height: 55.6 inches (1412 mm)

In August 2015, less than three months after the show’s finale aired, the actual ’65 Cadillac Coupe de Ville driven by Don in the show was auctioned by Screenbid, yielding $48,980. As Bob Sorokanich noted for Road & Track, the “sale price includes $39,500 for the car, plus a 24 percent commission to Screenbid, the auction host. That’s pretty strong money for a ’65 Coupe de Ville, which Hagertys tends to value around $13,000.”

“De Ville” was evidently the theme of Don’s luxurious life from the fifth season onward, as that season premiere introduced both his new Cadillac Coupe de Ville and the Omega Seamaster DeVille that he would have through the end of the series.

What to Listen to

Times have changed since the days of Don Cherry crooning “Band of Gold” in a crowded Manhattan bar. A decade later, Don “rides the rails” in his shiny Cadillac to the sounds of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” closing out the episode.

Recorded in June 1969 and released as a single three weeks later, Bowie’s dreamy rock ode to a fictional astronaut (“Major Tom”) tapped into the zeitgeist of an era captivated by space travel; indeed, only five days after the release of the single on July 11, 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts would take off for their mission that would land them on the moon, the world-changing event at the center of Mad Men‘s penultimate season finale.

“Space Oddity” was instantly recognized for its originality, receiving the 1970 Ivor Novello Special Award for Originality and becoming Bowie’s first single to chart in the United Kingdom. Nearly five decades later, it remains significant in pop culture, named one of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. David Bowie’s death in January 2016 led to a resurgence of the song’s popularity, and it ranked third in iTunes downloads within two days of the artist’s passing.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.12: “Lost Horizon”)

How to Get the Look

Don Draper’s final office suit may be an evolution of his usual gray-suited style, but the presence of trendy 1970 details makes it the first time the decade’s bolder trends had influenced his business wear.

• Gray subtly self-striped suit
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, welted breast pocket, wide-flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and long single vent
  • Flat front trousers with wide belt loops, frogmouth front pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton dress shirt with semi-spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and double/French cuffs
  • Silver-framed cuff links
• Maroon and light gray “downhill”-striped tie
• Wide black leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Black calf leather split-toe derby shoes
• Black dress socks
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator
• American Optical Flight Goggle 58 gold-framed aviator sunglasses

The suit jacket makes one more appearance in the series’ penultimate episode, “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13), when Don wears it to dress up a white shirt and khakis at an American Legion fundraiser in Oklahoma.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series… or just the final season, if you still haven’t caught up or need to complete your collection.

The Quote

I’m really tired, aren’t I?

Clark Gable as Victor Marswell in Mogambo (1953)

Vitals

Clark Gable as Victor Marswell, big game hunter

Kenya, Summer 1952

Film: Mogambo 
Release Date: October 9, 1953
Director: John Ford
Costume Designer: Helen Rose

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Red Dust was a steamy 1932 pre-Code drama that starred Clark Gable as a rugged yet caddish outdoorsman embroiled in a love triangle with the brassy Jean Harlow and the classy Mary Astor. The film was remade two decades later with Gable reprising his similar role though, in true Hollywood fashion, the two female leads were recast with the younger Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly, respectively.

The cast was relatively new to director John Ford, who had cultivated his “stock company” over four decades of filmmaking with familiar faces like John Wayne, Ward Bond, Harry Carey, and of course, the director’s brother Francis Ford.

Ava Gardner and Clark Gable on set and in character during filming of Mogambo. His character is unreasonably upset after finding her using his shower.

Mogambo would be John Ford’s only collaboration with Clark Gable, who reportedly did not get along with the director and once walked off the set to protest Ford’s treatment of Ava Gardner. However, Gable was certainly the center of enough off-screen drama of his own from his affair with the much-younger Grace Kelly to his insistence that any male cast or crew member with more hair on his chest than Gable be forced to shave it off any day that the more hirsute man would appear shirtless on set.

Gable had little to worry about when it came to his on-screen image, however. Mogambo begins with his character, Victor Marswell, wakened with news of a black leopard to be captured. With little time to lose, Victor leaps from his tent, grabs his Winchester Model 70 rifle, and leads the hunt. Unfortunately, the oafish Boltchak (Eric Pohlmann) blows their chance at bagging the black panther, and a grumpy Victor returns to his abode where he is… uh, frustrated? upon finding Eloise “Honey Bear” Kelly (Ava Gardner) using his shower.

Within a week, Victor and Kelly (she prefers her last name) have immersed themselves in a romance – well, one person’s “romance” is another’s fling – when the sensitive, mannered British couple Donald and Linda Nordley (Grace Kelly) arrive. Victor is immediately smitten with the latter and gives her the following advice:

Out here, we have three antidotes for everything: quinine, iodine, and castor oil.

What’d He Wear?

Victor Marswell’s chosen profession as a big game hunter warrants the frequent wearing of khaki safari attire, which will be featured in its own post later this year. When not dressed for the hunt, Victor’s go-to casual wear consists of a comfortable navy-colored cotton-knit polo shirt. The short-sleeve polo shirt has a large, soft collar and two white mother-of-pearl buttons.

Later, when the Nordleys arrive, Victor wears a red cotton bandanna tied around his neck, first sticking out of his shirt then tucked into the shirt under the fastened second button. The kerchief is patterned in the traditional white-and-black paisley on a red ground.

Victor wears the same pleated khaki trousers that he often wears with his safari garb. These full-fitting slacks have a high rise with tall, slim belt loops and double forward-facing pleats on each side. The trousers have slightly slanted side pockets, two jetted button-through pockets just under the rear belt line, and the bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs).

Victor finds underwear in his room that is decidedly not his own.

Victor’s wide web belt is more of a true khaki color than his tan trousers, and the edges are trimmed in brown leather. The belt fastens with a slim brass buckle.

Victor makes the acquaintance of the Nardleys, now with his bandanna tucked into his shirt.

Victor’s brown suede boots are the subject of a few continuity errors as the shade alternates throughout the scenes from a light sand-colored suede to a richer tobacco brown suede, as well as a shot during the initial panther hunt that shows them to be a darker chocolate calf leather.

His most frequently seen boots are the lighter sand-colored suede ankle-high boots with derby lacing and a moc toe-box. Though he wears mustard-gold cotton lisle socks, the tops of the boots are also covered with gray leg-warmers in some scenes.

First aid, courtesy of Victor Marswell and John Brown-Pryce (Philip Stainton).

Ava Gardner and Clark Gable in Mogambo (1953)

Another continuity error can be linked to Gable’s wrist. When Victor Marswell first awakens in his tent, he isn’t wearing a watch, but the next shot suddenly shows him to be wearing a gold tank watch on a brown leather strap. Is it the same Cartier Tank he wore two decades earlier when playing essentially the same role in Red Dust?

We don’t have time to find out, as Gable’s wrist is adorned for the hunt – and for the rest of the film – with the actor’s own yellow-gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual, ref. 6011. This 14-karat timepiece with its faded off-white matte dial and textured black leather strap was included in a 2013 auction of other Hollywood memorabilia.

Victor wears a gold signet ring on his left pinky, a real-life affectation of Clark Gable who wore signet rings exclusively on that finger through most of his professional career.

Victor also favors a few different well-worn hats for his adventures on safari. The first hat he dons, for the opening black panther hunt, is a tan safari-style fedora with a thin brown leather band.

Later, for the arrival of the Nardleys, Victor wears a more conventional-looking fedora made from khaki felt with a lighter beige band.

Victor Marswell is a man who wears many hats… or at least just these two.

The Bond Connection?

Mogambo was released in October 1953, several months after the first publication of Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale. The novel wouldn’t be adapted into an official James Bond film until more than five decades later when it was Daniel Craig’s cinematic inauguration as agent 007.

The 2006 film established a fresh direction in casual wear for Bond as the blue polo shirt became a new staple of the agent’s dressed-down wardrobe. In fact, an early scene in Casino Royale finds Craig’s 007 arriving in the Bahamas wearing a navy short-sleeve polo shirt from Sunspel, khaki casual trousers, a brown belt, and brown suede boots.

From Clark to Craig: untuck the shirt, clip on a pair of sunglasses, and don’t skip arm day at the gym.

The similarities are almost certainly coincidental, but it’s worth noting the timelessness of the dark navy polo shirt, khakis, and brown suede boots on different style icons over the span of a half-century.

Clark Gable as Victor Marswell in Mogambo (1953)

How to Get the Look

Clark Gable’s no-nonsense hunter in Mogambo takes a classic approach to dressing casually in a navy polo and khakis that keep him casual and cool in his warm, stressful environment.

• Navy cotton-knit short-sleeve polo shirt
• Red paisley neckerchief
• Khaki double forward-pleated trousers with tall belt loops, slightly slanted side pockets, jetted button-through back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Dark khaki web belt with brown leather trim and brass buckle
• Sand-colored suede derby-laced moc-toe ankle boots
• Mustard-gold cotton lisle socks
• Rolex Oyster Perpetual ref. 6011 yellow-gold wristwatch on textured black leather strap
• Gold signet ring, worn on left pinky
• Khaki safari-style fedora

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

This happens to be my home! Be it ever so humble.

Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974)

Vitals

Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone, née Andolini, Sicilian-born gangster

Corleone, Sicily, Summer 1922

Film: The Godfather Part II
Release Date: December 12, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today’s #MafiaMonday post explores a much requested outfit – indeed, I’ve received at least three separate asks for it in the last 12 months alone – from The Godfather, Part II, often considered one of the greatest films of all time. In a mostly Italian-speaking performance that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Robert De Niro reprised the role of Vito Corleone that had been originated by Marlon Brando in The Godfather two years earlier.

The shifting narrative of The Godfather, Part II, tells the parallel stories of mob kingpin Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in the late 1950s and his father Vito’s rise from a nine-year-old Sicilian refugee at Ellis Island to a powerful figure in the 1920s underworld.

Vito’s success takes him back to his hometown in Sicily, face-to-face with aging Mafia chieftain Don Ciccio (Giuseppe Sillato). Don Ciccio has grown senile and mostly immobile in the two dozen years since he orchestrated the murders of Vito’s father, brother, and – ultimately – his mother. He has no recollection of the young boy that he orphaned when a dashing, dapper, and mustached gent from New York stands before him with a gift of olive oil… and a well-concealed knife.

What’d He Wear?

After more than two decades rising to success, wealth, and power in the United States, Vito Corleone’s return to Sicily finds him in a succession of suits that both signify his newfound status while also contrasting who he is against where he came from. Whether it’s the ivory summer suit worn for his arrival or the dark business suit for touring the olive oil warehouse, Vito stands out against the sun-kissed Sicilian environment as an outsider – albeit a successful one. His Sicilian friend, Don Tommasino (Mario Cotone), spends the duration of Vito’s visit wearing brown, and it indeed he that belongs. While Vito may be welcomed with open arms, he is still a visitor who now truly belongs in America.

However, Vito dresses in a rust brown pinstripe wool suit for his mission of vengeance at Don Ciccio’s villa. The rich suiting still conveys his status and power, but the earthy color coordinates more with his dusty, sepia-toned surroundings. It’s a chameleon effect that identifies Vito as a trustworthy son of Sicily as Don Ciccio welcomes him on his porch.

“My father’s name was Antonio Andolini…”

The suit was designed by Theadora Van Runkle and made for the film by Western Costume Co., as proven by the inside tags seen in this suit’s listing on The Golden Closet. The jacket and trousers were sold at a June 2016 “Profiles in History” auction with more details available from Invaluable.

Tailored specifically for Robert De Niro, the suit was distinctively styled in the vintage tradition, with short and wide full-bellied peak lapels that were popular on men’s single-breasted suit jackets in the 1920s and 1930s. These lapels roll to the top of three closely spaced brown buttons all placed at least an inch from the jacket.

The shoulders feature heavily roped sleeveheads, and the waist is suppressed with a horizontal seam circling the jacket at the center button. The bottom is cut more like a double-breasted jacket with squared, closed quarters that – combined with the suppressed waist and ventless back – create a full and flared skirt section of the jacket below the waist line. Each sleeve ends with a single button at the cuff, and the welted breast pocket slants toward the center.

Another distinctive aspect of the suit jacket are the slanted, welted pockets on the hips rather than the traditional hip pockets with jetting or flaps along the top. The angle is far more slanted than is typically seen on a jacket like this, and this style of side-entry pockets more resembles trouser pockets than those of a suit jacket.

“… and this is for you!”

Vito’s white cotton shirt with its long point collar, front placket, and button cuffs and the dark brown Deco-printed silk tie are both engulfed by the high rise of the suit’s matching single-breasted waistcoat, which Vito wears with all six buttons fastened.

Vito completes his grisly task by wiping his bloody hands on the shirt of the freshly mutilated Don Ciccio.

The finished film makes it difficult to discern much about Vito’s straight-leg suit trousers, as he is either seen primarily from the waist-up or in long shots where the overcoat in his hands covers up all but the fact that they are finished with two-inch turn-ups (cuffs) at the bottoms and are worn with dark brown leather derby-laced cap-toe boots that rise above his ankles.

The auction listings don’t shed any light on whether or not the trousers have pleats, though Invaluable informs us that the trousers sold in 2016 have “velcro front closure and hook and eye snap waist,” though it’s most likely that the velcro was added sometime in the 40 years after production wrapped as it’s hard to imagine a method actor like Robert De Niro wearing pants with a velcro fly for a scene set in the mid-1920s… especially such a pivotal scene.

The aforementioned overcoat that Vito carries is dark brown wool with a dark satin lining that shines in the sun. He never wears the coat, but he does wear a brown fedora with a brown grosgrain band that gets left behind in the ensuing fracas as Vito and Don Tommasino make their escape.

Olive oil in hand, Don Tommasino and Vito Corleone pay a house call on the decrepit Don Ciccio.

Happily married to Carmela for half a decade, Vito wears a gold-toned wedding band on the third finger of his left hand.

Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974)

How to Get the Look

Vito Corleone channels his rustic heritage when he returns to Sicily in a sharp brown three-piece suit with unique, vintage-inspired details.

• Rust brown pinstripe wool three-piece suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with wide, short peak lapels, curved welted breast pocket, slanted welted side-entry hip pockets, 1-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single-breasted 6-button waistcoat
  • Straight-leg trousers with turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton shirt with long point collar, front placket, and single-button cuffs
• Dark brown Deco-printed silk tie
• Dark brown leather derby-laced cap-toe boots
• Brown fedora with a brown grosgrain band
• Gold wedding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963)

Vitals

Rod Taylor as Mitchell “Mitch” Brenner, smooth defense lawyer

Bodega Bay, California, Summer 1963

Film: The Birds
Release Date: March 28, 1963
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Wardrobe Supervisor: Rita Riggs

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

After the massive success of Psycho in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock knew his next thriller had to go above and beyond to meet the public’s expectations from the Master of Suspense. Inspiration fell from the skies the following summer when the California town of Capitola was besieged one August day by hundreds of sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops and littering the streets with bird corpses. Hitch, who vacationed in nearby Santa Cruz, saw the storytelling potential in this unique type of fear and immediately set to work developing a story with screenwriter Evan Hunter, adapting Daphne du Maurier’s novella The Birds from its postwar English setting to contemporary coastal California.

To create the desired dramatic mood shift, Hitch begins The Birds with escalating pranks between Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) and Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), borrowed from the best of classic screwball comedies. This tactic not only created an initial romantic conflict but also deliver total shock to audiences when the expected bird attack actually happens.

Irritated yet intrigued by her initial encounter with Mitch in a San Francisco bird shop, Melanie tracks him down to his family’s weekend retreat “about sixty miles north” up the California coast in Bodega Bay. Although Melanie tries to remain covert during her lovebird delivery mission, a group of squawking seagulls (foreshadowing!) betrays her position and a lighthearted chase ensues with Mitch behind the wheel of his truck as Melanie pilots a skiff across the open water. Romantic antics still dominate the general tone of the story, but when a seagull strikes Melanie’s head upon her return to shore to greet Mitch, the suspense permeates.

What’d He Wear?

Melanie caught Mitch spending a leisurely Saturday at his family’s coastal home. He’s dressed for casual comfort in a cream ribbed knit sweater and olive drab military-style cargo pants, adding a touch of idiosyncratic luxury with a silk cravat around his neck.

The cream sweater is worn in the seaside tradition of the classic Aran knit fisherman’s sweater, though Mitch’s heavy crew-neck jumper is stitched in a less complicated rib knit. The soft wool material is possibly cashmere.

An amused Mitch spies Melanie making her attempted escape.

Around his neck, Mitch wears a silk kerchief patterned with paisley droplets on a solid navy ground that nicely brings out Rod Taylor’s blue eyes. It is worn like a traditional day cravat, tucked into the front of his sweater.

No less amused but perhaps more concerned about Melanie’s recent gull strike, Mitch and his new companion exchange bon mots.

From the waist down, Mitch’s casual wardrobe is the same functional attire that he would later wear with his gray tweed suit jacket and white shirt on the day of the actual avian invasion. His olive drab cargo pants resemble the OG-107 herringbone twill (HBT) cotton utility trousers issued by the United States military during World War II, indicating Mitch’s wartime service. The only pockets are the large bellows pockets on the outside of each thigh, which each close with a single metal button through a rectangular flap. He wears them with a thick dark brown oiled leather belt with a round-cornered brass single-prong buckle.

Mitch guides Melanie back to Bodega Bay.

Mitch wears his brown leather civilian work boots with four brass eyelets and tan stitching on the moc-toe, on the quarters, and around the heelcap. The heavy brown soles have yellow rectangular logos on the arches that could help identify their maker. He likely wears them with gray socks as he does with the tweed jacket and white shirt.

Mitch’s simple yet elegant wristwatch has a gold case with a gold crown and silver dial with plain hour indicators, worn on a dark brown alligator strap.

Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963)

How to Get the Look

One rarely associates military-style cargo pants with a silk cravat around the neck, but an individualist like Mitch Brenner is comfortable blending leisure and luxury however he chooses.

• Cream ribbed-knit cashmere wool crew-neck sweater
• Navy paisley-patterned silk day cravat
• Olive drab herringbone twill (HBT) cotton military-issue utility trousers with tall belt loops, button-down flapped side cargo pockets, and plain bottoms
  • Reproductions of these classic GI pants can be found online
• Dark brown oiled leather belt with round-edged single-claw brass buckle
• Dark brown leather moc-toe 4-eyelet boots
• Light gray socks
• Gold wristwatch with silver dial on dark brown alligator leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You really like me, huh?

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957)

Vitals

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans, womanizing nightclub singer

San Francisco, Spring 1957

Film: Pal Joey
Release Date: October 25, 1957
Director: George Sidney
Costume Designer: Jean Louis

Background

Let’s ease into #SinatraSaturday with a return to Pal Joey, the story of an ambitious nightclub performer played by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself who finds himself in a love triangle with an ingenue chorus girl (Kim Novak) and a wealthy widowed former stripper (Rita Hayworth), all set to more than a dozen classic Rodgers and Hart tunes.

This sequence finds Sinatra’s Joey Evans, firmly ensconced in the employ – and bedroom – of Hayworth’s Vera Prentice-Simpson, who is promising him his own club. The mesmerized Joey watches Kim Novak’s Linda perform “My Funny Valentine” (dubbed by Trudy Stevens), but Vera wants nothing to do with a rival for Joey’s affections and she forces the smitten lothario to fire his favorite singer.

Unable to actually fire her, Joey instead suggests to Linda that she take on “the strip” instead of her song, knowing that her pride will force her to quit. Linda sees right through it, despite Joey’s compelling arguments like…

You’re the best built mouse in the joint, so let’s take advantage of it.

What’d He Wear?

The scene begins with Sinatra in prime Sinatra: looking casual yet ultimately intentional with his hat tilted over one side of his face, his tie knotted but nonchalantly loosened, and his eyes focused.

Joey may be our pal, but he still needs the reassuring company of man’s best friend.

Joey’s hat is the same black felt short-brimmed trilby with its four gold-corded band that Sinatra had worn in an earlier scene with his dove gray dinner jacket. The informal headgear is a more appropriate choice with this dressed-down outfit.

“A hat’s not a hat till it’s tilted,” sang Sinatra with Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in “Style” for Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Here, Frankie shows us exactly what he means by that.

The light gray shirt is always worn with the top button undone, spreading the long point collar leafs out and leaving the neat Windsor knot of his gray grenadine silk tie to hang down an inch or so from the neck. The shirting has a silky sheen, suggestive of a high-twist cotton. The large square double (French) cuffs are fastened with a set of large, round ridged silver cuff links.

The shirt’s most individualistic detail? “Joey” monogrammed in large blue-gray cursive stitching on the left breast pocket.

Looking for a classic grenadine tie like Sinatra wears? Check out the selections offered by Sam Hober or this lighter gray Elizabetta tie handmade in Italy. You’re on your own for a shirt with “Joey” stitched on the pocket, however.

Joey wears dark gray flannel trousers, a traditional accompaniment for the navy blazer though khakis have emerged as a sporty, summer-friendly alternative in recent decades. The trousers have a long rise to Sinatra’s natural waist, where they are held up with a black leather belt with a brass single-prong buckle.

The double reverse-pleated trousers have “quarter top” slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets that each close with a button, and are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Once his dirty work is done for the day, Joey dons his jacket, a vivid navy blue serge single-breasted blazer with three shining gold crested shank buttons to match the three buttons on each cuff. Joey wears a white linen pocket square neatly folded in the welted breast pocket, and the two flapped pockets are placed low on his hips, straight in line with the lowest blazer button. The blazer also has double vents.

Joey, on the receiving end of a bit too much unwarranted business advice from Vera.

When Vera arrives home, asking Joey to leave before her “decent” dinner guests arrive, he’s kicking back on her couch, still wearing his blazer and his black calf leather derby shoes. His socks are worn with black socks.

Relaxing in style.

Barely seen on his left wrist is the black leather strap of Joey’s gold tank watch, likely an item that belonged to Sinatra himself.

What to Imbibe

If you’re Frank Sinatra, the drink is simple: two fingers of Jack Daniel’s over three ice cubes, topped off with a splash of water. Of course, if you’re looking get creative and combustible yet classic with your spirits, consider the Blue Blazer, brought to us by “father of American mixology” Jerry Thomas. Just be cautious to avoid anything excessively flammable during its creation.

Jerry Thomas mixes a Blue Blazer, one of his most famous – and flammable – concoctions.

As recounted by David Wondrich in his seminal tome Imbibe!, Jerry Thomas claimed to have invented the world’s first recorded “flaming cocktail”, the Blue Blazer, which started appearing in drinking holes in the years leading up to the Civil War. Whether or not Thomas was the actual inventor, it was his recipe that first appeared in print in Thomas’ 1862 bartenders’ guide How to Mix Drinks, with the simple enough ingredients of Scotch whisky and boiling water, then calling for its maker to:

Add one wineglass of boiling water, then set it on fire, and while blazing, pour from each into the other mug, being particular to keep the other blazing during the pouring process. Serve in small bar tumblers. Add piece of lemon skin, pour mixture into glass blazing, and cover with cup.

Thomas himself was reportedly a master of artfully hurling the flaming Scotch-and-water mixture back and forth between two silver mugs, though Thomas drolly noted that “the novice in mixing this beverage should be careful not to scald himself.”

Perhaps it’s better to stick to Frank’s tried-and-true Jack Daniel’s and water after all.

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957). Note his “light reading”, MacKinlay Kantor’s 1955 novel Andersonville about the infamous Confederate prisoner of war camp.

How to Get the Look

The navy blazer is a timeless menswear piece just as effective now as it was sixty years ago when Frank Sinatra donned one as a successful playboy crooner in Pal Joey. As the titular Joey, Ol’ Blue Eyes added a personal touch to this traditional staple with a monogrammed shirt, bold cuff links, and one of the singer’s signature hats.

• Navy serge single-breasted blazer with 3 gold shank buttons, with welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and double vents
• Light gray high-twist cotton shirt with long point collar, plain front, monogrammed breast pocket, and double/French cuffs
  • Silver ridged round cuff links
• Gray grenadine silk tie
• Dark gray flannel double reverse-pleated high-rise trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, button-through jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather belt with brass single-prong buckle
• Black calf leather derby shoes
• Black socks
• Black felt short-brimmed trilby with gold quadruple-corded band
• Gold tank watch on black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and read up on your Sinatra style. Several years ago, I was honored to receive the gift of Bill Zehme’s The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’, a definitive bible of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ approach to sartorialism and life, from BAMF Style reader Teeritz.

The Quote

The only thing I’m superstitious about is 13 in a bed.

Benicio del Toro as Alejandro in Sicario (2015)

Vitals

Benicio del Toro as Alejandro Gillick, mysterious government “advisor” and mercenary

Texas border, Summer 2014

Film: Sicario
Release Date: September 18, 2015
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Costume Designer: Renée April

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I’ve had a few recent requests to cover the outfit that Benicio del Toro wears for his introduction in the 2015 crime thriller Sicario, where his mysterious character Alejandro Gillick joins fellow U.S. Department of Defense special task force operatives Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) on a joint agency mission flight taking off from Luke Air Force Base to El Paso, though Alejandro reveals to Macer that their eventual destination is just over the border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Alejandro Gillick is introduced as a taciturn loner who “specializes” in dealing with Mexican cartels, but his sleep – even on airplanes – is distributed by trembling and waking in terror. He’s the kind of guy that Macer is given the direction to, “if he says do something, just do it.” Macer eventually gets Alejandro to reveal that he was formerly a prosecutor who worked in Juárez and now currently serves in more of a mercenary capacity, recently called into service from Colombia.

Listen, nothing will make sense to your American ears, and you will doubt everything that we do… but in the end, you will understand.

What’d He Wear?

Alejandro makes his first appearance wearing a beige sport jacket likely made from a summer-weight blend of cotton and silk. The color of the jacket reinforces Alejandro’s ability to blend in with his surroundings, first with the beige interior of the chartered plane and then again against the bland, off-white walls of the government facility where his task force is stationed.

Alejandro takes his seat on the plane.

Alejandro’s beige single-breasted sport jacket has narrow notch lapels that roll to a two-button front, though he always wears the front of the jacket open in accordance with his nonchalant approach to dressing. This approach is also apparent with his flaps of his hip pockets that are often half-protruding in or out of the pockets themselves. The jacket also has a welted breast pocket, four-button cuffs, and a single vent.

Kate Macer finally gets to learn a little more about her mysterious co-passenger.

As the squad prepares for their raid in Juárez, Alejandro carefully removes and folds his jacket to place it in his duffel bag, revealing more of the shirt made by Anto Beverly Hills specifically for del Toro to wear on screen. The dark blue shirt has a slight indigo cast and a sheen in certain lights that indicates a silky, high-twist cotton construction.

The shirt has a soft point collar that he typically wears unbuttoned at the neck, a plain front with mother-of-pearl buttons, and a breast pocket. The cuffs each close with a single button.

Alejandro carefully folds his jacket in preparation of the mission ahead.

A maroon satin silk tie makes Alejandro’s comfortable and sporty summer-friendly outfit a little more businesslike for his plane ride to El Paso and the briefing to follow.

In his red, white, and blue getup, who wouldn’t assume that Alejandro proudly associates himself with the United States?

Alejandro wears khaki cotton chinos from Brooks Brothers in a shade just dark enough to provide a necessary contrast when worn with the beige sport jacket.

A stronger contrast would have done more to keep the beige jacket and khaki chinos from looking too much like a mismatched suit.

Alejandro’s khaki chinos have slightly slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets with a button through the left one (no button on the right), and a straight-leg fit with plain-hemmed bottoms. He wears a walnut brown leather belt with debossed black edges and a steel single-prong buckle.

Alejandro in action during a gunfight at the Juárez-El Paso border crossing.

Alejandro wears brown suede boots, each with an inside zipper, made by To Boot New York. As of August 2018, the company no longer offers a side-zip plain-toe boot in this warm shade of medium brown, though their Harrison boot in a cooler shade of brown suede is the next best thing. (For the more tobacco-like suede color worn by Alejandro, you’d have to pick up To Boot New York’s lace-up Boston chukka boot.)

You can see the original costume pieces above – the jacket, shirt, trousers, belt, and boots – at this iCollector listing.

One item not included in the listing are Alejandro’s sporty silver-framed sunglasses with blue arms and brown-tinted prescription lenses. IZOD can clearly be seen in silver lettering at the temples. The specific model of Alejandro’s shades is the now-discontinued IZOD 736.

The rest of Alejandro’s accessories include a gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand and a yellow gold vintage-looking watch worn on his right wrist with a gold dial and gold bracelet.

Any ideas about Alejandro’s watch? Is it vintage?

Alejandro wears assault gear for much of the latter portion of the film, though his final appearance finds him in what appears to be the same dark blue shirt and khaki pants but with a black linen unstructured sport jacket with smoked mother-of-pearl buttons.

In yet another example of dressing to blend in with his surroundings, Kate doesn’t notice the dark-clad Alejandro hiding in the shadows of her apartment at first.

The Gun

When the task force heads to the border, Alejandro arms himself with a Heckler & Koch MP5A3 submachine gun that he uses ably during a brief battle with cartel gunmen. According to the pros at IMFDB, Alejandro’s suppressed MP5A3 is fitted with railed handguards and an Aimpoint red-dot sight.

Production photo of Benicio del Toro taking aim with a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP5A3 in Sicario.

Chambered for the universal 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition, the H&K MP5 had been in production for nearly 50 years at the time that Sicario was made. While the more modernized UMP submachine gun has been produced by Heckler & Koch since 1999, the popular and reliable MP5 remains in production and in the armories of military forces and law enforcement agencies in more than 40 countries around the world.

More than 100 different variants of the Heckler & Koch MP5 have been developed in the half-century of the firearm’s existence. The MP5A3 wielded by Alejandro is differentiated by its retractable metal stock and three-position “SEF” trigger group; the three positions are safe (non-firing), semi-automatic, and fully automatic. While the MP5A5 also has a retractable buttstock, it is set to fire three-round bursts.

In some shots, a continuity error exists that places a Heckler & Koch MP5SD3 in Alejandro’s hands. The MP5SD3 has the same retractable stock and SEF trigger group as the MP5A3, but the MP5SD3 has an integral suppressor.

Benicio del Toro as Alejandro in Sicario (2015), going tieless after a long day at the border.

How to Get the Look

Benicio del Toro wears a summer-friendly sport jacket and slacks just as effectively during action scenes as though he was dressed head-to-toe in assault gear, all while communicating his red, white, and blue patriotism.

• Beige cotton/silk single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and single back vent
• Dark blue high-twist cotton shirt with point collar, plain front, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Maroon satin silk tie
• Khaki cotton chino trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown leather belt with black debossed edges and steel single-prong buckle
• Tobacco brown suede side-zip ankle boots
• IZOD 736 silver-framed sunglasses with brown-tinted lenses and blue arms
• Gold vintage wristwatch with gold dial and gold bracelet
• Gold wedding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You’re asking me how a watch works. For now, let’s just keep an eye on the time.

Toshirô Mifune as Matsunaga in Drunken Angel (1948)

Vitals

Toshirô Mifune as Matsunaga, tubercular Japanese gangster

Japan, Summer 1947

Film: Drunken Angel
(Japanese title: 醉いどれ天使 Yoidore Tenshi)
Release Date: April 27, 1948
Director: Akira Kurosawa

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Based on the intensity of his performance, it’s hard to believe that Drunken Angel was one of Toshirô Mifune’s first movies. His portrayal of the cocky, conflicted, and ultimately doomed yakuza gangster Matsunaga remains a highlight of crime cinema 70 years after the film was released.

Drunken Angel begins with its titular protagonist, the alcoholic doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura), treating Matsunaga for a gunshot wound in his hand and recognizing the gangster’s tubercular condition. Matsunaga has no patience for Sanada’s pontifications against the wild lifestyle that would only quicken his death.

A tubercular breakdown forces Matsunaga back under the doctor’s care, and it appears that he is now willing to take on a gentler lifestyle with a greater chance at living longer, but a reunion with his manipulative yakuza boss Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto) lands Matsunaga right back where he started, living a fast and dangerous life fueled by whiskey, women, and violence.

Matsunaga launches back into a life of depraved, drunken foolishness.

What’d He Wear?

The action takes place during a summer in postwar Japan, where Matsunaga adopts a wardrobe that concedes both to the warmer weather and the conditions of the American occupation that forced Kurosawa to dress his characters in Westernized clothing. Earlier in the film, the good doctor Sanada had encountered Matsunaga exiting a nightclub in a sharp white double-breasted suit with a subtle stripe. For this night on the town, Matsunaga continues that look with a light-colored double-breasted jacket with a dark stripe, worn with a boldly striped tie and non-matching flannel trousers.

The striped double-breasted jacket is styled and cut like his previous suit jacket with wide, padded shoulders that fall off Mifune’s own shoulders and broad peak lapels that roll down to a low, four-on-one button stance with mother-of-pearl sew-through buttons. The ventless jacket has three-button cuffs, straight jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket where Matsunaga wears a dark silk pocket square.

Though he often wears the front of the jacket unbuttoned, Matsunaga’s suit jackets have an internal anchor button fastened to a short strap that keeps his jacket from flapping around while he’s dancing or brawling.

Oblivious to his crumbling reputation and health, Matsunaga enjoys the vocal talents of Shizuko Kasagi.

As with his suit, Matsunaga triples down on his stripe quotient, wearing both a striped shirt and tie under the striped jacket. However, the lower contrast – in grayscale, anyway – creates a more subtle stripe effect even with multiple stripes to each set. The shirt has a point collar, plain front, no pocket, and rounded button cuffs that he wears both fastened and unfastened.

Matsunaga’s tie is striped in inch-wide “downhill” diagonal stripes spaced out against a dark ground.

Matsunaga’s tie flops out of his jacket during a drunken night out.

If the jacket had been part of a suit, it would have been a bold suit indeed, but Matsunaga neutralizes this flamboyance by wearing it with a pair of mid-colored flannel trousers. The full-fitting trousers have double reverse pleats on each side, slanted side pockets, button-down flapped pockets, and narrow turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms. His belt is a lighter-colored leather, possibly tan to coordinate with the likely color scheme of his spectator shoes.

Royal flush.

Matsunaga appears to be wearing the same spectator derbies as he had with his suit. The shoes appear to have brown leather around the apron-toe cap and quarters with a lighter vamp that may be beige or cream leather. The lace panels look to be a third medium shade, possibly a deep tan. He wears them with dark socks.

Matsunaga finds himself in no place to be wearing snappy shoes like that.

Matsunaga wears his usual jewelry, a diamond ring on the third finger of his right hand and a watch on his left wrist.

Matsunaga flashes his ring as he accepts a shot of Nikka from his recently returned boss.

Go Big or Go Home

Nikka whisky again appears as Matsunaga’s nectar of choice… and the fuel of his eventual downfall. The Nikka distillery opened in Yoichi, a coastal town in Hokkaido, in the summer of 1934 following master distiller Masataka Taketsuru’s apprenticeship in Scotland.

Production still of Reisaburo Yamamoto as Okada, offering a shot of Nikka Whisky (advertisement also seen over Yamamoto’s left shoulder) to Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune).

It’s while under the influence of this Nikka whisky that Matsunaga accompanies his fellow gangland acquaintances to the nightclub. The group is serenaded by popular Japanese vocalist Shizuko Kasagi, who appears singing the original number “Jungle Boogie (Janguru bugi)”.

Matsunaga’s one-time girlfriend Nanae (Michiyo Kogure) has drifted into the arms of the gangster’s boss, but the drunken Matsunaga doesn’t care, grabbing a different woman in the club for a brief but vigorous dance that must exacerbate his increasingly delicate condition.

With music by Ryôichi Hattori and lyrics by Kurosawa himself, the director had penned and included this song to reflect the trends of American jazz and boogie woogie during the era. Indeed, he had also picked the right vocalist to perform it as Shizuko Kasagi enjoyed a reputation in post-war Japan as “Queen of the Boogie Woogie”, whether it was performing original numbers like “Kaimono Boogie” and “Tokyo Boogie Woogie” or American standards like “St. Louis Blues”.

As cited in an essay by Hosokawa Shuhei, stage critic Futaba Yazabura once commented on Kasagi: “Her swing feeling is something contemporary Japanese singers are unable to express. We know many swing singers mainly through recordings. For example, the robust swing feeling of Ella Fitzgerald, the chic one of Maxim Sullivan, the thoroughly delicate one of Mildred Bailey, the jewel-like and finely stringy one of Lil Armstrong, and other types of swing feel of countless singers. We have been searching almost desperately for those feelings in our country. But Kasagi Shizuko turned our melancholy into hope and joy.”

Toshirô Mifune as Matsunaga in Drunken Angel (1948)

How to Get the Look

Matsunaga takes cues from wide, flashy post-war American fashions for his distinctive club-hopping attire.

• Light (with dark chalk stripe) double-breasted 4-on-1 jacket with wide straight-gorge peak lapels, padded shoulders, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Mid-colored flannel pleated trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, button-down flapped back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Complex-striped shirt with semi-spread collar, plain front, breast pocket, and rounded button cuffs
• Dark tie with bold left-down-to-right colored stripes
• Brown-and-tan apron-toe spectator derby shoes
• Dark brown socks
• Diamond ring
• Watch on metal bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Robert Redford as Henry Brubaker in Brubaker (1980)

Vitals

Robert Redford as Henry Brubaker, idealistic warden of Wakefield state prison farm

Arkansas, Spring 1969

Film: Brubaker
Release Date: June 20, 1980
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Costumer: Bernie Pollack

Background

Happy birthday, Robert Redford! The legendary actor, who turns 82 today, recently announced that his upcoming film, The Old Man & The Gun, will likely be his last.

In addition to being one of the most popular and prolific actors of the last half-century, Redford was also a talented director, winning an Academy Award for his directorial debut Ordinary People in 1980. That same year, Redford also starred in Brubaker, a rough prison drama about an idealistic warden who goes undercover in a corrupt Arkansas prison.

The role of no-nonsense prison warden Henry Brubaker would be Redford’s last on-screen performance until stepping behind the plate for The Natural four years later.

What’d He Wear?

After Brubaker’s first appearance in civilian clothes, wearing a Black Watch plaid flannel shirt, chore coat, and corduroys, we catch up with the warden as he handles some administrative duties. One of the first is a visit from crooked C.P. Woodward (M. Emmet Walsh), who isn’t used to the new honest way of conducting business at Wakefield as Brubaker negotiates with him for a new roof.

“I ain’t in the construction business for my health,” Woodward says, trying to hardball. “Or anyone else’s, it seems.” Slowly but surely, Woodward eventually gets around to his point: “don’t fuck with tradition.”

The shirt pattern consists of a base red shadow plaid on a black ground, though criss-crossing stripes in green, blue, white, and yellow provide a complex and colorful effect.

Brubaker’s plaid shirt pattern is made up of at least six different colors.

The shirt has a large point collar as was fashionable from the end of the 1960s through the following decade. Redford wears the shirt with the top few buttons undone and the rest of the clear plastic buttons fastened down the front placket. Each cuff also closes with a single clear plastic button. The shirt has two chest pockets that each close with a slightly pointed flap that buttons through the center.

Brubaker takes an immediate stand to corrupt bureaucracy. Dressed as such, he looks far more a man of the people with the common good in mind.

Brubaker cycles through two pairs of corduroy trousers – one in navy blue and the other in dark brown – with his dressed-down civilian attire, worn with a thick black leather belt that has a large brass single-prong buckle through the pants’ tall belt loops. Both pairs are made from a standard wale cotton corduroy cloth and have side pockets that slant inward toward the waist, jetted back pockets, and slightly flared plain-hemmed bottoms.

Brubaker’s daily footwear is a pair of russet brown leather work boots with derby-style open lacing.

When he oversees the digging in the prison yards, Brubaker re-dons his earlier seen tan chore coat and black knee-high boots. The waxed cotton four-button coat has an olive pinwale collar, set-in sleeves, and three flapped patch pockets: one on his left breast and two larger ones on his hips.

An advantage to Brubaker’s casual everyday clothing is that he doesn’t need to change when putting on work outerwear for a day digging up the grounds.

Briefly, just briefly, Brubaker wears a dirty white straw cowboy hat with a slim black band while kicking back in his quarters.

Robert Redford often wore a Rolex Submariner in his real life throughout the 1970s, though a simpler steel wristwatch with a plain round dial was chosen for his role in Brubaker. He wears the watch on a steel bracelet around his right wrist.

Don’t talk to Henry Brubaker until he’s had his coffee.

Though Redford’s real-life watch didn’t make it into the film, the actor still wears the engraved silver ring that he received as a gift from the Hopi Tribe in 1966 and has worn on the third finger of his right hand in most of his films since then,

The Gun

Though he doesn’t have a writ for a rat on hand, Brubaker echoes John Wayne’s iconic gesture in True Grit by drawing his revolver on a rat. While Duke’s Rooster Cogburn may have waylaid his rat with a single-action .45 revolver, Brubaker carries a more modernized weapon in the form of a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver that he had evidently inherited from the previous warden.

As True Grit was released in June 1969, it’s more than likely that Brubaker would be familiar with the scene… though he could have also read Charles Portis’ book from the previous year.

Smith & Wesson first introduced its .38-caliber Military & Police revolver in 1899, and it quickly gained favor as a service revolver for American police departments and peace officers for its reliable mechanism and ability to chamber the new and powerful .38 Special cartridge. Five decades later, Smith & Wesson standardized the nomenclature of its models and the Military & Police became the Model 10. With production figures at 6,000,000 and growing, the Smith & Wesson Model 10 earned its standing as the most popular centerfire revolver of the 20th century.

A classic example of the double-action revolver, the Smith & Wesson Model 10 is still produced today more than a century after its introduction in a variety of barrel lengths, weights, and finishes, though Brubaker’s revolver is the quintessential police six-shooter with its blue steel finish and 4″ barrel.

Robert Redford as Henry Brubaker in Brubaker (1980)

How to Get the Look

Although Brubaker is set in 1969 as it was based on the experiences of former prison administrator Thomas O. Murton, who also served as technical adviser, the film’s fashions are contemporary to the time of its production in late 1979 and early 1980. Four decades later, Brubaker’s go-to casual ensemble of a plaid long-sleeved shirt, corduroy trousers, and work boots remains ruggedly fashionable.

• Red-and-black multi-colored plaid cotton shirt with large point collar, front placket (with clear plastic buttons), button-flapped chest pockets, and button cuffs
• coat
• Navy blue or brown flat front standard wale cotton corduroy trousers with tall belt loops, slightly slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and slightly flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Wide black leather belt with large brass single-prong buckle
• Russet brown leather derby-laced work boots
• Silver Hopi ring with black imprint, worn on right ring finger
• Steel round-cased wristwatch with light-colored dial on steel bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I hate prunes.

Footnote

Brubaker was directed by Stuart Rosenberg, who had made his major studio debut 13 years prior helming the classic prison flick Cool Hand Luke… starring Robert Redford’s pal and occasional co-star Paul Newman.

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (1960)

Vitals

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley, charming American con artist and sophisticated sociopath

Italy, August 1959

Film: Purple Noon
(French title: Plein soleil)
Release Date: March 10, 1960
Director: René Clément
Costume Designer: Bella Clément

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Purple Noon, released in France as Plein soleil, was the first cinematic adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 psychological thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley. Released five years after Highsmith’s novel was published, the film shot 24-year-old Alain Delon to stardom as the charming sociopath who envies the luxurious lifestyle of expatriate playboy Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet).

With all of the summery Riviera style on display throughout Purple Noon, one item that has been frequently requested for exploration is the first piece of clothing that Delon’s Tom Ripley appropriates from Philippe Greenleaf after an “accident” at sea.

What’d He Wear?

“How can I go on a cruise with out my cabana wear?” screams Frank Costanza (Jerry Stiller) in “The Raincoats”, a fifth season episode of Seinfeld. Perhaps in another lifetime, master of deception Tom Ripley would have reinvented himself as the cantankerous patriarch of a neurotic family in Queens. Either way, there is one thing that Tom Ripley and Frank Costanza share: a passion for taking to the sea in classic cabana wear.

After killing Philippe and disposing of his corpse in the waves, a drenched Tom Ripley reboards Marge (the boat, not the woman) and grabs the first dry garment he can find, a batik-dyed cabana shirt whose soft terry texture would have been an instant comfort for the wet murderer, while also symbolizing the beginning of Ripley’s transformation into assuming Philippe Greenleaf’s identity.

Interestingly, this is also the very shirt that Philippe had been wearing early when he “discovered” Tom’s initial plan.

The doomed Philippe.

Batik production is an Indonesian technique for hand-dyeing cloth using a wax-resist process that allows the artisan dyeing the clothing to be more selective about how and where the colors and patterns are applied.

Philippe’s batik shirt consists of white tropical patterns and shapes dyed onto a soft, terry-textured brick red cloth. Like many cabana shirts of the era, this shirt has a camp collar with brown nut buttons down the plain front. The shirt is fitted with pleats on the back shoulders and side vents. There is a breast pocket, and the short sleeves are cuffed at the ends.

Tom enacts his plan to take over all of Philippe’s life… from his shirts to his soulmate.

From the first shot in Purple Noon, the American faux-Ivy Leaguer Tom Ripley had almost exclusively worn cream-colored cotton jeans with the bottoms cuffed up. These are configured with the traditional five-pocket layout of two in the back and two in the front plus a coin pocket on the right side. They have a button fly and belt loops for Tom’s black leather belt with its squared steel single-prong buckle.

Tom wears his usual accessories, a gold necklace with a round gold pendant and his plain steel wristwatch on a dark navy strap. His shoes are the same navy-and-white rope-soled espadrilles that Philippe had forced him to remove before boarding Marge a few days earlier.

Tom returns to Mongibello, his life considerably different than when he had left it.

Tom makes a habit of, perhaps unconsciously, flaunting his crime, selecting some of the louder items from Philippe’s wardrobe from this batik shirt to a boldly striped regatta blazer during the film’s final act.

How to Get the Look

Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (1960)

If Tom Ripley is going to assume the identity of a hedonistic Riviera playboy, he may as well look the part, right? The introduction of a boldly patterned and undoubtedly comfortable batik-dyed cabana shirt does the trick.

• Brick red, with white tropical batik-dyed design, soft terry-textured short-sleeve shirt with camp collar, nut buttons, and breast pocket
• Cream cotton jeans with belt loops, button-fly, five-pocket layout, and self-cuffed bottoms
• Black leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Navy-and-white rope-soled espadrilles
• Gold pendant necklace on thin gold chain
• Steel watch with round silver dial on navy blue strap

The unique dyed pattern and material makes shirts like this particularly difficult to find, especially on a low budget. If you want to reflect the spirit of the shirt, you could certainly find a red-and-white printed shirt with a tropical motif, like the low-priced offerings of La Leela (here, here, and here).

Otherwise, your best bet for a Ripley-like batik shirt would be to search vintage shops or sites like eBay for classic cabana wear from brands like Jantzen who popularized them in the ’60s and ’70s. (Like this Jantzen example here or more modern example here.)

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Vitals

Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, narcissistic profligate playboy

Italy, Summer 1959

Film: The Talented Mr. Ripley
Release Date: December 25, 1999
Director: Anthony Minghella
Costume Design: Ann Roth & Gary Jones

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

My last post focused on one of the unlucky Mr. Greenleaf’s unique summer shirts that fell into the hands of an envious Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (Plein Soleil), the 1960 French adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. Highsmith’s novel was adapted under its original title by writer and director Anthony Minghella in 1999, starring Jude Law as the expatriate playboy Dickie Greenleaf and Matt Damon as the obsessive Ripley.

Ann Roth and Gary Jones were justifiably nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design based on their work in The Talented Mr. Ripley, establishing Tom Ripley as an obvious outsider to the Italian beach villa lifestyle with his Ivy League corduroy jacket, oxford cloth button-down shirts, and pebbled derbies. On the other hand, the elegant man of leisure, Dickie Greenleaf is perfectly dressed not only for the warm Mediterranean climate but also the simple demands required of a profligate spending his Jet Age summer days and nights hopping from sailboats to jazz clubs.

Shortly after making Tom’s acquaintance, Dickie allows him to spend time at the home that he shares with his fiancée Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow) on the Amalfi Coast, in the fictional town of Mongibello. “He makes me laugh,” is Dickie’s reasoning for keeping the awkward Tom around, and the young man shortly joins a welcoming Marge and a cheeky Dickie at breakfast as the latter makes espressos and explains the origins of his distinctive jewelry.

What’d He Wear?

Dickie dresses for breakfast in one of his knit resort shirts, the type he tends to prefer around the house rather than out and about with a blazer and slacks. The soft shirting is yellow and white open-weave mesh. The majority of the shirt is yellow mesh, though a wide white mesh panel does extend down the front of each shirt from the shoulder to just above the waistband.

While the shot may be intended to focus on Dickie’s coffee cup, it also gives the audience a closer look at the details of his shirt and shorts.

The slim one-piece “Italian collar” is also white, curved and styled flat to make it clear that this casual shirt is not to be worn buttoned up to the neck. There is a small patch pocket at the hips, centered on the bottom of each white panel with a yellow banded top.

Styled like a typical short-sleeved sport shirt, the shirt has four mother-of-pearl sew-through buttons down the plain, placket-less front to a short, pointed tab with a double-button closure on the straight-cut bottom. There is also a short vent on each side hem with a stacked two-button closure.

For morning espressos on the terrace, Dickie wears a wild pair of white shorts with a deep sea-themed print of red, gold, and touches of green featuring fish swimming among sea weeds. They have a white zip fly, side pockets, and jetted back pockets.

For what it’s worth, these shorts were voted the best of Dickie’s shorts in a 15th anniversary commemorative piece published by Bustle on Christmas Eve 2014, second only to the neon-green briefs that Matt Damon sports at the beach for his first encounter with Dickie and Marge.

Later, Tom catches Dickie with Silvana (Stefania Rocca), one of undoubtedly many mistresses from Dickie’s “love ’em then leave ’em” turnstile. Dickie turns to his trusty white linen-silk slacks when sporting this shirt in town, hand-cuffed at the bottoms. These pleated trousers have straight side pockets, button-through back pockets, and belt loops where he wears his black leather Gucci belt.

Dickie works his charm on Silvana.

While Dickie may be wearing a pair of beach-friendly white slip-on plimsolls with his shorts, he appears to be wearing a pair of white leather loafers with hard leather soles when Tom finds him working his charms on Silvana. Per his custom even with jackets and ties, Dickie wears no socks.

We also get a deeper look into the Dickie Greenleaf eyewear collection as he wears a pair of dark, square-framed sunglasses. They are certainly not the distinctive orange Persol shades that Dickie wears later that day when squiring Tom and Marge about on his sailboat.

“That ring is superb!” Tom can’t help but to comment. After some ribbing from Marge, Dickie tells Tom: “I had to promise – capital P – never to take it off. Otherwise, I’d give it to you.” Chevkov’s ring in question is gold with a gleaming green stone, symbolizing Dickie’s wealth that Tom craves and calling to him in that moment like the green light on the end of Daisy’s dock called to Gatsby.

Tom eyes Dickie’s distinctive accessories.

Less distinctive but equally ubiquitous is the gold ridged ring, resembling some wedding bands, that Dickie wears on the middle finger of his right hand. Dickie also wears his usual wristwatch, a steel-cased analog watch with a silver dial and silver mesh bracelet with a single-prong buckle. The watch remains unidentified though online speculation has suggested that it may be a vintage model produced either by Bulova, Hamilton, Longines, or Wittenauer.

Whether Dickie actually wore a Hamilton or not, the Hamilton Jazzmaster is a fitting timepiece for a man of Dickie’s particular interests and lifestyle.

One More Time…

The shirt makes its final appearance in Rome when Tom is packing his suitcases and takes a moment to caress his face with this shirt belonging to his late friend before packing it withe the rest of Dickie’s belongings.

It’s one thing to appreciate a friend’s taste in clothing. It’s something else to do… this?

Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

How to Get the Look

Dickie Greenleaf shows how the power of a single item of clothing as his mesh-knit resort shirt transforms from chaotic to classy merely by swapping out the bottoms that are worn with it.

• Yellow-on-white mesh-knit short-sleeve sport shirt with curved one-piece collar, plain front, and patch hip pockets
• White linen-silk pleated trousers with belt loops, straight side pockets, button-through back pockets, and self-cuffed bottoms
• Black leather Gucci belt
• White leather loafers
• Steel wristwatch with silver dial on silver mesh bracelet
• Gold double-ridged ring, worn on right middle finger
• Gold signet pinky ring with gold stone, worn on left pinky
• Dark square-framed sunglasses

The yellow-on-white mesh-knit shirt is very unique. If you want to step in that direction without going all out with buttons and mesh à la Dickie, Rag & Bone offers the beige cotton pajama-piped Greenleaf Shirt, undoubtedly inspired by Jude Law’s insouciant elegance in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Patricia Highsmith’s novel.

Quote

Now you’ll find out why Miss Sherwood always shows up for breakfast, Tom. It’s not love, it’s my coffee machine.

John Slattery as Roger Sterling on Mad Men (Episode 1.10: “Long Weekend”)

Vitals

John Slattery as Roger Sterling, advertising account service chief

New York City, September 1960

Series: Mad Men
Episode: “Long Weekend” (Episode 1.10)
Air Date: September 27, 2007
Director: Tim Hunter
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

It’s Labor Day weekend. Between now and Monday, we have to fall in love a dozen times.

Happy #MadMenMonday! Americans are celebrating their last week in the office before the long weekend over Labor Day, a holiday that provided Roger Sterling with one of his most quotable – and lecherous – of early Mad Men episodes.

Friday, September 2, 1960. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Roger Sterling are among a skeleton crew remaining in the office for the last full day before Labor Day weekend. After the long weekend, Roger hopes to see ideas from his team that “aims a howitzer at Kennedy’s balls” in service to their prospective new client, Republican presidential candidate Dick Nixon. In the meantime, Roger follows his true passions and propositions Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) for an extended liaison over the weekend.

We can go anywhere tonight! We can see a Broadway show then sit at any table in the Colony with our clothes off, if we want to.

Roger’s wide-eyed plans are quickly diffused, however, as Joan has recently seen The Apartment and is rethinking her place in line to be Sterling Cooper’s Shirley MacLaine surrogate. Paired with the bad news from Don that Dr. Scholl’s is taking its business elsewhere, the two ad men drown their sorrows in drams from Roger’s office bar before Roger leads them down to the casting area for Fred Rumsen’s double-sided aluminum commercial. A cynical yet amused Don watches as Roger plays predatory Richard Dawson to the young sets of twins who came to audition to the commercial before he “lands” on the 20-year-old sisters Eleanor and Mirabelle Ames, the latter of whom astutely notes: “Oh my… everything he says means something else, too.”

Flanking John Slattery in this production photo are Megan Stier and Alexis Stier, who portrayed Eleanor and Mirabelle Ames, respectively.

The Ames sisters soon realize exactly what is on Roger’s one-track mind, though his attempts at a second round of sex with Mirabelle leads to a heart attack that brings Don running to the rescue of his friend… and it isn’t the last time Don provides Roger with invaluable help that evening. As a delusional Roger starts calling out for Mirabelle while on the gurney, Don smacks him and reminds him that his wife’s name is Mona. The entire experience leads the cheeky ad man to a cathartic realization:

I’ve been living the last 20 years like I’ve been on shore leave.

What’d He Wear?

Three-piece suits were a hallmark of Roger Sterling’s style throughout Mad Men‘s entire run, though I believe the only time this specific suit is featured is the first season episode set on the Friday before Labor Day, 1960.

This gray semi-solid wool suit combines Roger’s two preferred styles – three-piece suits and double-breasted suits – by pairing a single-breasted jacket with double-breasted-style peak lapels with a matching waistcoat and trousers.

“I really need to get to the bottom of that… yes, I would like to get a look at those!”
Roger’s double entendres fail to have their desired effect on Joan Holloway, and he is forced to search elsewhere for his Labor Day weekend plans.

The suit jacket’s broad peak lapels have long gorges with pick stitching visible on the edges. The sleeveheads are roped with four buttons at the end of each sleeve, and the ventless back is somewhat flared. The jacket has straight flapped hip pockets in line with the lower button on the front, and Roger wears a white linen kerchief in the welted breast pocket.

The matching suit waistcoat (vest) has five buttons spaced apart and worn with the lowest button over the cutaway notch bottom undone. The waistcoat has four welted pockets and a gray satin-finished back lining with an adjustable cinch strap.

Roger and Don scope out the potential talent for Freddy Rumsen’s latest commercial… and their potential dates for the evening.

Roger’s trousers have a single reverse pleat on each side of the fly with side pockets, jetted back pockets, and substantial turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Although many men opt for braces, side adjusters, or nothing to secure the trousers of a three-piece suit, Roger Sterling prefers belts no matter what. This particular belt is black leather to match his shoes with a silver-toned box buckle. It’s difficult to tell if he does so here, but – in later seasons – Roger would use his belt buckles as a vehicle for his “S” monogram.

Pillow talk with Roger and Mirabelle Ames. Note his belt, half-hanging around the top of his pleated trousers.

Roger’s cotton dress shirt is white-on-white self-striped with a breast pocket and rounded cuffs that close on one of two buttons. The club collar is pinned under the tie knot with a long silver-toned collar bar.

His navy tie is patterned with a spaced out field of small, angled white dots.

Tie firmly in place, Roger smokes his way through a meeting to discuss strategy for the Nixon campaign.

Roger’s socks get far more attention than his shoes, as he kicks off his black lace-ups in preparation for his second tryst with Mirabelle. When Don runs back into the room, however, the first thing seen by both Don and the audience are Roger’s beige dress socks with brown polka dots. Roger holds his socks in place with a pair of black sock garters that clip onto each side of both socks.

An unusual sight greets Don Draper upon his return to Roger’s office.

Like Don and many other men of his era, Roger wears all white underwear, and his romp with Mirabelle means both his undershirt and undershorts get more screen time than usual. Roger’s undershirt is sleeveless with reinforced neck and arm holes, though the cloth isn’t ribbed like the fitted A-shirts popular today.

Roger Sterling finds a friendly, comfortable place to rest his head.

Roger wears no rings in this episode, nor does he appear to be wearing his watch.

What to Listen To

Once the office has emptied out, Roger puts on music and goes full steam in trying to bed one – or both – of the twins, set to the tune of the McGuire Sisters’ cover of Domenigo Madugno’s “Volare”.

After Domenico Madugno released “Nel blu dipinto di blu” on February 1, 1958, the Italian ballad shot to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, spending five consecutive weeks at the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart later that summer and becoming the first Grammy winner for Record of the Year and Song of the Year during the 1st Annual Grammy Awards ceremony in May 1959.

By the time Madugno’s hit made music history at the inaugural Grammy Awards, the world arguably had “Volare” fever, borrowing the Italian word for “to fly” that features prominently in the song’s chorus. Dean Martin recorded his own take on Madugno’s song in half-English, half-Italian, released in August 1958 as “Volare (Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu)”.

Even non-Italian artists became embracing the popularity of “Volare”. The McGuire Sisters, a trio from Middletown, Ohio, introduced their cover of Dino’s half-English version in 1958. While it didn’t have the enduring appeal of Madugno’s original canzone or Martin’s laidback cover, the McGuire Sisters’ recording still made it up to number 80 on the Billboard Hot 100… as well as into an episode of Mad Men nearly fifty years later.

How to Get the Look

John Slattery as Roger Sterling on Mad Men (Episode 1.10: “Long Weekend”)

Show you still mean business for the last week in the office before Labor Day by making a powerful impression à la Sterling Cooper’s witty and womanizing head of account services, Roger Sterling.

• Gray semi-solid wool three-piece suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with four welted pockets, notched bottom, and adjustable back strap
  • Single reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White-on-white self-striped cotton shirt with pinned club collar, breast pocket, and adjustable-button cuffs
• Navy tie with small white spaced-out angled dots
• Black leather belt with silver-toned box buckle
• Black leather derby shoes
• Beige dress socks with brown polka dots
• White cotton sleeveless undershirt
• White cotton boxer shorts

Whether you have the right suit or not, you can always outfit yourself with some of Roger Sterling’s favorite accessories, such as a navy polka-dot tie from The Tie Bar, beige polka-dot socks, and an old-fashioned set of sock garters.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series… but start with the first season, of course.

The Quotable Roger Sterling

• The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.
• You know what my father used to say? Being with a client is like being in a marriage; sometimes, you get into it for the wrong reasons, and eventually they hit you in the face.
• What do we work so hard for? To have enough money to buy fabulous vacations for our families so we can live it up here.
• Remember, Don… when God closes a door, he opens a dress.

Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve (1941)

Vitals

Henry Fonda as Charles “Hopsie” Pike, brewery heir and ophidiologist

SS Southern Queen, sailing north from South America,
August 1940

Film: The Lady Eve
Release Date: February 25, 1941
Director: Preston Sturges
Costume Designer: Edith Head
Men’s Wardrobe: Richard Bachler

Background

To celebrate the birthday today of my wonderful, patient, and charming girlfriend, I’d like to highlight the elegant evening wear worn by Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve, a classic screwball comedy that I first discovered with her family.

The Lady Eve is a fun, comedic change of pace for Fonda, who had just received an Academy Award nomination the previous year for the sobering The Grapes of Wrath. As opposed to a Dust Bowl drama featuring death and despair, The Lady Eve‘s set was reportedly plenty of fun for all involved. Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, who would remain lifelong friends, rarely returned to their dressing rooms, instead opting to trade stories and script notes with Preston Sturges, who both wrote and directed the film.

Sturges, who would have celebrated his 120th birthday yesterday, had set out to write a fantastic screenplay with Stanwyck in mind for the leading role, and he did just that while in Reno waiting out a divorce from his third wife.

Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck take direction while filming the famous flirty scene in Jean’s cabin.

The film begins as ophidiologist Charles Pike returns from a year-long expedition studying reptiles (as ophidiologists do) along the Amazon. Nicknamed “Hopsie” in recognition of his family’s successful brewery (“The Ale That Won for Yale”), Pike hopes for a quiet voyage on the SS Southern Queen as he heads back to the States, but his dashing looks and reputable success have him turning the heads of every woman during dinner. Only Jean Harrington is wily enough to force the heir to reciprocate her attention… and understandably so!

A few months after Hopsie’s suspicions of Jean’s true motives ruin their chance at romance, she reappears in his life as the “Lady Eve Sidwich”, posing as a posh English socialite who pretends not to recognize her former near-paramour. The Pike family hosts a dinner party in honor of “The Lady Eve”, calling for Hopsie to don his finest formal regalia. The astounded heir first ruins his evening tailcoat and white tie kit, then his black double-breasted dinner jacket, forcing him to return to the dinner in the same off-white dinner jacket he wore during his first encounter with Jean on the Southern Queen.

“It’s the last one,” Hopsie bemoans. “If anything happens to this, I’ll have to wear a beach towel.”

…so, naturally, he finds himself directly under the falling coffee service and yet another dinner jacket bites the dust.

What’d He Wear?

More than a decade after the dinner suit, or tuxedo, was increasingly accepted as formal wear in the years following World War I, stylish gents began looking for alternatives to traditional black or midnight blue dinner jackets that would be comfortable yet fashionable in warmer climates. Enter the white dinner jacket.

It would be more accurate to describe the color of a “white” dinner jacket as off-white or ivory, providing a touch of contrast against the crisp white dress shirt beneath it. Single- and double-breasted styles were both popular during the emergence of the white dinner jacket in the 1930s, though the double-breasted style eliminated the need for its wearer to don an additional layer that would cover the waist. Thus, a double-breasted dinner jacket would have been very comfortable for Hopsie Pike’s equatorial evening at sea.

No matter how comfortable your dinner jacket may be, there’s no sartorial cure for awkwardness.

Likely constructed from a light, summer-weight wool, Hopsie’s dinner jacket has a wide self-faced shawl collar that rolls to a 4×1-button double-breasted front with mother-of-pearl sew-through buttons that match the three smaller buttons on each cuff. The relaxed formality in situations calling for white dinner jackets means the lapels are traditionally not faced in grosgrain or satin silk as found on dark dinner jacket lapels, nor are the buttons covered in silk. The ventless jacket has a welted breast pocket where Hopsie wears a white display kerchief and straight hip pockets.

Hopsie appropriately wears a black silk bow tie, and the pointed-end bow tie (also known as a “diamond tip”) nicely balances Henry Fonda’s narrower face.

Hopsie’s white formal dress shirt has a large point collar typical of the era’s fashion trends. A later scene that finds Hopsie changing into his other dinner jacket gives us a better look at the shirt, which appears to be a sheer cotton voile with the visible collar, bib, and double cuffs made from thicker marcella cotton.

The dress shirt has three small round black studs with metal trim on the front bib. The double (French) cuffs are fastened with a set of thin cylindrical links.

A year up the Amazon does nothing to prepare Hopsie Pike for a situation like this.

Suspenders (braces) with black tie kits are meant to be useful but not visible, yet the unorthodox position that Hopsie finds himself in during mid-embrace with Jean reveals his white suspenders to the audience. White leather double-hooks on the front and back connect to buttons along the inside of the trouser waistband.

The trousers themselves are the same black or midnight blue wool formal trousers that would be worn with a full dinner suit, with silk braiding down each side and plain-hemmed bottoms. In accordance with traditional black tie standards, Hopsie also wears a well-shined pair of black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes with black dress socks.

Production photo of Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda filming The Lady Eve.

As the black tie dress code was developed and standardized during the early 20th century, there was uncertainty about how a gentleman should wear his timepiece. Early practices with formal white tie stipulated that, if a man must wear a watch with his formal wear, that it be a discreetly placed pocket watch on a simple but elegant chain. However, World War I introduced both relaxed dress codes and popularity of the wristwatches that had been worn by servicemen, and men were increasingly keeping time on their wrist, whether dressed for business or dinner.

Hopsie wears a wristwatch with an elongated rectangular case on a brown leather strap. As these were the days before watchmakers like Omega invested millions to have their timepieces on James Bond’s wrist, little attention would have been paid to the exact watch model during production and it’s likely that this is Henry Fonda’s own wristwatch.

Henry Fonda as “Hopsie” Pike in The Lady Eve (1941)

How to Get the Look

Henry Fonda wears a classic example of the warm-weather white dinner jacket in The Lady Eve, perfectly styled and appropriately suitable for a summer evening at sea. The look would become iconic the following year as Humphrey Bogart dressed in an ivory dinner jacket to brood over his bourbon in Casablanca.

• Ivory wool double-breasted dinner jacket with 4-on-1 button front, shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Black wool formal trousers with black satin side stripe, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton voile formal dress shirt with long marcella point collar, marcella front bib with three black studs, marcella double/French cuffs
• Black silk pointed-end bowtie
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Rectangular wristwatch on brown leather strap
• White silk pocket kerchief

This weekend also presents your last opportunity to wear white before Labor Day… if you’re the sort of the Northern Hemisphere dweller who follows such practices.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie… and take care of your dinner jackets!

The Quote

You’re certainly a funny girl for anybody to meet who’s just been up the Amazon for a year.

Footnote

Interestingly, context clues on the checks written by her father indicate that Jean’s attempted seduction at sea seems to be set on August 28, 1940, exactly 78 years and two days ago!

James Stewart as Rupert Cadell in Rope (1948)

Vitals

James Stewart as Rupert Cadell, cerebral publisher and former prep school headmaster

New York City, Spring 1948

Film: Rope
Release Date: September 25, 1948
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Labor Day often signifies the changing of the seasons from the hot summer months into the cooler autumn, a time when the linen suits are shifted toward the back of the closet as flannels and tweeds return to the forefront. As we look ahead to the warmer clothes of the approaching season, I take inspiration from a real-life BAMF who had plenty of style both on and off the big screen, Jimmy Stewart.

Just over 70 years ago on August 26, 1948, Rope premiered in New York City, nearly a month before it was released to screens around the country. With a story by Hume Cronyn and a screenplay by Arthur Laurents, Alfred Hitchcock adapted his experimental thriller from Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play, itself inspired by the psychology of the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case that shocked the world in 1924.

John Dall and Farley Granger play the murderous young men who kill a former classmate they deemed inferior just to prove to themselves – and to the world – that they can commit “an immaculate murder”. In his first of four collaborations with Hitch, James Stewart stars as the fellas’ former prep school headmaster with whom they’d discussed Nietzsche’s “superman” concept and the “art” of murder.

What’d He Wear?

Produced during the shining decades in the early 20th century often referenced as “the golden age of menswear”, Rope showcases elegant tailoring on each of its three leads. Bold peak lapels are the order of the day, from the double-breasted jacket of John Dall’s navy serge suit to the sharp and wide lapels on the single-breasted jackets of Farley Granger and Jimmy Stewart’s three-piece suits.

Rupert’s gray tweed suit bridges the gap between the cool, calculating Brandon in navy serge and the anxious, earthier Phillip in his brown striped suit. While gray can have businesslike connotations, the tweed suiting brings Rupert’s ensemble “down to earth” and subconsciously presents his morality more in line with the less murderous Phillip.

Stewart’s Rupert Cadell arrives at a dinner party hosted by Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), unaware that the two lads have just murdered a former classmate and are daringly storing his corpse in an antique chest that the food is being served from.

Dressed in a gray herringbone tweed three-piece suit, Rupert’s party attire befits his professorial reputation and occupation. Gray is a good color for the former schoolmaster, reflective of his own moral “gray area” that led his former students to believe he would actually condone a murder committed by Nietzsche’s Übermensch.

Rupert’s fine tweed suit is one I consider to be overlooked, though I was pleased to see that the blog Clued Down did include it in a list of the top 5 suits in cinema.

The single-breasted, three-button jacket has wide and sharp peak lapels with a buttonhole through the left lapel. At 6’3″, James Stewart’s tall frame places him in the rare segment of the male population that not only can pull off a three-button jacket but also benefits from the visual balance offered by that third button.

The ventless suit jacket has straight shoulders, a welted breast pocket for his white linen pocket square, and straight jetted hip pockets. The sleeves end with four kissing buttons that curve away from the sleeve vent as they extend down toward the wrist.

Rupert’s slanted sleeve button formation can be seen as he slyly plants his gold cigarette case in Brandon and Phillip’s apartment.

The single-breasted, six-button waistcoat is correctly worn with the lowest button left undone over the notched bottom. It likely has four welt pockets, though the draped chest of his suit jacket covers much of the clothing beneath it.

Ideal tailoring during the 1940s meant that wearing a three-piece suit to a dinner party would keep the trouser waistband properly concealed under the waistcoat at all times. James Stewart’s suit is beautifully tailored so that the long rise of the trousers ends just above the lowest fastened button of his waistcoat, maintaining a harmonious flow.

Though the proper fit of the jacket and waistcoat means we can’t be sure if he is wearing suspenders (braces) or has side adjusters, we can see that the full-fitting trousers have double forward pleats and are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

The full fit of 1940s tailoring was beneficial for a lanky guy like Jimmy Stewart, who would likely look like a lopsided string bean in the “skinny fit” suits of the 2010s.

Rupert wears a white cotton dress shirt with a front placket and double (French) cuffs that are fastened with a set of flat gold rectangular links. The large point collar is elegantly accented with a classic gold bar that keeps his appearance neat throughout the evening.

Rupert works his charm on Mrs. Atwater (Constance Collier).

Rupert wears a navy tie made of finely textured silk, knotted in a neat four-in-hand that pops forward due to the shirt’s collar bar.

Rupert makes an unfortunate discovery.

Gray tweed works equally well with brown or black footwear, but attending a dinner party in an urban metropolis like New York City makes the latter a little more appropriate. Rupert thus wears black leather cap-toe oxford shoes with black socks, which are mostly covered by the full break of his trousers.

Brandon and Phillip aren’t the type to demand their guests remove their shoes in the house, though they might have reconsidered this rule if they knew that Rupert would be stepping over the couch. However, most hosts would likely protest a guest firing a gun out their window before concerning themselves with whether or not said guest was wearing his shoes on their couch while doing so.

Rupert’s subtle dress watch has a round yellow gold case and a light-colored dial and is worn on a russet brown leather strap with stitched edges.

Rupert’s watch flashes from his wrist as he and Phillip struggle for control of Brandon’s discarded .38.

Like any respectable gent in the city during the ’40s, Rupert wears a hat. In this case, it’s a gray fedora with a black grosgrain band.

Brandon and Phillip’s kind housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson), helps Rupert with his hat.

The Gun

Brandon Shaw (John Dall) keeps a loaded Colt Detective Special in his pocket throughout the dinner party, perhaps as an extension of his thrill-seeking behavior.

“That’s a gun, isn’t it?” Rupert asks, and Brandon sheepishly admits to arming himself to prepare for his trips up to Connecticut where burglars are evidently running rampant. In a gesture of good faith, Brandon leaves the revolver on the piano, but his more emotional partner Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) impulsively grabs it. After a brief struggle, a slightly wounded Rupert gets control of the weapon and fires three shots out the window to attract police.

Rupert Cadell has his own way of calling 9-1-1, and it doesn’t even need a phone.

The idea of carrying an all-steel .38 that weighs considerably more in your pocket may seem preposterous in the era of lightweight polymer subcompact handguns, but Colt had introduced its innovative Detective Special for just that purpose in 1927. Though pocket pistols had existed since the dawn of the revolver nearly a century earlier, the Colt Detective Special combined the power of the .38 Special round with the concealability of a 2″ “snub nose” barrel to deliver the first true mass-produced “belly gun” favored by cops and criminals alike.

What to Imbibe

This is an occasion. It calls for champagne.

Despite their haughty sense of superiority, Brandon and Phillip somehow make the mistake of outfitting their guests with the incorrect glasses, providing neither coupes nor flutes but stemmed cocktail glasses for their champagne. This wasn’t an uncommon practice a few decades earlier during the Prohibition in the United States, but it most likely would have been out of vogue by the late 1940s when the pair of murderers hosted their dinner party.

Rupert makes no bones about having to drink his champagne out of an inconvenient glass.

Interestingly, many modern mixologists are turning their nose up at the traditional cocktail glass for martinis and artisanal cocktails, instead preferring the more bowl-shaped coupe that had been specifically developed for sparkling wine in the late 1600s. (Contrary to rumor, the coupe was not designed in honor of Marie Antoinette’s bosom.)

James Stewart as Rupert Cadell in Rope (1948)

How to Get the Look

James Stewart looks every bit the professorial “Hitchcock hero” in his gray tweed three-piece suit, elegantly tailored for the times.

• Gray herringbone tweed wool tailored suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with wide/sharp peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, slanted 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single-breasted 6-button waistcoat with narrow notched bottom and four welted pockets
  • Double forward-pleated trousers with side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton dress shirt with pinned point collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold collar bar
  • Flat gold rectangular cuff links
• Navy textured silk tie
• Black calf leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Gold round-cased wristwatch with light-colored dial on russet brown leather strap
• Gray felt fedora with black grosgrain band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

In the spirit of this and the previous post about Henry Fonda’s white dinner jacket in The Lady Eve, fans of classic Hollywood should check out Hank & Jim, Scott Eyman’s fantastic and insightful book released last October about the five-decade friendship of Fonda and Jimmy Stewart.

The Quote

After all, murder is – or should be – an art. Not one of the “seven lively”, perhaps, but an art nevertheless. And, as such, the privilege of committing it should be reserved for those few who are really superior individuals.

Footnotes

Astrological enthusiasts might appreciate the loquacious Mrs. Atwater’s accuracy when exploring the sun signs of movie actors, declaring the “sinister” James Mason to be a Taurus (born May 15, 1909), Cary Grant to be a Capricorn (born January 18, 1904), and Ingrid Bergman to be a Virgo (born August 29, 1915).

When Phillip Morgan replies that his birthday is July 14, she astutely concludes: “Cancer, the crab… moon child”. While actor Farley Granger, who portrayed Phillip, was also a Cancer, his birthday was July 1. (James Stewart, born May 20, 1908, is a Taurus like Mr. Mason, and John Dall’s May 26, 1920, birthday thus makes him a Gemini.) Evidently, Hitch was quite enamored with the concept of astrology at the time, as his subsequent film – coincidentally starring Ingrid Bergman – was titled Under Capricorn.

Yours truly is also a Cancer, born on July 21. From what I understand about the traits of my shared sign with Mr. Granger, it is an apt sign for me.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.13: “The Milk and Honey Route”)

Vitals

Jon Hamm as Don Draper, former ad man in search of himself

Oklahoma to California, Fall 1970

Series: Mad Men
Episodes:
– “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13), dir. Matthew Weiner, aired 5/10/2015
– “Person to Person” (Episode 7.14), dir. Matthew Weiner, aired 5/17/2015
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

To honor the anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, published today in 1957, I’m taking a look at “The Milk and Honey Route,” the penultimate episode of Mad Men in which Don Draper’s journey to find himself drives him through the heart-land of darkness.

I’ve always romanticized the idea of the Great American Road Trip, a nostalgic journey through the land of “googie” architecture, of lonely motels and diners now mostly dormant along the old U.S. Route 66. As a result, I’ve always been drawn to “road movies” like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Carol, and Rain Man that find its characters forced to forego the more “efficient” travel method of flying, instead traveling by car through the core of America’s heartland. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Don Draper’s seven-season narrative on Mad Men seemed to be wrapping up with his motor trip through the titular “milk and honey route” of the series’ penultimate episode.

The Milk and Honey Route, a 1930s “handbook for hobos”, lent its name to the penultimate episode of Mad Men.

Don’s journey across the continent in these final episodes markedly contrasts to the slick “jet set” vibes of his previous trips out to his beloved California that are well chronicled in the show’s earlier seasons and even in the premiere of the first part of the seventh season. Don’s coast-to-coast air trips have always provided him the luxury of skipping the opportunity of finding himself in favor of processed air travel. Now, behind the wheel of his five-year-old Cadillac, it’s just him and the chance to find out more about himself and his country.

When Don’s Cadillac encounters some car trouble, the former ad man gets a look behind the curtain of this oft-romanticized nostalgia of small-town America, a place that advertises itself as warm and welcoming… until it isn’t.

Take Del (Chris Ellis) and Sharon Hill (Meagen Fay), the proprietors of the Sharon Motel in rural Oklahoma. Don is dropped off at the motel where Del and Sharon are quick to accept him as one of their own, appreciating his handiness, inviting him for roast dinners, and even including him in one of Del’s American Legion get-togethers. It’s this latter inclusion that gives Don the greatest anxiety; after all, Dick Whitman has spent the better part of two decades forever anticipating the moment he’s been called to account for his desertion in Korea that began with the death of his commanding officer. However, Don is able to find some semblance of kinship with these strangers who understand the tolls of war, not just on humanity but on the individual.

Unfortunately, a few shared bars of “Over There” aren’t enough to build unwavering trust. We see how quickly the town is to turn on Don, whose demographic defines him as presumably of their own kind, and we can only imagine how they would treat an outsider.

The theft of funds from the Legion hall turns all eyes against the shifty outsider with his fancy car and bulging money clip. As a bourbon-soaked Don sleeps off his hangover, Sharon meekly unlocks the door to his motel room and Don awakes to find himself surrounded by Del and his drunken comrades-in-arms, who are quick to accuse and even quicker to take the keys to Don’s “probably stolen” car as collateral until the money is returned. That particular accusation must strike a particular chord with Don, whose entire life – and the cars, clothes, and cash that it afforded – have all been stolen by his appropriation of Lieutenant Donald Draper’s identity in 1950.

In a way, Don’s accusers weren’t wrong to target him, as it was Andy (Carter Jenkins), the motel’s young “maid” and fledgling hustler in whom Don sees the worst of his young self, that was responsible for the theft. “I’m not paying for the room,” Don declares to the scowling Del as he hands over the money and leaves with Andy in tow. A few miles outside of town, Don pulls over at a bus stop. He hesitates a second, then tosses the keys to his Cadillac in Andy’s lap. “Pink slip’s in the glove box,” Don tells him. “Don’t waste this.”

And thus… Don persists. “The final shot shows Don alone on the roadside with nothing but cash and a bag of clothes,” wrote John Teti for The AV Club. “He smiles with relief. His disappearing act is nearly complete. All that remains to vanish is himself. Then they’ll never catch up to him.”

What’d He Wear?

(Note: This analysis does not include the denim workwear that Don also wears frequently in the finale episode, “Person to Person”, as that particular aesthetic will receive its own BAMF Style post.)

The Shirts

The Mint Green Polo Shirt

“The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13) begins with Don Draper calling his daughter Sally from a motel room in Kansas, describing his “milk and honey route” road trip to her. It’s late September 1970, and it’s been a few weeks since he abandoned his enviable position at the advertising super-agency of McCann-Erickson in New York.

Though he’s dressed down, Don’s casual aesthetic initially looks similar to his weekend attire during his days in advertising. He kicks back in the motel room with a mint green double-knit polyester polo shirt with short sleeves and a breast pocket for Don to keep his Old Gold cigarettes (lest we forget, he stopped smoking Lucky Strikes after they dropped his agency!) There is white piping on the shirt’s large collar and on each side of the four-button placket that extends down to mid-chest.

It may be a humanistic spiritual retreat, but Don’s still gotta be Don.

The same shirt makes another appearance a week later when Don wears it with his blue bomber jacket and khaki trousers as he returns to the Sharon Motel. His Cadillac fixed, Don allows the motel owner Del to talk him into joining Del’s fellow Legionnaires for an evening of drinking and stories. A desperate Del also offers Don two free nights at the motel if he fixes the Coke machine. How interesting… just as Don had appealed to McCann-Erickson for his ability to service the Coca-Cola account, even here he can’t evade people wanting him to service Coke.

Keep noodling on how to solve that Coca-Cola problem, Don. I’m sure something will come to you…

The mint green polo shirt makes a final appearance during the first day of activities at the Big Sur retreat in “Person to Person” (Episode 7.14), when he wears it with a pair of light tan chinos, brown leather loafers, and black socks.

A white-stitched umbrella logo on the top of the breast pocket indicated to me that this was likely a vintage piece, so I did some digging and found a nearly identical shirt in black at the online vintage retailer Rusty Zipper that identified it as a polyester shirt offered by the Arnold Palmer brand in the 1970s.

The white-stitched golf umbrella is faintly visible against the mint green shirting on the breast pocket, but it’s clearly the mark that has been used by Arnold Palmer’s branded apparel since the 1960s.

“What about an umbrella?” Arnie had reportedly asked his corporate team when establishing the brand in 1961. Read more about the history of the Arnold Palmer brand here.

Blue-and-Cream Plaid Shirt

The day after his phone call with Sally, Don is driving through rural Oklahoma when his Cadillac runs into some mechanical trouble. He gets a ride from the tow service – based out of Alva, Oklahoma – to the local Sharon Motel, where he meets the proprietors Del Hill (Chris Ellis) and his wife Sharon Hill (Meagen Fay), for whom Del’s hotel is named. Don’s only luggage is a rumpled bag from Sears, indicating that all of the duds we’re seeing on screen are likely from that venerated American department store.

The summery plaid shirt Don is wearing is almost assuredly from his new Sears collection, a non-threatening short-sleeved cotton shirt with a large button-down collar, front placket with mother-of-pearl buttons, and breast pocket for his cigarettes. It’s slightly oversized for Don’s fit physique, showing us that the ad man’s “made-to-measure” days are behind him and looking more like something from your dad’s closet.

Poor Don just wanted to watch some Redd Foxx and ends up invited to a Legion fundraiser where he is forced to face his daunting past.

The shirt pattern consists of blue double stripes criss-crossing against a cream ground, with both sets of stripes bisected by a slim tan stripe. The shirt has a long curved hem, as it is meant to be worn tucked in. When Don first arrives at the motel, he does indeed have it tucked in to his dark brown trousers.

This shirt makes another appearance a few nights later when the TV in Don’s motel room goes out (and in the middle of a Redd Foxx joke, no less!), sending him to the motel’s lobby to inform Sharon as The Platters’ sleepy “Harbor Lights” plays. After Don fixes her old Royal typewriter and volunteers that he was in “the service”, she pays off the favor by inviting Don on her husband’s behalf to an upcoming military reunion: “everybody who’s a vet and likes drinking will be at the Legion on Saturday night”.

Green-and-Orange Plaid Shirt

Don’s other plaid shirt worn during his stay at the Sharon Motel in “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13) is a more complex plaid pattern in autumnal shades of orange and hunter green mixed with black and translucent white. It buttons up the plain front (no placket) with six mother-of-pearl buttons and a small loop that extends from the left side of the collar for a seventh button at the top.

Don makes a difficult phone call in “Person to Person” (Episode 7.14).

The short-sleeved shirt is styled more like a classic sport shirt with its camp collar and trim fit with a short hem meant to be worn untucked. Of course, Don still needs a place for his smokes, so the shirt has a pocket over the left breast.

The shirt makes its first appearance as Don reads Mario Puzo’s The Godfather in his room at the Sharon Motel in rural Oklahoma, kicking back in khakis and no socks. Finding out that the car part his wounded Cadillac needs has to come from Tulsa, he tells the motel “maid”, Andy, that: “I’m gonna need another book.”

Evidently, Don took Sonny Corleone’s death a little too hard. It’s no wonder he gives up his car at the end of the episode.

Don wears the shirt again when he leaves the motel about a week later, having been blamed for Andy’s theft of the funds raised during the Legion dinner. In addition to a serious grimace, he wears his blue bomber jacket and brown slacks as he tosses the money back to Del.

“You think this town is bad now? Wait until you can never come back!” Don lectures the young hustler Andy, in whom he likely sees too much of his young, disillusioned self.

Don’s autumnal-plaid sport shirt shows up again in “Person to Person” (Episode 7.14) when he calls Sally from Utah, having just witnessed Gary Gabelich’s Blue Flame breaking the land speed record at Bonneville Speedway on October 23, 1970. Sally, in turn, breaks the news about Betty’s lung cancer diagnosis. Don reacts as one would expect him to, but Sally is the true hero of this tough call. “I’m not being dramatic. Now, please, take me seriously,” she urges as she offers thoughtful suggestions on what he should do.

This shirt makes its final appearance for a sunset walk at Big Sur, when Don wears it with a pair of jeans.

This doesn’t show us much more of the shirt, but I just think it’s a pretty shot. Kudos to cinematographer Chris Manley.

Everything Else

Blue Bomber Jacket

Don’s outerwear for this leg of his journey is primarily a blue nylon jacket, which a helpful Instagram commenter (@relicvintage) identified as a product by Derby of San Francisco, an iconic brand that had been producing this jacket since the early 1960s. Vintage examples can be found online (see here), but the style was revived in 2012 by Iraq War veteran Victor Suarez. “It was the workingman’s jacket,” Suarez told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Once you wear a Derby, your whole attitude changes.”

The style appears to be inspired by the classic MA-1 bomber jacket with its zip front and dark knit collar, cuffs, and hem. The jacket has a yoke that extends across the chest and shoulders, and there are two slash-style hand pockets. There is also a button at the top of the jacket and two on the waistband.

Dressed to hit the road in light, comfortable layers.

The zipper begins a few inches above the waistband. Unlike a classic bomber jacket, the elasticized hem only extends around the back rather than the full waist.

Don wears this Derby jacket with all three of his “road” shirts while at the motel and with both pairs of trousers. Per Tom and Lorenzo in their fantastic blog exploring the style of Mad Men, Don’s jacket “is pretty much an exact match to the blue Betty’s wearing in the previous scene, where she gets news that is going to affect Don’s life on a profound level,” signifying a subconscious familial tie.

Gray Suit Jacket

The only other coat that Don wears during this leg of his road trip is the gray self-striped jacket from the business suit he was wearing when he left New York in “Lost Horizon” (Episode 7.12). This suit was arguably the trendiest of those worn by Don during the seventh season with its wide notch lapels and long single vent on the single-breasted, two-button jacket. The jacket also has a welted breast pocket, though Don foregoes a pocket square, and wide flapped hip pockets with swelled edges like the lapels.

From the expression to the suit jacket and cuff links, we see a bit of the old Don as he enters the American Legion dinner. But his “armor” is incomplete with the conspicuously missing tie and mismatched trousers, and his vulnerability brings out a side of Don that gets little public exposure.

You can read more about this whole suit in my post from July 2018. The suit jacket makes its appearance when Don attends the American Legion fundraiser in “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13) orphaned with a pair of khaki chinos rather than the suit’s matching trousers. Once again, I refer you to the excellent prose of Tom and Lorenzo as they explore the subtext of Don’s clothing – and how he wears it – in this scene:

Note that Don puts on a little bit of his old Don Draper armor – that suit jacket and white shirt – to enter a situation that felt slightly threatening. Note also that this is the suit Don was wearing when he walked out of McCann and out of his old life. More importantly, he walked out of a meeting in which a slick marketing research guy was describing a mythical middle-American male full of likable attributes and benign good will. Nothing like the violent, ignorant, xenophobic men Don encountered in the real middle-America; the one not mythologized by Madison Avenue. There’s a reason the radio was playing “Okie from Muskogee” in Don’s dream. It’s because the lyrics were all about that tension between coastal and middle America; a tension which grew during the cultural revolution and which has informed all of American politics in the half-century since. Don looks like exactly what he is here: a city slicker slumming with the locals. And despite their faux and forced good will toward him in this scene, it became obvious that the locals saw him in exactly that way.

Don wears one of his classic dress shirts, though he wears it without a tie and the contrast of the shirt with the white undershirt visible under his open neck reveals it to be more of an eggshell color. The shirt has a semi-spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and double (French) cuffs that are fastened with a set of steel rectangular links with black onyx rectangular settings.

There isn’t enough bourbon in the world to make this dinner fun for the erstwhile Private Whitman.

In a nod to continuity, these appear to be the same cuff links that he was wearing with the suit and shirt when he left New York.

Brown and Khaki Trousers

All of Don Draper’s trousers, aside from his jeans, in the last two episodes are varying shades of brown, indicative of his abandonment of the grays and navy blues of the business world as he embraces the earthiness of his new adventure. In total, he appears to cycle through three pairs of trousers during his drive from Oklahoma to California, all flat-fronted straight-leg trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

Don’s “driving” trousers in “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13) are a pair of dark tobacco brown slacks, worn with a black belt that closes with a gold single-prong buckle. He wears these for his arrival at and his departure from the Sharon Motel.

Sockless Don Draper.

When Don is temporarily grounded due to car trouble in Oklahoma, he lounges about in his room and attends the local American Legion in a pair of warm khaki slacks, also worn with a black belt.

Don spends an idle week at the Sharon Motel.
Inset photo: Jon Hamm on set.

By the time Don ventures further west into Utah and, eventually, the Big Sur retreat in California, he wears a pair of lighter tan trousers in a lightweight chino cloth. These trousers appear to be styled slightly different from the others with no belt loops and buttons on the back pockets.

Don Draper at Big Sur.
See the second photo… do you think that’s Jon Hamm’s iPhone in the back right pocket of Don’s trousers?

A Penney’s bag in his Utah motel room indicates that these newly seen trousers may have been a purchase from Penney’s, as the brand was known until it was re-branded as J.C. Penney in 1971.

Footwear

When you’re living out of a shopping bag, you hardly need the extra weight of additional shoes. That said, you’ll be making the most of one pair of shoes, and they should be both durable and versatile. Don thus engages on his cross-country adventure with just a pair of walnut brown leather moc-toe penny loafers.

If you’re only going to be wearing one pair of shoes, comfort is key.

Don’s brown penny loafers prove their versatility as he is able to wear them dressed up with a suit jacket and dressed down when stepping out to the motel swimming pool… and nicely suited for all casual occasions in between. He foregoes socks when he heads out to the pool, but he otherwise wears exclusively black dress socks with the distinctive gold acetate threading on the toes that modern shoppers would recognize as the Gold Toe brand.

Currently the third largest producer of American socks, Gold Toe will be celebrating its 99th anniversary this Saturday. The brand started life on September 8, 1919, at Great American Knitting Mills in Berks County, Pennsylvania. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, as men were wearing holes in their socks and unable to afford to buy more, the company reinforced the toes with high-quality Irish linen and added gold threading to make them easily distinguished for department store shoppers looking to purchase this durable hosiery. After enjoying massive success in its segment for the better part of a century, Great American officially changed its name to Gold Toe Brands, Inc., in 2002.

Underwear

During the warm evenings from motel room to motel room, Don often strips down to his underwear for solitary nights with a bottle of booze and late-night TV. As seen through the entire show’s run, this never deviates from his white cotton crew-neck T-shirts and white cotton boxer shorts with elasticized waistbands.

Bourbon, pretzels, and late night TV. Don Draper continues living the dream.

Swimwear

Possibly encouraged by Andy’s report that the motel pool is now “piss”-free, Don struts out to the swimming hole in a pair of short-inseam navy swim trunks with red-and-white piping on the bottom hems and on the top and bottom of the front waistband, which closes with a single white button.

With his patriotic red, white, and blue swimwear and his multi-colored plaid sport shirt, Don brings the total number of colors in his outfit to a staggering six.

Don wears these swim trunks with his autumnal-plaid short-sleeve sport shirt, brown penny loafers, and – of course – his sunglasses.

Don’s Accessories

Aviator Sunglasses

Don Draper wore several pairs of sunglasses over the run of Mad Men, but his signature pair is arguably the American Optical Flight Goggle 58. Developed for American military pilots in 1958, per its nomenclature, the AO FG-58 offers its wearers a squared “navigator” frame as opposed to the rounder frame of the traditional aviator-style eyewear.

“Don’t waste this,” Don advises Andy, when providing him the chance to start his life anew behind the wheel of a shiny ’65 Cadillac.

You can read more about these sunglasses in Preston Fassel’s incredibly researched article for 20/20 Magazine in March 2016, where the author busts open the oft-reported falsehood that Don wears Randolph Engineering sunglasses.

Omega Wristwatch

Don may hand over the keys to his Cadillac Coupe de Ville, but he doesn’t show any desire to rid himself of his Omega Seamaster DeVille, a classic timepiece evoking timeless, understated luxury with its slim steel 34mm case, black cross-hair dial with 3:00 date window, and textured black leather strap.

Having left behind his job, his possessions, his wardrobe, and his car, Don retains only his Omega as a tangible link to his recent past.

A Christie’s auction from December 2015 sold four watches that had appeared on the show, including Don’s Omega which sold for $11,875.

According to the auction listing, “the watches were leased to the show by vintage watch specialist Derek Dier, who has supplied watches to the movie industry, noted musicians, actors, writers, artists, international dignitaries and Fortune 500 CEOs. Mad Men Property Master Ellen Freund worked with Dier to select the watches.” The Christie’s page further describes the watch as: “Signed Omega, Automatic, Seamaster, De Ville, Ref. 166.020, Movement No. 23’943’081, Circa 1960.”

What to Imbibe

Now far from the luxurious cocktail bars of New York City, we see what Don drinks when he’s got nothing to prove. Rather than taking slugs from an office bottle of Canadian Club while prepping for a pitch or smoothly ordering another Old Fashioned while a beautiful beehive-haired woman stares from across the bar, Don chooses the humble Coors Banquet beer as his brew of choice when holed up in a Kansas motel room and excitedly sharing details of his “milk and honey route” road trip in Sally.

Now that he’s west of the Mississippi, Don is legally able to enjoy some Coors Banquet beer without needing to enlist the help of a mustached daredevil.

Later in Utah, after another phone call with Sally, Don preps himself for a difficult conversation with Betty by drinking Stag beer, now a Pabst brand that currently advertises itself as “first brewed before your granddad was born.” Originally brewed in Belleville, Illinois, in 1851, this budget beer enjoys a popularity among hard drinkers for its low sugar content and among hipsters for its vintage aesthetic.

In “The Milk and Honey Route”, Don fuels his week of boredom in the Oklahoma motel room with lower-priced bourbon. Looking for something – anything – to do, Don pays Andy to “rustle up a bottle” of something to drink. Andy returns to Don with a bottle of Old Granddad, charging another $10 to hand it over. Don begrudgingly pays and offers the boy a drink, but Andy refuses: “I’m 1/8 Comanche, don’t touch it.”

At the local American Legion reunion and fundraiser, Don gets hammered on Old Crow while his new “pals” drink Lone Star beer.

Old-fashioned booze for old-timers.

What to Drive

It’s not #CarWeek, but Don’s Caddy gets so many glamour shots in its penultimate episode, that I feel behooved to give it a little more love than just a few sporadic mentions scattered throughout this post. (This same content, with different photos, appeared in an earlier post about Don’s final suit.)

Don Draper drives across country in the 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville that he has been driving since the fifth season premiere. This silver ’65 Coupe de Ville replaced Don’s earlier Caddy that he purchased in the show’s second season when a salesman convinced him that it was the car he needed for proving his success to the world.

Don’s Cadillac comes to an unwelcome stop in “The Milk and Honey Route” (Episode 7.13).

1965 was the first model year of the redesigned third generation Cadillac Coupe de Ville, though it continued the 129.5-inch wheelbase of its predecessor and the 429 cubic-inch V8, though the engine would be increased in size to a 472 cubic-inch V8 for the 1968 model year. The Coupe de Ville would undergo another redesign for 1971.

1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville

Body Style: 2-door convertible

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 429 cid (7.0 L) Cadillac V8 with Carter 4-barrel carburetor

Power: 340 hp (253.5 kW; 343 PS) @ 4600 rpm

Torque: 480 lb·ft (651 N·m) @ 3000 rpm

Transmission: 3-speed automatic

Wheelbase: 129.5 inches (3289 mm)

Length: 224.0 inches (5690 mm)

Width: 79.9 inches (2029 mm)

Height: 55.6 inches (1412 mm)

In August 2015, less than three months after the show’s finale aired, the actual ’65 Cadillac Coupe de Ville driven by Don in the show was auctioned by Screenbid, yielding $48,980. As Bob Sorokanich noted for Road & Track, the “sale price includes $39,500 for the car, plus a 24 percent commission to Screenbid, the auction host. That’s pretty strong money for a ’65 Coupe de Ville, which Hagertys tends to value around $13,000.”

“De Ville” was evidently the theme of Don’s luxurious life from the fifth season onward, as that season premiere introduced both his new Cadillac Coupe de Ville and the Omega Seamaster DeVille that he would have through the end of the series.

How to Get the Look

Don Draper’s road closet puts function before fashion, comfortable enough to wear for long periods of sitting behind the wheel of a car or against the headboard of a motel bed while also respectable enough to gain the [initial] trust of the folks he meets along the way. By wearing clothes that all follow the same general color scheme, Don is more able to mix and match for a relatively wide variety of outfits from his limited selection.

Jon Hamm on the set of Mad Men‘s penultimate episode, “The Milk and Honey Route”.

Shirts:

• Mint green double-knit polyester short-sleeve polo shirt with white-piped collar, four-button placket, and breast pocket
• Blue-on-cream plaid cotton short-sleeve shirt with large button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and curved hem
• Green, orange, black, and white plaid short-sleeve sport shirt with camp collar, plain front, breast pocket, and straight hem

Outerwear:

• Blue nylon bomber-style zip-front Derby of San Francisco jacket with dark blue knit collar, cuffs, and waistband

Bottoms:

• Dark brown flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Khaki flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Light tan chino-cloth flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Navy short-inseam swim trunks with red-and-white piping

Footwear:

• Walnut brown leather moc-toe penny loafers
• Black dress socks with gold toes

Underwear:

• White cotton crew-neck T-shirt
• White cotton boxer shorts

Accessories:

• Black leather belt with gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator
• American Optical Flight Goggle 58 gold-framed aviator sunglasses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series… or just the final season, if you still haven’t caught up or need to complete your collection.

The Quote

You weren’t raised with Jesus. You don’t know what happens to people when they believe in things.

Footnote

Tidbits on the title from John Teti’s review for The AV Club:

The episode’s title comes from a bit of early 20th-century hobo lingo: A “milk and honey route” was a train route that offered plenty of food for a scavenging wanderer of the American countryside. In a 1930 book that was also named for the term… author Nels Anderson writes, “Any railroad running through a valley of plenty may be called a milk and honey line. But this is a transient term; what may be a milk and honey route to one hobo may not be so to another.” Indeed, the route rejected by Don ends up bestowing a rich bounty on Pete.

Both Don and Pete mention Kansas, although Don leaves just before Pete is about to start a new life there. He always ends up following Don one way or another.

Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious (1946)

Vitals

Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin, American government agent

Rio de Janeiro, Spring 1946

Film: Notorious
Release Date: September 6, 1946
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Background

With a tight screenplay from Ben Hecht, a dream cast including Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains, and a finely developed cinematic maturity as the by-product of a quarter-century of directing, Notorious is considered a career high in the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock.

Released across the country 72 years ago last week, Notorious includes the director’s traditional elements of suspense, romance, and comedy in a contemporary espionage tale of a Nazi spy’s daughter (Bergman) recruited by a dashing agent (Grant) to infiltrate her father’s organization by seducing the urbane Alexander Sebastian (Rains). Hitchcock’s research for the film’s MacGuffin of uranium had him placed on an FBI watch list for a time, but it was a kiss rather than radioactive materials that brought Hitch closer to actual trouble with the U.S. government.

The Motion Picture Production Code was introduced in 1930, but it wasn’t until 1934 when code administrator Joseph Breen began strictly enforcing the rigid code that censored profanity, sexuality, drug use, and other “immoral” content (including “ridicule of the clergy”) from American films for nearly 35 years to follow. Filmmakers wishing to obtain the necessary seal of approval would need to adhere to the code’s restrictions or face making a film that could never be released. (Some directors fought back, as Howard Hughes did with The Outlaw, though it took five years of fighting Breen for Hughes to get a wide release.)

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman share a code-defying three-minute kiss in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946).

“Excessive or lustful kissing” was one of many items prohibited by the Hays Code, preventing even the most passionate of on-screen couples from locking lips for more than three seconds. Aware of this restriction and more than willing to circumvent it, Hitchcock designed a sequence that would have Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman kissing for a full two-and-a-half minutes, though the two would break apart every three seconds as they walked and nuzzled together through the scene.

The director was reportedly inspired when he was traveling by train through France and spotted through the window a young woman who was helping her male companion balance against a wall while he was peeing. “And that was what gave me the idea,” he later explained. “She couldn’t let go. Romance must not be interrupted, even by urinating.”

Grant and Bergman, who began a lifelong friendship while filming Notorious, displayed enough chemistry on-screen to conceal the awkwardness they felt while filming the scene. “Don’t worry, it’ll look right on the screen,” he told the actress.

And how right he was. Along with this film’s impressive tracking shot that begins on a second floor balcony and ends with a key clasped in Bergman’s hand, the two-and-a-half minute kissing scene is regarded as one of Hitchcock’s superlative sequences from his career.

What’d He Wear?

When not in his sharply tailored suits or evening wear, Cary Grant’s T.R. Devlin dresses down for an afternoon in Rio with a single-breasted sport jacket in classic gun club check. This criss-crossing four-color pattern was adapted by the American Gun Club in 1874 from the original Scottish “Coigach” estate check.

While the color of Devlin’s sport jacket can’t be confirmed, contemporary lobby cards and promotional art show it to be generally olive green. The notch lapels of the jacket roll to the top of three woven leather shank buttons, and Grant typically wears the top two fastened. There are also four smaller woven leather buttons on the end of each sleeve.

The jacket cut is contemporary to the mid-1940s with a fashionably full cut, wide shoulders, and draped chest. There is a single back vent. The hip pockets are jetted but the set-in flapped pocket on the left breast adds a sporty detail that slightly dresses down the jacket while adding a unique identifying element.

A well-tailored sport jacket nicely bridges the gap between relaxed formality and buttoned-up business as needed.

By his mid-40s, Cary Grant was already enough of a confident style authority to know what he found to be both comfortable and flattering, a must-have combination for a man who spends many hours in front of the camera. His style experimentations resulted in the establishment of an otherwise uncommon fusion of an Ivy League-style button-down collar shirt with double (French) cuffs. These are almost impossible to find off-the-rack, though Brooks Brothers does offer a limited number of shirts – like this one – available in this combination.

“As a younger man, I tried wearing a flared, too-high collar that, although modish amongst those I regarded as the sophisticates of that day, looked ridiculous on my 17 1/2-inch neck,” Grant told GQ for his now-famous advice section in the publication’s winter 1967/1968 issue. “Luckily, after the embarrassment of viewing myself from almost every angle on screen, that mistake was soon rectified. Button-cuffed shirts are simplest to manage, but if you wear cuff links, as I do, don’t, I beg you, wear those huge examples of badly designed, cheap modern jewelry. They, too, are not only ostentatious, but heavy and a menace to the enamel on your car and your girl friend’s eye.”

Grant’s GQ advice doesn’t mention his preference for the soft button-down collar, but those who have tracked his style through his career notice its frequent presence in his films. With his suits and this sport jacket in Notorious, Grant wears a white cotton shirt with a luxuriously rolled button-down collar and double cuffs fastened with a set of engraved round links.

T.R. Devlin tops off a round of highballs during his afternoon date with Alicia Huberman.

With such a noticeable pattern, Grant wisely keeps his shirt and tie subdued. His dark tie has a mid-colored foulard pattern and is tied in a neat four-in-hand knot with a dimple.

Despite his English heritage and debonair continental style, Cary Grant made a career-long habit of embracing quintessentially American casual fashions from head to toe, whether it be the button-down shirt collar popularized by Brooks Brothers or the penny loafer introduced by G.H. Bass. Grant expressed his appreciation for the penny loafer in his GQ entry, where he stated that “the moccasin type of shoe is, to me, almost essential and especially convenient when traveling, since they can be easily slipped off in the airplane or car.”

Exactly a decade before Notorious was produced and released, G.H. Bass of Wilton, Maine, introduced the “Weejun” to the world. This slip-on shoe soon gained its “penny loafer” moniker for the prep school habit of slipping pennies in the diamond-shaped slot across the shoe’s top strap. At the time of its 1936 introduction, this shoe was mostly worn in extremely casual situations or at home, but it grew to more formal acceptance with sport jackets and blazers within the following decade.

By the time Notorious was produced in 1946, the penny loafer was perfectly acceptable footwear for an American gent to wear with a casual sport jacket and tie as T.R. Devlin does in Rio. Based on the shade of the leather seen on screen and Grant’s frequent on- and off-screen practice of wearing brown loafers with gray hosiery, we can assume that T.R. Devlin’s shoes in Notorious are brown leather Weejuns with light gray socks.

Behind-the-scenes photo of Hitchcock on set with co-stars Grant and Bergman.

When in the city, Devlin balances the patterned jacket with a pair of solid trousers in a mid-colored flannel. These pleated trousers have side-pockets and are finished on the bottoms with turn-ups (cuffs).

However, a day on horseback calls for attire better suited for the activity. Devlin’s sporty gun club check jacket is appropriate for a ride in the country, and his favored button-down style keeps his shirt collar from flapping up into his face during the constant equestrian movement, even with the top two buttons undone in the absence of neckwear.

Devlin’s equestrian gear includes tall brown leather boots that rise to just below his knee. His light gabardine riding breeches have seven lace eyelets visible down from the knee area to just above where the trouser legs tuck into the boots.

Making connections after post-ride libations.

Only a glimpse of Devlin’s wristwatch is available under his shirt cuffs, but he most likely wears the same Cartier Tank on a dark leather strap that Cary Grant wore in real life.

For a day of equestrian pursuits, Devlin ditches his tie and swaps out his disc-shaped cuff links for a set of pearl semi-sphere links.

Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious (1946)

How to Get the Look

Cary Grant often brought his own tasteful tailoring to his roles, and T.R. Devlin in Notorious is no exception. Devlin adds sophistication to a sporty dressed-down outfit with a uniquely detailed jacket, a button-down shirt worn with cuff links and a tie, and slip-on penny loafers.

• Light-toned gun club check wool single-breasted 3-button sport jacket with notch lapels, woven leather buttons, flapped set-in breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and single vent
• White cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
• Dark foulard pattern silk tie
• Mid-colored flannel pleated trousers with side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• Brown leather moc-toe penny loafers
• Gray socks
• Cartier Tank gold dress watch with square white dial on brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

James Garner as Philip Marlowe in Marlowe (1969)

Vitals

James Garner as Philip Marlowe, cynical private detective

Los Angeles, Spring 1969

Film: Marlowe
Release Date: October 22, 1969
Director: Paul Bogart
Costume Design: Florence Hackett & James Taylor

Background

Save for a single season of a loosely adapted ABC TV series, he character of Philip Marlowe had gone more than two decades without a cinematic portrayal at the time Marlowe was released in 1969. Directed by the appropriately named Paul Bogart (no relation), this adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1949 pulp novel The Little Sister updated the setting to contemporary Los Angeles.

James Garner took some criticism for his take on the famous private eye, but I think the likable actor’s vulnerable sincerity works for his interpretation of Chandler’s anti-hero. Marlowe is also credited for setting the stage for Garner to take on his signature role of Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files for six seasons on NBC.

James Garner and Rita Moreno in Marlowe (1969)

If any criticism should be seriously leveled toward Marlowe, it’s that the whole vibe seems passé with Marlowe more in vein with characters like Paul Newman’s Harper or Frank Sinatra’s Tony Rome who were stylish in mid-decade but already anachronistic by the end of the tumultuous decade. After all, 1969 was the same year that George Lazenby decided James Bond was already out of date after his one-off turn as 007. This isn’t to say there wouldn’t eventually be a place for venerated literary characters like Marlowe and Bond, but they would need to catch up with a rapidly changing world to find their place with modern audiences getting used to a world beyond the strict Hays Code.

In fact, 1969 may have been the last year that an ambivalent detective like James Garner’s Marlowe could find his way onto the big screen before the divisive politics of Nixon-era zeitgeist split America’s big-screen cop heroes into violent avengers like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and cheekier and more sensitive de-escalators like Garner’s own Jim Rockford.

Perhaps to reintroduce ’60s audiences to the character, the title Marlowe was used in place of The Little Sister, though Chandler’s original title is referenced in the title song performed by Orpheus, which transitions to the radio inside Marlowe’s ’63 Plymouth convertible as he drives up to The Infinite Pad, a flop house in the fictional coastal town of Bay City, California.

Garner does his own work to introduce the cool-as-a-cucumber Marlowe to audiences as he steps out of the Plymouth, drops his shades down below his eyes, and approaches this den of hippie iniquity.

In the middle of his search for one Orrin Quest, Marlowe shakes down the shifty junkie managing the place who groans: “Lousy private fuzz, you oughta be ashamed of yourself!” to which Marlowe cracks back: “Just too proud to show it.”

When someone later mistakes the manager “for an ice block,” as Marlowe puts it, the case gets rolling.

Average day in a detective’s life. I’ve been stabbed, snubbed, and generally snookered.

What’d He Wear?

Though it’s not technically autumn yet, mid-September brings us even closer to tweed season.

James Garner’s Philip Marlowe makes his on-screen introduction – and spends most of the film – wearing a gray tweed sport jacket in the classic American sack cut with its natural shoulders, boxy profile due to lack of darts, and ventless back.

Marlowe finds himself in temporary custody. Lt. Christy French (Carroll O’Connor) makes a point of asking Sgt. Fred Beifus (Kenneth Tobey) to cuff the private eye’s wrists behind his back.

The 3/2-roll single-breasted jacket has slim notch lapels with swelled edges that roll over the top button to the center of three sew-through buttons in the same dark gray mixed plastic as the two spaced buttons on each cuff. The patch breast pocket and flapped patch hip pockets are double-stitched along the edges.

The suiting is a small-scale light gray-and-black herringbone tweed that has an overall gray effect.

Marlowe gets stoned on some wicked weed, courtesy of the equally wicked Dr. Vincent Lagardie (Paul Stevens).

Marlowe doubles down on his Ivy League aesthetic, wearing a white cotton oxford shirt with a gently rolling button-down collar. The shirt has a front placket, breast pocket, and single-button rounded cuffs.

The first tie he wears with this outfit is a plain black slim tie, knotted in a small Windsor knot though it’s worn loosened at the collar throughout the sequence, both communicating Marlowe’s general nonchalance and signifying to the audience that he’s already in the middle of a case when we meet him.

Marlowe has no patience for shady motel shamus Oliver Hady (George Tyne).

Marlowe spends the latter portion of the film wearing a different white cotton shirt with a narrow semi-spread collar rather than the button-down collar. The rest of the details – the front placket, breast pocket, and single-button rounded cuffs – remain the same, and he wears the same black leather holster over both of his shirts.

“Underneath your pasties, there’s a size 40 heart,” Marlowe suggests to burlesque performer Dolores Gonzales (Rita Moreno) after she offers to help him bandage up his latest wound.

Despite the American influences of his attire, Marlowe’s skinny striped repp tie follows the traditional British “uphill” direction from the right hip to the left shoulder. With its wide stripes in maroon and dark navy blue, the tie follows the color combination of the Royal Fusiliers, the City of London regiment of the British Army that was in continuous existence for 283 years until it was deactivated in 1968, the year before Marlowe was released.

The look of the all-American cop in a gray tweed jacket, light shirt, red-and-navy striped tie, and dark trousers would be revisited two years later in Dirty Harry when Clint Eastwood’s renegade cop dons the same ensemble but with a brick red sweater vest as an added layer against the San Francisco chill.

Marlowe balances the textured jacket with a subdued pair of dark charcoal straight-leg trousers. These trousers have a medium-high rise with a fitted, belt-less waistband that appear to have darts rather than pleats or a traditional flat front. These trousers have frogmouth-style front pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms.

With this outfit and both of his screen-worn suits, Marlowe invariably wears a pair of black calf cap-toe oxfords with black socks.

The violent death of a gangster in the hills above Bay City isn’t enough to ruin Marlowe’s appetite for nuts… though it might help to look a little more concerned in front of the two cops investigating the case.

“He eschews fedora and trench coat for sunglasses,” writes a reviewer at Noirsville, referencing the subtle way that James Garner’s Marlowe updates an otherwise classic American look. While Bogie’s Marlowe had only worn tinted lenses as part of an effete disguise, sunglasses were de rigueur for any character to be deemed “cool” in 1969.

The first scene finds Garner stepping out of his Plymouth and dropping his shades to below his eyes… not removing them immediately, but instead visually communicating his disdain for his slummy surroundings. Marlowe’s black-framed sunglasses have a wraparound shape and long, curved lenses similar to the Ray-Ban Balorama, which had been developed only two years earlier and, two years later, would be the outdoor eyewear of choice for Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.

Marlowe sizes up The Infinite Pad.

Marlowe’s steel wristwatch follows the emerging mid-sixties fashion with its black dial and black leather strap.

The Guns

Unlike Jim Rockford, Garner’s Philip Marlowe has no reservations about arming himself for his considerably dangerous profession. In a black leather shoulder holster, he first carries a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver with a blued steel frame, rounded wooden grips, and a two-inch barrel. The Model 10 originated as the Smith & Wesson “Military & Police” model just before the dawn of the 20th century and remains the quintessential American police revolver with its six-round cylinder and .38 Special round.

Marlowe holds a .38 on Grant W. Hicks (Jackie Coogan) after spotting a .45 in his suitcase.

The decision to arm Garner’s Marlowe exclusively with revolvers is at odds with Chandler’s 1949 novel, where he carried a Luger, the iconic semi-automatic pistol of the German military.

After his Smith & Wesson is taken away by Sonny Steelgrave’s thugs, Marlowe takes up his secondary weapon, a Colt Python with a 2.5″ barrel dug out from his office desk drawer. While it resembles his previous revolver with its snub-nosed barrel, blued steel frame, and wooden grips, the Python was chambered for the more powerful .357 Magnum round.

Marlowe arrives at Sonny Steelgrave’s home, tapping on the glass door with the butt of his snub-nosed Colt Python.

After Mavis Weld (Gayle Hunnicutt) summons him to Steelgrave’s home, Marlowe takes her nickel Colt Model 1908 Vest Pocket with white pearl grips to stage a suicide. Developed soon after the turn of the century, this pocket pistol was chambered for the anemic .25 ACP round, though Marlowe mistakenly refers to it as a .32 several times throughout the film.

Marlowe sniffs the Colt .25 he took from Mavis Weld to determine that it had been recently fired.

Marlowe incorrectly referring to the Colt .25 as a .32 almost definitely comes from Chandler’s novel The Little Sister, where Steelgrave had gifted “a [little black] .32-caliber automatic with a white bone grip” to both Mavis Weld and Dolores Gonzales. This would imply the popular Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless pistol, though the only other detail provided in the book is a nine-round magazine, one more than the Colt Model 1903 could carry.

James Garner as Philip Marlowe in Marlowe (1969)

How to Get the Look

James Garner’s Philip Marlowe spends much of his time on screen in the classic American Ivy League-inspired ensemble of a tweed jacket with a white button-down collar shirt, slim tie, dark trousers, and black oxfords.

• Gray-and-black herringbone tweed single-breasted 3-button-2 sport jacket with slim notch lapels, patch breast pocket, flapped breast hip pockets, spaced 2-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton oxford shirt with button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and 1-button rounded cuffs
• Black skinny tie
• Charcoal flat front trousers with fitted waistband, frogmouth front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Black leather shoulder holster (RHD)
• Stainless steel round-cased wristwatch with black dial on black leather strap
• Black plastic-framed wraparound sunglasses

If you’re the type that opts for more color, seek out a Marlowe-approved maroon-and-navy striped tie.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Her boyfriend tried to buy me first, then bury me… I resent both overtures.

Matthew McConaughey as Rustin “Rust” Cohle on HBO’s True Detective.

Vitals

Matthew McConaughey as Rustin “Rust” Cohle, nihilistic bartender and ex-cop

Lafayette, Louisiana, April 2012

Series: True Detective
Season: 1
Air Dates: January 12, 2014 – March 9, 2014
Creator: Nic Pizzolatto
Costume Designer: Jenny Eagen

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Don’t be assholes. You wanna hear this or not?

Rust Cohle challenges his interrogators at the outset of “The Long Bright Dark”, the premiere episode of HBO’s True Detective, indicating to us as well as detectives Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) and Maynard Gilbrough (Michael Potts) that a wild ride is ahead. What followed were eight ambitious and rewarding episodes that delved into pessimistic philosophy and toxic masculinity, all bursting at the seams with shades of southern Gothic suspense, Lovecraftian supernatural horror, and the bleakest of comedy.

Matthew McConaughey is nearly unrecognizable for his first appearance as Rust Cohle, appearing 17 years after the detective was called to the scene of a bizarre ritual murder in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. While the 1995 Rust Cohle had no doubt lived a rough life from years of working undercover with biker gangs and getting popped with a .25, the rutted version of him presented in 2012 lives up to Marty Hart’s reaction: “Father Time has had his way with his all… looks like you must have pissed him off.”

The insult hardly stings Rust, though the reference to time must have intrigued him as he had spent much of his extended session with detectives Papania and Gilbrough pondering its very notion:

You ever heard of something called the M-brane theory, detectives? It’s like in this universe, we process time linearly forward, but outside of our spacetime – from what would be a fourth-dimensional perspective – time wouldn’t exist, and from that vantage, could we attain it? We’d see… our spacetime would look flattened, like a single sculpture with matter in a superposition of every place it ever occupied, our sentience just cycling through our lives like carts on a track. See, everything outside our dimension… that’s eternity, eternity looking down on us. Now, to us, it’s a sphere, but to them… it’s a circle.

It’s one of many bewildering yet brilliantly delivered monologues from McConaughey during these 2012 sequences, which begin in the first episode as Rustin Cohle defiantly flips his Zippo to light one of his Camels, prompting Papania to slide him a BIG HUG MUG that would become almost as iconic as Rust’s six pack of Lone Star tall boys and drooping mustache. “Start askin’ the right fuckin questions,” Rust demands after a series of superficial inquiries, sitting back to await their next as The Black Angels’ “Young Men Dead” closes out the first episode.

Soon, the “right” questions start coming and Cohle recounts everything from the facts of the 1995 Dora Lange murder to the art of interrogation, religion, fulfillment and closure, and the original sin of being a parent, reflecting on the “hubris it must take to yank a soul into non-existence into this meat… to force a life into this thresher,” and how his daughter’s death “spared [him] the sin of being a father.”

This is what I mean when I’m talkin’ about time… death… futility.

What’d He Wear?

If his nonchalance didn’t give it away, Rust Cohle’s ragged clothing and unkempt appearance when he shows up for his interview with detectives Gilbrough and Papania in April 2012 should communicate to the two detectives exactly how concerned he is in the proceedings. After all, the interview starts dangerously close to the time that Rust typically starts drinking on Thursdays.

With their frayed edges and worn-in dirt, Rust’s clothes appear to have followed him from his eight years off the grid in Alaska to his current status, low on the totem pole in rural Louisiana. As costume designer Jenny Eagen explained to Medium in 2014, “Finally in 2012, we know Rust was working at a bar in a small town, no need for anything to tell the story. I gave him the tools, he was Rust, we didn’t need to tell a story in his clothes.”

Dressed entirely in washed-out neutral tones that help him blend into the background, Rust’s frayed clothing works with his craggy aged features and stringy hair to present the appearance of a man who has essentially turned to dust. This is a Rust Cohle that life has forgotten about… and he doesn’t mind it that way.

Rust Cohle sizes up his interrogators in “The Long Bright Dark” (Episode 1.01).

Rust wears an oversized work shirt in a stone-colored washed cotton, similar to the canvas shirts that have been mainstays in the apparel offerings of Cabela’s, Eddie Bauer, L.L. Bean, and other outdoors-oriented outfitters for decades. In fact, it was probably secondhand even when Rust first picked it up.

The shirt has a point collar, front placket with sand-colored plastic sew-through buttons, and two inverted box-pleat chest pockets that are rounded on the bottoms and close through a single button at the top. The elbows are reinforced with self-patches that have double-stitched seams as do the pockets and placket.

April isn’t a particularly cold month in Lafayette, Louisiana, and yet Rust wears the thermal under layer of a long-sleeve ivory cotton T-shirt with a textured “waffle” knit. He rolls the sleeves up along with his overshirt.

The low-contrast neutrality of Rust’s outfit is emphasized with his choice of faded gray denim jeans with a boot cut. The jeans have the usual five-pocket layout with his wallet kept in his back-right pocket and attached with a silver-toned chain across his right hip to a belt loop in the front. His belt is almost assuredly the same thick black leather belt with the steel double-prong buckle that he wears elsewhere in the 2012 sequences.

Rust takes his leave in “The Secret Fate of All Life” (Episode 1.05) after the interview with Papania and Gilbrough goes sour… even more than it had been already.

Rust wears a pair of durable black leather derby-laced work boots.

Rust appears to be wearing the same boots throughout the 2012-set scenes, as seen in this production still from a different scene.

Rust’s stainless steel dive watch has been the subject of much speculation in the years since the show first debuted on HBO. Many brands are still tossed around as possibilities, including Citizen, Orient, Seiko, Timex, and even Rolex. However, the speculation all but ended when an e-true detective, “AJMc” on the WatchUSeek forum, reported that he received confirmation from the show’s property master Lynda Reiss that the watch supplied for Matthew McConaughey was indeed a Lorus dive watch from the mid-1990s.

“Time is a flat circle” could also be a roundabout way of describing the typical look of a watch face?

Based on this information and the appearance of Rust’s stainless watch with its black bezel, black dial with cyclops at the 3:00 date window, and “Mercedes” hands, the model was deduced to likely be the Lorus Tidal LR 0021 diver.

One of the strongest arguments that Citizen proponents used was the fact that McConaughey is clearly wearing a ridged black resin Citizen PVC sport strap with the words “WIND VELOCITY” printed in white on the end of the strap with smaller measurements (m/sec in white, knots in yellow) further toward the inside of the wrist that help validate the theory. (See here.)

Note the “WIND VELOCITY” markers on Rust’s watch strap.

However, the word of the prop master and the fact that “LORUS” can be faintly read on the dial in some production stills and screenshots overrule theory, and we can all sleep well knowing for sure that Matthew McConaughey wore a Lorus dive watch from the mid-1990s worn on a resin Citizen strap for his role as Rust Cohle on the first season of True Detective.

What to Imbibe

Listen, boys, I’m gonna half to call a little timeout ‘n make a beer run.

Rust Cohle belongs to that lonely class of confident people who would interrupt police questioning to make a beer run. Naturally, Papania and Gilbrough voice their objections, but Cohle the old pro knows there’s no reason to adhere to their advice to “hold off on that for a while.” If they’re not planning on his deposition to be admissible, then he may as well loosen himself up.

I’ll take a sixer of Old Milwaukee or Lone Star, nothin’ snitty…

“‘Cause it’s Thursday, and it’s past noon. Thursday is one of my days off. My off days, I start drinkin’ at noon. You don’t get to interrupt that.”

To reinforce his demand, Rust not only places a five-dollar bill on the table, but blows it across to Papania. When the detective finally gives in and rises, grabbing the bill, Cohle adds that “I’d appreciate a little hustle on that.”

Sure enough, Papania returns with a six pack of Lone Star beer in 16 oz. cans.

“Thank you, boys. We almost had a moment there.”

While this may be the most prominent and enduring screen time that “The National Beer of Texas” receives in True Detective, it’s far from the last as everyone from cops to criminals seems to take a few swigs of Lone Star over the series’ eight-episode run.

Now owned by Pabst Brewing, the brand was founded by Adolphus Busch in 1884 when Lone Star Brewery became the first large mechanized brewery in the state of Texas. Despite the name of the brewery, the first brew to actually carry the Lone Star label was produced in 1940 from a formula by Munich brewer Peter Kreil. In the decades to follow, Lone Star became a popular onscreen symbol for Texan culture, appearing in movies and TV shows like White Lightning, Urban Cowboy, Dallas, From Dusk Till Dawn, No Country for Old Men, W., American Sniper, and the first season of True Detective.

How to Get the Look

Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle on HBO’s True Detective.

Rust Cohle’s “washed out workingman” attire from his 2012 interviews with Gilbrough and Papania inspired many parodies, but the ragged, neutral clothing does much to both establish his character to the audience and show how far he has fallen from the master interrogator and investigator he had been just a decade prior.

If you saw this Rust Cohle questioning a perp in the interrogation room, you’d probably think the handcuffs belonged on Rust. If you saw him nursing a Lone Star and a pack of Camel Lights at the end of a dingy dive bar, however, you wouldn’t think a second thought after “oh, that makes sense.”

• Stone washed cotton canvas work shirt with point collar, front placket, button-through inverted box-pleat pockets, back “locker loop”, and button cuffs
• Ivory cotton waffle-woven long-sleeve crew-neck T-shirt
• Light gray denim jeans
• Black leather belt with squared steel double-prong buckle
• Black leather derby-laced work boots
• Lorus Tidal stainless steel dive watch with black bezel and black dial (with 3:00 “cyclops” date window) on black resin Citizen “Wind Velocity” strap

The Knife

Even with all his laconic swagger, Rust Cohle the civilian is wise enough to not bring a gun into the police station. He does, however, carry a folding knife that he uses to great effect to carve the Lone Star cans into a tableau.

If the can wasn’t already open, you might think Rust was trying to shotgun some Lone Star in the middle of his questioning.

Rust carries the exact same knife that his character used 17 years prior, a Smith & Wesson First Response Rescue Knife. This stainless steel knife has a 3.3″ folding blade and a black “grippy” G10 inlay, as described at Knife Center where the knife is currently offered for less than $10 as of September 2018.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the first season of True Detective.

HBO hit a rare sophomore slump with the far-from-beloved second season of True Detective, putting the show’s future in jeopardy. However, recently released previews for the show’s third season – scheduled to premiere in January 2019 – promise a return to form that reflects the elements that had made the first season such a phenomenon.

The Quote

I know who I am. And after all these years, there’s a victory in that.

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 5.02: “Rat Pack”)

Vitals

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, New Jersey mob boss

New Jersey, Spring 2004

Series: The Sopranos
Episodes:
– “Rat Pack” (Episode 5.02, dir. Alan Taylor, aired 3/14/2004)
– “In Camelot” (Episode 5.07, dir. Steve Buscemi, aired 4/18/2004)
Creator: David Chase
Costume Designer: Juliet Polcsa

Background

This week’s #MafiaMonday post celebrates the late James Gandolfini, the award-winning actor who would have celebrated his 57th birthday tomorrow.

Gandolfini won multiple awards, including three Emmys, for his performance as the tough yet troubled gangster Tony Soprano on HBO’s The Sopranos, setting the foundation for future TV icons. TV Guide columnist Matt Roush wrote in the first issue of the magazine after Gandolfini’s death that, “Without Tony, there’s no Vic Mackey of The Shield, no Al Swearengen of Deadwood, no Don Draper of Mad Men (whose creator, Matthew Weiner, honed his craft as a writer on The Sopranos).”

What’d He Wear?

The latter seasons of The Sopranos feature Tony Soprano sporting more windowpane-patterned sport jackets that range in color from the earthy, neutral spectrum to colder tones of blue and gray. With fall on the horizon, let’s explore one of the earthier ensembles.

Tony wears this fashionable but relatively non-threatening tan windowpane sport jacket when meeting acquaintances from years past, including his recently paroled cousin Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi) to one of his father’s secret mistresses, Fran Felstein (Polly Bergen).

Tony Soprano: Where’s Tony?
Quintina Blundetto: Downstairs, getting into one of his old suits.
Tony Soprano: I’ll buy him some new suits.
Quintina Blundetto: He’s fine.

Is this The Sopranos or Miami Vice?
Artie Bucco calls out Tony B.’s anachronistic wardrobe, asking “Where’s Tubbs?” at his homecoming party. Maybe Quintina should have let “Tony Uncle Johnny” take “Tony Uncle Al” shopping for some new suits instead of parading him around like a scrawny Don Johnson.

Tony Soprano wears this tan worsted sport jacket patterned with a subtle cream plaid windowpane consisting of sets of four stripes criss-crossing horizontally and vertically. It has notch lapels and closes with a single front button. The single-button tailored jacket was most popular in the 1960s, though it has recently been re-emerging as a style offered by many brands from high fashion houses down to budget-oriented online “tailors”. The quality of Tony’s tailoring is indicative with the placement of his single button, not too high and not too low.

The ventless jacket has straight jetted hip pockets and a welted breast pocket, where he always wears a pocket square that coordinates with his tie, whether it’s made from the same patterned fabric, as seen in “Rat Pack” (Episode 5.02), or a solid color that echoes a shade in his tie, as seen in “In Camelot” (Episode 5.07). Typically, the latter is more advisable than the potentially tacky-looking practice of sporting a matching tie and pocket square.

An additional noteworthy detail of Tony’s sport jacket is the presence of four functioning buttons on the ends of his sleeves, which Tony shows off by frequently wearing the button closest to the wrist undone. The term “surgeon’s cuffs” is often applied to this style of functioning cuff buttons, referring to a theory that it was more efficient for 19th century military surgeons to just unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves before performing a battlefield operation rather than remove their jackets.

Wearing one or more “surgeon’s cuff” buttons undone is often considered a rakish way for gents to show off, as working sleeve buttons – and the difficulty of altering a jacket with them – was once a better indicator of quality than it is now with lower priced (and lower quality) brands imitating this detail.

Note the unbuttoned cuff button closest to his wrist. All of the buttons on this sport jacket are brown plastic 4-hole sew-through buttons with tan edge trim.

For Tony B.’s homecoming party in “Rat Pack” (Episode 5.02), Tony Soprano wears a beige dress shirt with a semi-spread collar, plain front, breast pocket, and single-button rounded cuffs.

Tony loses the tie after the party moves from the respectable, family-friendly trappings of Vesuvio to the Bada Bing. (He does, however, wear all four cuff buttons fastened.)

Tony’s silk tie in “Rat Pack” follows the color scheme of his shirt and jacket in a geometric pattern of mini triangles with taupe borders on a beige ground. A series of shapes are filled in taupe rather than beige to create a repeating effect of stripes in the “uphill” (right-up-to-left) direction.

Tony’s tie and pocket square in “Rat Pack” (Episode 5.02) were both clearly made from the same patterned silk, often considered a no-no in the sartorial purist community.

For an afternoon rendezvous at Fran Felstein’s apartment in “In Camelot” (Episode 5.07), Tony wears the same jacket with a coffee brown-colored dress shirt with the same semi-spread collar, plain front, breast pocket, and single-button cuffs as his other shirt.

Tony wears another multi-colored silk tie with a complex pattern that creates an “uphill” stripe effect, though this tie consists of a broken pattern of bronze, beige, black, and purple criss-crossed striping. Mercifully, he opts for a solid-colored pocket square in periwinkle satin silk, nicely drawing out the purple tones of his tie and creating a more colorful effect overall.

Tony has a little more fun with color in “In Camelot” (Episode 5.07). Perhaps when paying a visit to a woman who had dalliances with his own style icon, JFK, Tony knew he had to bring his A game.

Tony always balances this light plaid jacket with a pair of full-fitting brown pleated trousers that are styled to match his usual preferences with belt loops, double pleats, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms. Gandolfini was known to wear trousers from Italian fashion house Zanella on the show, particularly the later seasons, and it’s likely that these trousers are made by Zanella as well.

He first wears a dark chocolate brown pair for Tony Blundetto’s party in “Rat Pack” (Episode 5.02), then a lighter, softer-toned pair of mid-brown trousers for his final visit to Fran’s in “In Camelot” (Episode 5.07).

Tony’s move of using his foot to flush the urinal is relatable, but Johnny Sack sitting on the toilet in a public bathroom without a door on the stall? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Given the colors of his outfit, Tony opts for brown leather in his belt and shoes. His dark brown leather belt has a squared steel single-prong buckle. His cap-toe lace-up shoes are also dark brown.

The reacquainted cousins embrace after sharing breakfast following an all-night party in “Rat Pack” (Episode 5.02).

Tony wears all gold jewelry and accessories. Around his neck is a gold open-link chain necklace with a pendant of St. Jerome, whose feast day is coming up on September 30. He also wears his usual yellow gold chain-link bracelet and gold pinky ring with its diamond and ruby stones, both on his right hand.

Tony’s luxury watch is an 18-karat yellow gold Rolex Day-Date ref. 18038 “President”, so named for its distinctive link bracelet with a hidden clasp. This chronometer has Roman numerals around the “champagne” gold dial with a long display for the day of the week at the top and a date window at 3:00.

“Tony Uncle Johnny” embraces “Tony Uncle Al” while the latter’s mother, Quintina (Rae Allen), looks on.

Strangely, a very similar jacket makes an appearance for a brief scene in “Sentimental Education” (Episode 5.06) as Tony dines at Vesuvio, wearing it with a silky black shirt with a black silk pocket square but no tie. At first glance (and likely second and third glance as well), you’d be forgiven for thinking this tan windowpane jacket with its subdued cream plaid pattern is the same as the one we’ve been exploring above, particularly as it falls right between both episodes where said jacket appears.

However, a closer look reveals that the “Sentimental Education” jacket has a slightly more pronounced plaid pattern though it consists of three (rather than four) stripes per set and the stitching on the left lapel buttonhole appears to be slightly darker with more of a contrast to the suiting.

And if you think the differences are just an optical illusion, pick a spot of Tony’s jacket – like the right collar just above the notch – and compare the plaid. On this jacket, the plaid is visible right on that spot; on the other jacket in “Rat Pack” and “In Camelot”, this spot has no plaid.

Did Tony Soprano really go to his tailor and order two almost identical jackets, one to be worn with ties in social situations and one to be worn without ties when dining alone? We’ll never know.

How to Get the Look

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 5.02: “Rat Pack”)

As Tony Soprano’s power grew, so did his elegant wardrobe. While he was no stranger to the shell tracksuits of his associates like Paulie Walnuts, Tony always looked his most self-assured in a tailored sport jacket and silk tie.

• Tan windowpane-plaid single-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, kissing 4-button “surgeon’s cuffs”, and ventless back
• Beige or brown dress shirt with spread collar, plain front, breast pocket, and 1-button rounded cuffs
• Multi-colored silk tie with a complex pattern creating an “uphill” stripe effect
• Brown double forward-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, button-through jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Dark brown leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Dark brown leather cap-toe derby shoes
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
• Rolex President Day-Date 118238 yellow gold wristwatch
• Gold open-link chain bracelet
• Gold pinky ring with ruby and diamond stones
• Gold open-link chain necklace with round St. Jerome pendant

What to Imbibe

Tony Soprano, a dedicated Scotch drinker who typically doesn’t dilute his alcohol with any mixers unless its a touch of anisette or sambuca in his coffee, accepts what appears to be a Manhattan mixed for him by Fran Felstein in “In Camelot” (Episode 5.07).

Other than the fact that she serves them up and garnished with a single maraschino cherry, we don’t know much about Fran’s Manhattans. The only whiskey brand visible in her home is Dewar’s, and she certainly wouldn’t be using Scotch in her Manhattans. If you are in a pinch for a Tony-approved brand for your Manhattans, the only non-Scotch whiskey that he is seen drinking over the course of The Sopranos is a single instance of him drinking Wild Turkey a few seasons earlier, and bourbon is certainly a welcome ingredient for a Manhattan.

Tony indulges in the same culinary pleasures that Fran had likely bestowed on his own father a generation earlier.

Water chestnuts wrapped in bacon… and dip them in the duck sauce.

Fran’s hors d’oeuvre for Tony’s visit in the same scene is one of the simplest satisfying recipes for entertaining, and it appropriately dates back to the mid-20th century era when Fran was in her peak Judy Exner phase, serving as a gangster’s arm candy by day and a president’s boudoir buddy at night.

To make bacon-wrapped water chestnuts, Genius Kitchen suggests you marinate the water chestnuts in soy sauce for an hour. After draining them, roll the marinated water chestnuts in brown sugar and wrap them each in a half-slice of bacon. For good measure, arrange them on a foil-wrapped baking pan and secure each one with its own toothpick, then bake them at 400 °F for 30 minutes or until they’re golden brown.

A slightly different take, adapted in Toledo’s daily newspaper The Blade, suggests brushing each half-slice of bacon with Dijon mustard and sprinkling them with brown sugar before wrapping it over each water chestnut. I suspect Genius Kitchen’s soy sauce-marinated recipe would work more cohesively with Fran’s duck sauce accompaniment, but to each their own!

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series.

The Quote

I remember growing up, I was always asking why I just used to have sisters. I said to my mother, I said, “Can’t you save up something and then get me a baby brother?” And my mother said, “What’s wrong with your cousin Tony?” And she was right, ’cause we were brothers. Except, you know, we had the same name. There was like fifty Tonys in the family. Some of you remember this. My dad’s name was Johnny and his dad’s name was Alfred. And so whenever we were out running around and we’d hear “Tony Uncle Johnny,” that was for me. And “Tony Uncle Al,” that was for him. And there was “Tony Uncle Philly!” Remember? But he passed away – buon’ anima – and Uncle Phil… Uncle Phil, he passed away a long time ago, too. So anyway… Tony’s being away has been hard, but he’s back now, for good…so welcome home.

Lee Marvin as Walker in Point Blank (1967)

Vitals

Lee Marvin as Walker, revenge-driven armed robber

Santa Monica, Summer 1967

Film: Point Blank
Release Date: August 30, 1967
Director: John Boorman
Costume Designer: Margo Weintz

Background

With the first day of autumn only a day away, we’re looking ahead to fall fashion from a tough guy. In John Boorman’s 1967 neo-noir Point Blank, Lee Marvin starred as Walker, the unsmiling thief out for revenge after he was left for dead on Alcatraz Island by his one-time partner Mal Reese (John Vernon).

Having patched up his wounds, Walker seeks out the help of his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson), who agrees to lend her own particular brand of charm to assist Walker in retrieving the $93,000 he believes he is rightfully owed.

What’d He Wear?

Walker goes after Mal Reese in a brown plaid tweed wool single-breasted sport jacket with unique details like a flapped set-in breast pocket and flared cuffs with a single button on each.

Walker’s sport jacket has notch lapels that gently roll over the top of three buttons. In addition to the flapped breast pocket, the hip pockets also have flaps. The double vents allow Walker greater access to draw his .44 Magnum from under his jacket.

Supposedly, Lee Marvin had hit John Vernon so hard during rehearsal for this scene that he made the actor cry. (Source)

Walker wears an amber-colored shirt in a shade closer to orange than yellow, though not as orange as the bold shirt he wears with his rust-colored sport jacket. The shirt has a narrow semi-spread collar and large plastic buttons with a mother-of-pearl effect on the front placket and on each cuff. The texture appears to be a soft microfiber polyester, a synthetic fabric that was gaining considerable traction in the late 1960s before it became the inexplicable fabric of choice for many during the disco era.

Yellow seems to be the color of choice for bonding over a mutual dislike of Mal Reese.

He stays consistent with his carotenoid-inspired color palette by wearing a slim gold micro-textured silk tie.

Walker’s mid-brown flannel trousers appear to be shaped with darts rather than pleats or a traditional flat front. They have a fitted waistband with no belt, braces, or adjusters required, and they taper slightly toward the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Walker plans his next move.

Whether wearing his gray or blue business suits or a fall-friendly sport jacket like this, Lee Marvin wears the same set of cordovan brogues throughout Point Blank. Currently in the collection of the British Film Institute, these Bally derby have full longwing broguing with a perforated medallion toecap and four lace eyelets for his black laces. He wears them here with either black or dark brown dress socks.

His own Smith & Wesson Model 29 in hand, Walker tosses away the gats he grabbed from Mal’s bodyguards from “The Organization”.

How to Get the Look

Lee Marvin as Walker in Point Blank (1967)

You don’t need to cut the color from your wardrobe to look tough. In fact, Lee Marvin’s Walker embraces color for many of his creative outfits as he ass-kicks his way up the California coast.

• Brown plaid tweed single-breasted 3-button sport jacket with notch lapels, flapped set-in breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, single-button flared cuffs, and double vents
• Amber polyester microfiber dress shirt with narrow semi-spread collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Gold textured silk skinny tie
• Brown darted-front trousers with fitted waistband, side pockets, and tapered plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown cordovan leather medallion-toe 4-eyelet longwing derby brogues
• Black socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Footnote

The Hunter was the first of Donald E. Westlake’s series of crime novels featuring the Parker character, who was renamed Walker for this adaptation and again renamed Porter for the 1999 adaptation Payback starring Mel Gibson. Neither adaptation was permitted to use the actual title or character name unless the filmmakers were planning to adapt the character into a series.

Michael Douglas as Nick Curran in Basic Instinct (1992)

Vitals

Michael Douglas as Nick Curran, suspended homicide detective

San Francisco, April 1991

Film: Basic Instinct
Release Date: March 20, 1992
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick

Background

The scene itself needs no introduction. Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) sits in a shadowy interrogation room full of detectives (including Newman!) with Hitchcockian ice-cold blonde Catherine Trammell (Sharon Stone) facing them. In one of the most-paused moments of the VHS era, Catherine deftly uncrosses her legs just enough to guarantee that the room – and the audience – know that she neglected to wear underwear that day.

Nick already knew that, of course, but she has the rest of the room eating out of her hand, craning their necks so hard to get a glimpse that you think poor Newman’s head is on the verge of popping off of his neck. The manipulative ploy

If you haven’t seen the famous scene by now, you’ve almost certainly seen it parodied.

In the spirit of Michael Douglas’ 74th birthday today, BAMF Style is taking a look at the fall-friendly office look he sports during this unforgettable scene.

What’d He Wear?

The scene has become so famous for what Sharon Stone isn’t wearing that viewers’ minds may need to be refreshed as to what other characters actually are wearing. Michael Douglas’ fashionable cop once again dresses for the job in head-to-toe Cerruti, with a light brown suit made from worsted twill-weave wool.

Note the twill suiting.

Nick Curran’s three contemporary suits, designed by Ellen Mirojnick, are all neutral tones, ranging from this warmer light brown suit to a cool light gray suit with a taupe suit falling somewhere in the middle. Ms. Mirojnick has frequently collaborated with Michael Douglas across his career, delivering some of his most iconic and influential looks in Fatal Attraction (1987), Wall Street (1988), and its sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), as well as Basic Instinct. Most recently, the designer has earned accolades for her work in The Greatest Showman (2017) and Cinemax period series The Knick.

Nick’s light brown suit is fashionably styled for the early 1990s with its widely notched lapels, low two-button stance, jetted hip pockets, and ventless back, not to mention the overall cut. The jacket also has a welted breast pocket and three-button cuffs.

Nick takes in the sights at Catherine’s home.

After their resurgence in the 1980s, pleats remained popular for fashionable gents well into the following decade, and Douglas’ suit trousers in Basic Instinct are styled with double reverse pleats. The trousers have straight side pockets, jetted button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

Nick wears a dark brown leather belt with a steel single-prong buckle with his English tan stiff leather holster for his Glock service pistol snapped onto the right side of his belt. He keeps a matching leather pouch with a spare Glock magazine on the back left side of his belt.

Shooter takes a coffee break.

Anto of Beverly Hills custom made Michael Douglas’ shirts in Basic Instinct, using a high-quality end-on-end cotton. This sky blue silky-effect shirt is styled like his others with a point collar, plain front, button cuffs, and no pocket.

Buttoned up at the office… and considerably loosened up after.

The ’90s also saw a resurgence of bold ties with loud patterns and blades up to 4″ wide. Ellen Mirojnick wisely avoided these perilous trends and outfitted Nick Curran in neckwear just wide enough to be stylish in the ’90s and patterned with a relatively subdued print of gold and beige swirls on olive green silk.

Nick Curran’s preference for Chelsea boots with his suits set him apart as a hipper, younger detective more tuned in to style than his conservatively dressed comrades. These slip-on boots with elastic side gussets are a similar English tan leather as his holster and magazine pouch, and he wears them with a pair of light brown socks that nicely coordinate with his suit.

These guys are no match for Catherine Trammell.

When Nick heads home with his off-and-on paramour Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the resulting scene reveals that he seems to prefer black boxer briefs.

What to Imbibe

Nick Curran has had some issues with substance abuse in the past, but this episode is enough to send him back to the bar. “Double black Jack on the rocks,” is his order, implying a double pour of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey over ice… just what you’d expect from a cop on the edge.

How to Get the Look

Michael Douglas as Nick Curran in Basic Instinct (1992)

Nick Curran’s sleek on-duty suits benefit from a strong sense of balance, balancing ’90s trends with timeless fashion and balancing the neutral tones of his suit and tie with a bright blue shirt.

• Light brown high-twist worsted wool tailored Cerruti 1881 suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button suit jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, ventless back
  • Double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Sky blue cotton shirt with point collar, plain front, and button cuffs
• Green, gold, and beige swirl-patterned silk tie
• Dark brown leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Brown (English tan) leather belt holster and magazine pouch
• Brown (English tan) leather Chelsea boots
• Light brown dress socks
• Black boxer briefs
• Steel wristwatch with round white dial on steel bracelet

A photo of the full costume – including shirt, tie, and boots – can be found here.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You like playing games, don’t you?