On “just another Thursday,” I’m pleased to present another guest post contributed by my friend Ken Stauffer, who has written several pieces for BAMF Style previously and chronicles the style of the Ocean’s film series on his excellent Instagram account, @oceansographer.

Ryan Gosling as Sierra Six in The Gray Man (2022)

Vitals

Ryan Gosling as Courtland “Court” Gentry, a.k.a. Sierra Six, off-the-books CIA operative

London and Hong Kong, 2019

Film: The Gray Man
Release Date: July 22, 2022
Director: Joe and Anthony Russo
Costume Designer: Judianna Makovsky
Mr. Gosling’s Costumer: Mark Avery

Background

If you haven’t checked out The Gray Man yet, it seems you’re in the minority. Released last month directly on Netflix, the film has consistently stayed on the streamer’s top watched list around the globe. Based on Mark Greaney’s popular book series, it’s a bit of a throwback to ’90s action movies, chock full of offhand quips and casual explosions, but modernized with drone shots and a popular, A-list cast.

The film focuses on Sierra Six, a previously convicted murderer with a heart of gold played nonchalantly by a bearded Ryan Gosling. Once known as Courtland “Court” Gentry, he was recruited into the CIA by bubble gum-wielding bureaucrat, Donald “Fitz” Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). For years, Fitz acted as Six’s handler and ersatz father figure, until recent closed door machinations forced him into retirement.

Now, Six is less of a secret agent and more of a disposable, off-the-books assassin, indentured to the CIA in exchange for the commutation of his prison sentence. He acts as a triggerman without collecting intel, assigned targets by his handlers with little to no explanation. As things tend to do in these types of movies, things get personal for Six, forcing our hero to go rogue while on the run from the CIA’s most vicious contractor (Chris Evans) and an army of mercenaries out for the bounty on his head.

During a brief respite from the plethora of shootouts, car chases, and fistfights that ensue, we’re treated to a few scenes that fill out some backstory. We flash back two years to the London office of chain-smoking CIA regional chief, Margaret Cahill (Alfre Woodard sitting behind two cartons of Lucky Strike), to learn that Fitz has been secretly caring for his orphaned niece, Claire (Julia Butters, who’s replaced her Tammy Craps doll with a record player). To make matters worse, the girl recently had a pacemaker implanted and the CIA “accidentally” made her address public knowledge. In classic action movie logic, rather than just move Claire, Six flies to the Fitzroy household in Hong Kong to protect her. (Fun fact, though the establishing shots of the house show it overlooking Victoria, Hong Kong, it’s actually the Harvey house—designed by John Lautner—in the Hollywood Hills. Filming was done on location in the LA home, and then the backgrounds were changed out to match the view from Victoria Peak.)

The power dynamic in the Fitzroy home is quickly established as adolescent Claire chastises Six for chewing gum in her home, snaps a Polaroid of him, and peppers him with questions about his unusual moniker. Six is clearly uncomfortable in this domestic setting, pacing around with his hands clapsed in front of him. Claire soon absconds with his suit jacket, forcing him to engage her in conversation, and the two quickly develop a playful banter. After Six saves the girl’s life later that night, her precocious nature and vulnerability lead him to view her as a pseudo-little sister… which unfortunately makes her a prime candidate for kidnapping.

What’d He Wear?

While Six spends the majority of the movie in track jackets and tactical gear that he’s quickly procured from other 42 Regulars, the 2019 flashback scenes show us the character in far more comfortable surroundings, dressed in a conservative two-button suit from Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Made in a 100% wool sharkskin fabric, also called “pick and pick,” the suit has a slight, natural sheen, created using alternating light gray and black threads in a weave that resembles the steps of a staircase up close. From a distance, the colors blend together to create a semi-solid medium gray color with a sort of cross-hatched effect.

The suit has quite a contemporary look and fit, while remaining elegant. This is achieved by only subtly updating classic proportions, without going to extremes. The lapels are a bit narrow, but still balanced, at 3″ wide and set at a slightly high 3¼” gorge height. The jacket is on the shorter side, measuring 29½” from shoulder to the back hem, but still manages to cover most of Gosling’s rear. The gently roped shoulders are lightly padded with a slight extension, conforming well to the actor’s frame, and there are dual 10″ vents to give our man full range of motion for impromptu hand-to-hand combat.

The sleeves are well-fitted and finished with four kissing buttons made of a dove gray polycarbonate, while all of the button holes of the suit are finished in a charcoal thread that slightly contrasts with the fabric. There’s a straight pocket on each hip, with a smaller 3¾” ticket pocket on the right side (a spy can never have too many pockets), each covered by a 2″ flap. There’s a standard welted breast pocket, cut straight and set at a slight angle. The lapels, hip, ticket, and breast pockets, and the front edges all have subtle pick stitching. The jacket is fully lined in an iridescent steel gray Bemberg cupro.

The suit’s matching trousers are cut with a medium-low 9½” rise. They have side adjusters shifted to the rear of the waistband, finished in glossy black metal, and close at the waist with an extended 4″ tab hiding a hook-and-bar closure (signatures of the RL Purple Label line). There are slanted pockets on each side, two button-through besom pockets on the rear, and a 2½”-wide coin pocket with a thin welt, just perfect for storing a stolen thumb drive loaded with secrets. The legs taper from the thigh to a 15″ leg opening at the ankle and are finished with plain hems set with a medium break. When his jacket is removed, we can see the agent’s most important accessory, his Glock 17 in an IWB holster on his back-right side.

Shop the suit:

A Ralph Lauren Purple Label gray sharkskin suit identical to the suit worn in The Gray Man, as photographed by the author.

Despite the different model names, I've received confirmation from store clerks that these suits are the same, merely titled differently depending on sales channel:

• Ralph Lauren Purple Label Doug Two-Button Slim-Fit Suit (Saks Fifth Avenue, $2,795)
• Ralph Lauren Purple Label Gregory Wool Sharkskin Suit (Ralph Lauren, $2,795)

Prices and availability current as of Aug. 23, 2022.

To bring down the formality of his tailored outfit, Six wears the suit with a pair of knit polos from John Smedley. He wears their short-sleeved Isis polo in mint (titled “Pine Mist”) during the London scene and the long-sleeved Finchley model in a warm shade of navy called “Marine Blue” throughout the Hong Kong scenes.

Both are knit from 30-gauge Sea Island cotton with a banded bottom and a three-button placket of mother of pearl buttons spaced 2½” inches apart. They also share Smedley’s “fashioned collar,” a semi-spread collar with 3″ long points which they’ve been placing on their polos consistently since the 1930s. Finally, the long sleeves on the navy shirt have unique, ribbed “turnback cuffs,” designed to be folded back on themselves when worn to create a custom sleeve length.

Left: John Smedley Isis in “Pine Mist” in London
Right: John Smedley Finchley in “Marine Blue” in Hong Kong

Throughout the film, Six always wears a TAG Heuer Carrera Three Hand watch. The Carrera line has a storied history linked to racing, attracting the likes of James Garner and Niki Lauda to their chronographs. That said, the more recent three-hand model is designed as a sporty everyday dress watch, similar to a Rolex DateJust or Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra, albeit with an outsourced movement to keep costs down. In the present day scenes, Six wears the current model, ref. WBN2111.FC6505, on a black leather strap. In this flashback though, it looks like he’s wearing a slightly earlier model, ref. WAR211B.BA0782, with the date window positioned at the 3 o’clock position, rather than at 6.

The watch has a silver dial with a subtle concentric circle design, a fixed, polished bezel, and sharply angled, straight lugs. The three-piece oyster-style bracelet has alternating center links, either wide and brushed or thin and polished, and closes with a branded, push button clasp. The stainless steel 39mm  case has a domed sapphire on top and a flat sapphire below, allowing one to see the 25-jewel “Calibre 5” automatic movement inside.

Claire: “Six is an odd name.”
Six: “Yeah. Yeah. Just 007 was taken, so…”

On his feet, Six wears a pair of cap-toe derbies in a mid-gray smooth calf leather over a pair of plain, gray dress socks. The dress shoes have a whopping six eyelets, though the character only laces them through the lower five. Just in front of the cap-toe seam, there’s a band of broguing. After a bit of digging, these unique shoes are almost certainly the Madison Cap-Toe Oxford by Stacy Adams. (The brand titles them this despite the fact that the stitching on the vamp is exposed, technically making the shoe a derby, not an oxford. Sorry for this level of nerdiness, but hey, you clicked on this blog post–what did you expect?)

This choice of footwear here may be familiar to Gosling fans–the actor wore the boot version of the Madison in both Drive and Only God Forgives. These are a very affordable option to pair with the luxury items of this outfit, and one wonders if they were Gosling’s personal choice for the character. After all, the brown leather sole of the Madison is hardly the most practical for a guy that has to sprint or fight every ten minutes.

How to Get the Look

Ryan Gosling as Sierra Six on set, filming The Gray Man (2022)

• Medium-gray sharkskin wool suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with 3″-wide notch lapels, dove gray buttons, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets with ticket pocket, 4-button cuffs, and double vents
  • Flat-front tapered-leg trousers with metal-toned side-adjusters, extended waist tab with hidden hook-and-bar closure, slanted side pockets, coin pocket, two button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Warm navy-blue Sea Island cotton knit long-sleeved polo shirt with 3-button placket, semi-spread collar, ribbed hem, and ribbed turnback cuffs
• Steel-gray leather semi-brogue cap-toe 6-eyelet derby shoes with brown leather soles
• Medium-gray dress socks
• TAG Heuer Carrera Three Hand WAR211B.BA0782 wristwatch with stainless 39mm case, silver-tone dial, and steel three-piece link bracelet
• Black IWB holster, for Glock 17
• Pack of nondescript gum

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Sneak a piece of gum when no one’s looking, and check out the movie.

The Quote

Upon being discovered standing over the body of an assassin he’s just knocked out in the home’s kitchen…

Claire: Is everything okay?
Six: Yeah. Broke a bowl.
Claire: You sure you’re alright?
Six: Yeah, just another Thursday.

The post Ryan Gosling’s Gray Sharkskin Suit in The Gray Man appeared first on BAMF Style.

Cary Grant as Romer Sheffield in Hot Saturday (1932)

Vitals

Cary Grant as Romer Sheffield, smooth playboy

Ohio, Summer 1932

Film: Hot Saturday
Release Date: October 28, 1932
Director: William A. Seiter

Background

Today being a hot Saturday in late summer reminded me of the early Cary Grant movie called, well, Hot Saturday. 1932 had been a breakout year for the Bristol-born star, as the erstwhile Archie Leach had worked his way in six months from his screen debut (This is the Night) to his first leading role, as the dapper playboy Romer Sheffield in Hot Saturday. (Curiously, this marks the second time both this month and in the decade-long history of this blog that I’m writing about a character named Romer!)

Romer provides a prototype of what would become Grant’s signature screen persona: charming, debonair, and romantic yet wickedly self-deprecating. We meet him on a warm afternoon in the fictional Ohio berg of Marysville, where he strolls into the local bank and makes a date with the young clerk, Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll), despite his already scandalous living arrangement with a woman named Camille Renault (Rita La Roy). As Ruth already has a date set that weekend with co-worker Connie Billop (Edward Woods), Romer invites both to his lakeside estate for what promises to be a hot Saturday indeed.

His amorous advances spurned by Ruth, a spiteful Connie begins rumors about Ruth’s activities with Romer which ultimately threaten to derail her engagement to another man, her childhood friend Bill Fadden (Randolph Scott, who was Grant’s Very Good Friend and Roommate at the time).

With its relatively frank depictions of sex, dating, and jealousy, Hot Saturday exemplifies cinematic storytelling during the pre-Code era “when a lax code of censorship let sin rule the movies,” as described by Mark A. Vieira in the prelude to his book Forbidden Hollywood.

What’d He Wear?

Even in black-and-white, the brightly bleached fabric of Cary Grant’s suit as he emerges from that elegant Lincoln phaeton leaves little doubt that our confident playboy is tailored in white. Lacking linen’s characteristic wrinkle and silk’s distinctive shine, the material may be a blend of wool and mohair, which Alan Flusser describes as “one of the few summer suits capable of holding its crisp good looks.” Another potential option would be the signature cotton and mohair tropical-weight blend that Goodall Worsted Co. of Sanford, Maine, had patented as “Palm Beach cloth” n 1908 (Source: The Met).

The double-breasted jacket follows classic proportions with its pearl buttons arranged in a traditional 6×2 arrangement, with only the top of the two fastening buttons done for a more laidback look that eases Romer’s habit of slipping at least one of his hands into a trouser pocket. (This was long a real-life habit of Cary Grant’s, borne of early insecurity as reported by his third wife Betsy Drake: “He said you notice how my hand is in my pocket because I didn’t know what to do with my hands.”) Wearing the bottom button undone would ease the habit, particularly given the jacket’s lack of vents—a prevailing style of the 1930s, particularly with double-breasted jackets.

Sporty patch pockets dress the suit down, with rounded patch pockets over the hips and a more squared breast pocket that Romer dresses with a medium-colored cotton or linen pocket square. Straight, padded shoulders build up Romer’s silhouette, and each sleeve is finished with four-button cuffs.

The smooth Romer, clad in a white double-breasted Palm Beach suit and low-contrasting shirt and tie appears more dashing and exciting than the uptight Connie in his business suit and bow tie.

Romer wears a low-contrasting shirt and tie, though still shades darker than the suit to suggest an off-white color. The point collar is pinned to keep it neatly in place behind the knot of his darker silk tie. Publicity photos taken to promote Hot Saturday depict a lighter shirt with a non-pinned collar and a knitted silk tie of the same color, though the screen-worn tie is clearly a smoother silk. Romer’s shirt has a front placket and double (French) cuffs, which he keeps in place with subtle rectangular links.

Romer’s charm meets some resistance with Ruth.

Even with the lower button undone, the jacket’s double-breasted wrap still covers enough of the trouser waistband that little of the trousers can be spied beyond the bottoms, which are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) but are likely pleated in accordance with the prevailing fashions of the era.

The trousers have a high break that shows plenty of Romer’s spectator semi-brogue oxfords, which are primarily white but designed with dark brown toe caps. These two-toned shoes were also known as “correspondent shoes”, so nicknamed for their association with the “co-respondent” third parties legally named in adultery-themed English divorce cases and thus contextually appropriate for Romer’s scandalous playboy reputation.

Romer completes his look with a dark felt short-brimmed fedora with a matching grosgrain silk band. Though the color is obviously lost to history, something along the brown or olive spectrum would be a reasonable choice.

Romer strolls from his Lincoln to the bank, his resplendent white suit and spectator oxfords looking proudly out of place among the modest denizens of this small Ohio town.

By the time the eponymous hot Saturday comes around, Romer dresses comfortably for his party in a crested navy blazer, white slacks, and a white scarf through his open-neck shirt, while Connie appears determined to mimic his romantic rival in an off-white double-breasted suit of his own.

Connie dresses in a white double-breasted suit of his own, contextually appropriate for a summer weekend but also possibly chosen to echo his romantic rival’s sense of style.

How to Get the Look

Cary Grant as Romer Sheffield in Hot Saturday (1932)

As could be expected by his reputation for three successful decades to follow, Cary Grant steals the sartorial spotlight for his fashionable introduction to leading screen roles in a white double-breasted Palm Beach suit, pinned collar, and natty spectator shoes.

• White tropical-weight mohair-blend suit:
  • Double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with peak lapels, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Pleated trousers with side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• Light-colored cotton shirt with pinned point collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
• Medium-colored silk tie
• Dark felt fedora with matching grosgrain band
• White-and-brown leather semi-brogue spectator oxford shoes
• Light-colored socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Say, what’s the matter? Does everyone in this town have high blood pressure?

The post Hot Saturday: Cary Grant’s White Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski in Day Shift (2022)
Photo by Andrew Cooper/Netflix

Vitals

Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski, maverick vampire hunter

San Fernando Valley, California, Summer 2022

Film: Day Shift
Release Date: August 12, 2022
Director: J.J. Perry
Costume Designer: Kelli Jones

Background

When I saw that Day Shift, the latest Netflix action comedy, centered around Jamie Foxx killing vampires while wearing a rotation of Hawaiian shirts, I knew I had to check it out.

Foxx stars as Bud Jablonski, whose job cleaning pools in the San Fernando Valley provides cover for his more serious occupation of hunting the undead. Unfortunately, Bud’s numerous infractions in the line of duty have resulted in his suspension from the local union—yes, there’s a vampire-killing union—reducing him to attempting to sell their teeth to make ends meet. His rent already in arrears, Bud’s situation grows increasingly dire as he needs to help his ex-wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) raise $10,000 fast for their 10-year-old daughter’s tuition and braces.

Seeking his way back into the union, he enlists the respected services of his old pal John “Big J” Elliott (Snoop Dogg), a cowboy-styled legend who still pulls enough sway in the L.A. vampire-killing community to help Bud get reaccepted by the union. Though he’s to be babysat by by-the-books union supervisor Seth (Dave Franco), Bud earns his chance to work his way back in, though—rather than the coveted and high-paying night shifts—he’s assigned… the day shift. (Though at least he still gets that free app from the Cheesecake Factory!)

What’d He Wear?

Bud Jablonski explains his aloha-friendly sartorial philosophy when Seth arrives for their first day of work dressed in a “juniper green” suit, explaining that “we’re in the Valley… in the summertime” and thus need to dress to blend in.

“How’s the shirt look?” Bud asks Big J as they stride through the union offices on their way to requesting him to be reinstated. Bud’s clearly hoping to make an impression, dressed in a deep teal-green aloha shirt, patterned with chains of orange hibiscus flowers and pineapples. The short-sleeved camp shirt follows the basic aloha design structure, with edge stitching around its wide camp collar, a non-matched breast pocket, and six small green plastic buttons up the plain (French) front.

Foxx’s screen-worn shirt is 100% polyester, made by the brand On Shore. I’ve only been able to find one example of the same pattern and colorway online, available from Ragstock as of August 29, 2022.

The cowboy-styled Big J brings an aloha-shirted Bud back to the union office in the hopes of sponsoring his reinstatement.

With this shirt, Bud wears khaki cotton twill cargo pants, his preferred style likely for the tactical advantages of being able to access the additional flapped pockets on his thighs while in anti-vampire combat. The untucked aloha shirt hem covers much of the top of the trousers, but we can determine that they have a flat front, side pockets, flapped back pockets, and a casually loose fit through the legs down to the plain-hemmed bottoms that gather at the tops of his Adidas sneakers.

While also providing a greater contrast against his shirt than the olive cargo pants he wears later, the lighter khaki cargo pants may be Bud’s “dressy” trousers that he reserves for occasions like talking his way back onto the union’s day shift.

On his first day partnered with the granola-munching desk jockey Seth, Bud dresses for work in another green aloha shirt, though patterned with a unique panel print that depicts a tropical scene of red and green parrots perched among the palm trees and bombera of a white sandy beach scene. The background color is more of a dark teal, with six matching plastic buttons up the plain front. The shirt also has a camp collar and a narrowly welted pocket set-in on the left breast that interferes less with the illustrated tableau than a patch pocket.

Note the set-in breast pocket that avoids the potential design interference of a non-matched patch pocket, particularly important for panel prints like this shirt.

Bud wears another pair of cotton twill cargo pants, though the color is an Army-style olive-green. In addition to the standard trouser side pockets, the cargo pockets over the side of each thigh consist of a large inverted box-pleated patch pocket covered with a flap that appears to secure with two covered snaps—one in each corner. A visible seam extends down the side of each leg, following the placement of the side pocket openings and the cargo pocket pleats.

Bud delivers some wisdom and comfort after a nervous Seth pees through the trousers of his “guacamole suit”.

The following day finds more vampire-killing and another green aloha shirt, this time shaded a very vivid bright green. The all-over floral print consists of white hibiscus flowers with fiery-hued centers and mint leaves. The cloth, cut, and styling of this short-sleeved camp shirt with its non-matched breast pocket echo his first green shirt, suggesting another On Shore product. He also wears the same olive cargo pants as on the previous day.

For Bud and Seth’s most action-packed day, teaming up with the famous Nazarian brothers to attack what turns out to be a vampire ‘hive”, Bud wears another panel-print aloha shirt. The dark blue background reflects the night sky, gradating to a lighter blue then yellow and finally an intense orange to present a tropical sunset, silhouetted by dark blue palm tree shadows and bordered along the bottom by another strip of dark blue. The shirt’s short sleeves reflect the same palm-silhouetted yellow-and-orange sunset, albeit upside-down with the bottom of the scene starting at the set-in shoulder line.

The “sky” is broken up over the chest by designs of white clouds and burgundy birds in flight. The shirt also has a camp collar, set-in welted breast pocket, and six dark blue buttons up the plain front, with the top of Bud’s navy undershirt showing. Bud also continues wearing the same olive-colored cargo pants with this outfit.

Bud and Seth have wildly differing senses of tactical dress: Bud in a cross-body bag and gun belt, Seth in a cervical collar to prevent vampires from biting his neck.

After the hive assault, Bud changes to pick up his daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax), though he sticks to his vampire-killing uniform of boldly printed camp shirts as he now wears a navy rayon shirt patterned with orange dragons. The shirt has a camp collar (with no edge stitching) and five dark blue plastic buttons up the front though, unlike the other shirts, it lacks a pocket.

Once Bud transitions back into assault mode and confronts his neighbor Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), the top of his dark navy undershirt reappears. Ultimately, Bud is still able to recruit the “turned” Seth and Heather onto his anti-vampire team:

Welcome to the motherfuckin’ night shift.

Heather and Seth become Bud’s unlikely allies against the darker forces driving L.A.’s vampires.

Bud continues wearing the same faded olive cotton twill cargo pants, though the heavy action of the sequence shows more of these trousers than we had seen previously, including the “jogger”-style elasticized bottoms and the belt loops through which he wears a plain brown leather belt.

After selling his Nike Jordans to Troy (Peter Stormare) for some much-needed extra scratch, Bud spends the rest of Day Shift wearing a pair of Adidas Superstar sneakers in the classic “Cloud White” colorway with “Core Black” detailing. “Originally made for basketball courts in the ’70s. Celebrated by hip hop royalty in the ’80s. The adidas Superstar shoe is now a lifestyle staple for streetwear enthusiasts,” Adidas describes the iconic sneakers.

Bud’s Superstars have white leather uppers detailed with the signature textured “shell toe” and three serrated black leather stripes on each side, with a gold-foiled “SUPERSTAR” behind them. Black leather collars around the back are imprinted with the Adidas trefoil logo in white. Flat white woven cotton laces are pulled through seven sets of eyelets over each shoe, and the white rubber outsoles are zig-zagged. Bud wears black socks.

Expecting action, Bud briefly pulls on a khaki waist-length work jacket with the distinctive “red tab” against the left pocket that identifies it as a Levi’s product, specifically an iteration Levi’s® Two-Pocket Cotton Military Jacket, with a shell made from a blend of 71% washed cotton and 29% nylon. (Available via Amazon and Levi’s)

The jacket has a brass zipper up the front, with a double brass-snap closure over the standing collar, which also has a brass zipper around the back of the neck. The shoulder straps (epaulettes) contribute to the military-inspired look. The two chest pockets are covered with flaps that each close with a single brass snap, and an additional pocket set in behind the left breast pocket can be accessed through a horizontal brass zipper, reinforced against a darker tan twill tape.

“I’m not exactly a pool cleaner… I hunt vampires.”
Note the red Levi’s tab against the left pocket on Bud’s jacket.

Bud wears unique aviator-style sunglasses that also appear to be a favorite of Jamie Foxx’s as the actor has worn them off-screen, specifically in content posted to his social media accounts as well as at Day Shift opening events. In fact, they may even be a pair from Foxx’s designer collection through Privé Revaux.

The half-rimmed sunglasses have thin nickel silver frames across the top of the blue gradient-tinted lenses.

Bud wears an all-black Casio G-Shock GA100-1A1 watch that’s tough enough to withstand the rigors of his violent profession while also helping him organize his life, as we observe when he uses one of the five available alarms to remind himself to pick up Paige. (The screen-worn watch was identified at Watch-ID. You can read more about or purchase the GA100-1A1 from Casio and Amazon.)

A hybrid of analog and digital functionality, the “three-eyed” GA100-1A1 boasts a trio of sub-dials across the top, four large LCD displays, and lightweight aluminum and minute hands, with a millisecond stopwatch and speedometer in addition to the standard time and date functions. The watch has a hefty 55mm black resin case, offering shock resistance, JIS class-1 magnetic resistance, and water resistance down to 200 meters. The black resin bracelet straps to Bud’s left wrist through a brushed steel double-prong buckle.

Despite his estrangement from Jocelyn, Bud continues wearing his gold wedding ring.

The Guns

Bud carries a TTI Glock 45 Combat Master, significantly modified by Taran Tactical Innovators (TTI), as his signature pistol, named “Snake Eyes” in reference to the hand-painted pair of dice on each side of the stipple-wrapped grips. In conjunction with Day Shift‘s release, Taran Tactical began marketing “Snake Eyes” for between $2,454.99 and $2,675.99, depending on whether it would have the standard 4.5-lb. trigger pull or a lighter 2.25-2.75-lb. trigger pull.

The pistol was built from the Glock 45, a 9x19mm Parabellum pistol introduced in October 2018. To over-simplify, the Glock 45 follows the design of the Glock 19X but in a non-reflective black finish, with a compact Glock 19 slide—albeit with front slide serrations—and the grip of a full-size Glock 17. The Gen 5-style flared magazine well lacks a front lip, thus allowing the Glock 45 to take 17-round magazines.

The TTI customizations most visibly included finishing the slide in a high-polish silver (apropos vampires’ famous vulnerability) with beveled slide cuts rather than the straight serrations of a standard Glock 45.

Due to a desperate financial situation, Bud is forced to temporarily part with “Snake Eyes” when he sells it to Troy.

Bud keeps a backup Glock that he tries to hand to Seth, who explains he doesn’t believe in guns after a traumatizing childhood incident with a squirrel and a BB gun. Based on the unique profile of this Glock, this appears to be the Glock 43 with a distinctive “slimline” subcompact frame that makes the model a popular choice for concealed carry. Developed during the 4th generation of Glock pistols, the Glock 43’s then-revolutionary “slimline” frame made it the first 9mm Glock pistol to feed from single-stack magazines.

Seth doesn’t appreciate Bud’s offer of a backup Glock to take on “vamps” during his first day on the job.

Bud’s arguably most effective weapon for killing vampires is his short-barreled Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip. The removed stock and 14″-long barrel convert the shotgun into an extremely portable close-quarters combat weapon, with the receiver and magazine tube also finished in silver while retaining the standard blued barrel, blued pistol grip, and glossy walnut slide.

Given vampires’ in-universe wood allergy, Bud loads the 12-gauge shells with beads of panga wood (“strongest African hardwood, not that Ikea shit,” he clarifies) mixed with garlic. He keeps up to six shells carried in black loops against the left side of the shotgun’s frame.

Flanked by the well-armed Nazarian brothers, Bud keeps his shotgun ready for action as he enters a Valley vamp hive.

Bud’s arsenal also includes dozens of knives and “garlic grenades” filled with garlic and sawdust, which he’d never actually had the opportunity to use before his partnership with Seth.

How to Get the Look

Jamie Foxx as Bud Jablonski in Day Shift (2022)

Bud Jablonski builds a comfortably utilitarian wardrobe for fighting vampires, consisting of cool-hued aloha shirts, olive cargo pants, classic Adidas sneakers, and a sturdy G-Shock that bridge being effectively tactical while also allowing him to blend in while working in the Valley.

• Green tropical-printed polyester aloha shirt with camp collar, non-matched pocket, and plain front
• Olive-green cotton twill flat front cargo pants with belt loops, side pockets, inverted box-pleated cargo pockets, flapped back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown leather belt with single-prong buckle
• Adidas Superstar white leather sneakers with three black leather side stripes and white rubber zig-zagged outsoles
• Black socks
• Silver-framed semi-rimmed aviator-style sunglasses with blue gradient lenses
• Gold wedding band
• Casio G-Shock GA100-1A1 “ana-digi” watch with 55mm black resin case and black resin strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, currently streaming on Netflix.

Footnotes

• Seth compares his and Bud’s partnership to Crockett and Tubbs, an obvious reference to the pair of detectives on the ’80s TV show Miami Vice but possibly also a nod to Foxx’s performance as Tubbs in the 2006 cinematic adaptation of the series.
• The name Bud Jablonski reminded me of Jock Yablonski, a crusading United Mine Workers leader who was assassinated alongside his wife and daughter in their southwest Pennsylvania home on New Year’s Eve 1969 after he challenged the fraudulent results of the UMW’s presidential election. The Jablonski/Yablonski name and Day Shift‘s union-centric plot may be mere coincidences, but they felt significant to me!

The Quote

Yes, I absolutely am a changed man. I’ve cut out pork and cartoons and minimal white women.

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Bill Cummings as Quist in Thunderball (1965)

Vitals

Bill Cummings as Quist, silent yet easily subdued SPECTRE henchman

Nassau, Summer 1965

Film: Thunderball
Release Date: December 29, 1965
Director: Terence Young
Wardrobe Designer: Anthony Mendleson

Background

As summer winds to an unofficial end, I want to continue celebrating some of my favorite warm-weather fashions. During a recent rewatch of Thunderball, I was again struck by how contemporary the men’s summer style remains almost sixty years later, with tropical prints and terry cloth still best-sellers for many modern-day outfitters.

Naturally, Sean Connery’s wardrobe as 007 remains a highlight, but I also delighted in the aloha shirts worn by his allies Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) as well as the beach-wear sported by a character so minor that he’s routinely dismissed not just by the characters, but even the movie itself as Bill Cummings’ performance goes uncredited in the official end credits cast roll.

Quist is the man’s name, mentioned on screen only once by the megalomaniac Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) in an utterance that I had long mistaken for Largo barking out a throat clearance. We first meet Quist as he slumps in a beach chair with a pair of binoculars, fulfilling his unsung duties of surveilling Largo’s glamorous mistress Domino Derval (Claudine Auger). He’s not a very subtle watchdog, with his monitoring methods no more sophisticated than leering at Domino from several yards away.

Bond: Friend of yours?
Domino: He works for my guardian.
Bond: Your guardian has you watched?
Domino: (shrugs) He likes to know where I am.

At some point, Largo must give Quist the order to exterminate Bond, a task that Quist seeks to complete by hiding in the agent’s shower with a gun—or, as Roger Moore’s 007 may have quipped, “a water pistol”. 007 doesn’t even need his silenced Walther PPK to neutralize the threat, instead blasting the shower on the unfortunate Quist and slugging him in the stomach to disarm him.

“Have you seen everything you came to see?” Bond asks. “Go back to your friends and report; tell them the little fish I throw back into the sea,” before asking Leiter to toss Quist’s Beretta back to him. This may be the least seriously that Bond has ever taken one of his nemesis’ henchmen, sending the embarrassed would-be assassin back to his master…

Leiter: Who was he?
Bond: Like I said, a small fish.

While Bond may have been speaking metaphorically about tossing the “small fish” back into the sea, Largo takes the directive far more literally when he actually has Quist tossed into his private pool, where the hapless henchman meets the cruel fate of being gnawed alive by sharks as punishment for his failure, an ignoble but ultimately iconic death.

What’d He Wear?

Quist stands out as the most colorfully dressed on Largo’s henchmen, though this was likely a tactical choice as the rest of the black-clad mooks would stand out a bit too clearly while watching Domino from the beach… not to mention be prone to overheating in the heat-absorbing black clothing.

Though he’s prone to tactical errors, Quist proves to at least be effective in blending in with the touristy beach-goers in his terry-lined cabana shirt, worn both partially buttoned and totally unbuttoned as he slumps in an Adirondack beach chair. His short-sleeved shirt is entirely lined in a white piled terry toweling cotton, indeed the same absorptive cloth used in bath and beach towels to dry skin. The colorful shell is irregularly striped in white, navy, aqua, magenta, green, and rust in a manner that looks haphazardly painted: vertical on the body of the shirt, but horizontal on the sleeves and pockets. The lining extends over the top to present a white terry-lined Lido collar.

Consistent with resort-oriented leisurewear, Quist’s cabana shirt is generously sized as evident by the tops of the set-in sleeves falling off Bill Cummings’ shoulders. The short sleeves extend to Cummings’ elbows, with a short V-shaped vent on each side. Three large white buttons are spaced up the front, from mid-chest to the waist-line, with the lowest button aligned with the top of the non-matched patch pockets positioned over each hip.

What was Quist’s biggest mistake? Not getting the all-black uniform memo or wearing Calico cut pants without giving?

Quist wears pale stone-colored cotton flat-front trousers that, while less relaxed than swimwear, effectively harmonize with his resort-ready shirt while he’s lounging on the beach. The trousers have belt loops that go unused, and the waist closes with an extended button-through tab. In addition to two button-through back pockets, there are two full-top “frogmouth”-style front pockets, a style that was most fashionable through the 1960s and ’70s, as seen on many of Sean Connery’s non-suit trousers through the series.

Look, unless your workday ended with you desperately swimming for your life in a literal shark tank—a valid complain of both Quist and his portrayer, Bill Cummings—I don’t think we can really complain.

The straight-leg trousers are finished with plain-hemmed bottoms, which have a short break that clears the sand as Quist strides off the beach. His shoes are casual sneakers with espadrille-style roped soles and navy canvas uppers, though the uppers have a lace-up design more like sneakers or derbies than the traditional slip-on espadrille. The casual, beachy environment makes it particularly appropriate for Quist to go sockless with these shoes.

Quist may not be the most effective surveillance agent, but at least he’s more subtle than Felix Leiter in his seersucker suit, black tie, and black lace-ups… though both men would end up socked in the gut by James Bond within just a few scenes.

On the beach, Quist wears a plain steel wristwatch with a round yellowed dial on a black strap. Several days later (though I suspect the scene was originally intended to directly follow this one), Quist takes out 007’s shower but has swapped out his watch—likely done to protect it from water damage—for a gold ring on his left middle fingerr.

The Gun

Quist arms himself with a Beretta M1934, the compact semi-automatic pistol that—as its designation implies—was developed in the mid-1930s as the Italian firearms manufacturer Beretta’s response to the Walther PP series, which had impressed the Italian military and was seeking a new service pistol to replace its 9mm Glisenti pistols. Like the PP and PPK series, the blowback-operated  M1934 and its subsequent sister model M1935 could fire the more universal .380 ACP and .32 ACP ammunition, respectively.

The Beretta M1934 also has the distinction as the first sidearm carried by the cinematic James Bond, when he handed it over in Dr. No (1962) to be replaced by the supposedly more powerful Walther PPK, though this was a misinterpretation of a similar scene from the novel Doctor No in which 007 had replaced his older .25-caliber Beretta with a .32-caliber Walther PPK; whether it was budget limitations or inattention to firearms, Dr. No instead featured a .380-caliber Beretta M1934 as the pistol to be replaced by the similarly powered .380-caliber Walther PP.

By From Russia With Love, the Bond series was paying slightly more attention to how they were arming their famous secret agent as it was now a .32-caliber Walther PPK that Sean Connery slipped into 007’s shoulder holster. The Beretta M1934 was then reserved specifically for Bond’s enemies, specifically the deadly Count Lippe (Guy Doleman)… and the decidedly less dangerous Quist.

Kudos to Quist for maintaining a grip on his Beretta even after Bond briefly knocks his lights out… thought 007 does seem to then knock it out of his hand with considerable ease.

The “Modello 1934” gained a reputation for reliability though not without some operational concerns, such as the fact that “the hammer remained operable even with the safety engaged, which was a potentially dangerous flaw in an otherwise very good handgun,” according to Martin J. Dougherty in Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia. Additionally, the slide doesn’t remain locked back after the magazine is removed, slowing down the reloading process. Despite these issues, the M1934 remained in Italian service until the 1980s, when it was replaced by the revolutionary Beretta 92F and 92FS series.

How to Get the Look

Bill Cummings as Quist in Thunderball (1965)

Terry-lined cabana shirts are great for comfortably drying off after a day in the water, though poor Quist’s shirt wouldn’t do him much good after it gets soaked first in James Bond’s shower and then again for a decidedly final time when he’s tossed into Emilio Largo’s shark pool.

Of course, that’s assuming George Costanza hasn’t sold your cabana-wear to a secondhand antique boutique…

• Multicolor-striped short-sleeved cabana shirt with white terrycloth collar and lining, three-button front, and patch hip pockets
• Pale stone-colored cotton flat front trousers with belt loops, “frogmouth” full-top front pockets, button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Navy canvas rope-soled sneakers
• Gold ring, left middle finger
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round yellowed dial on black leather strap

Do Yourself A Favor And…

Check out the movie.

Footnote

So what do we know about Bill Cummings, besides the fact that the accent for his sole line delivery (“You are going to shoot me in the back!”) doesn’t seem to match the actor’s very English name!

Born either in 1920 or 1928, Cummings was primarily a stunt performer who was paid $450 to jump into Largo’s pool of sharks. His career included stuntwork in nearly all Bond movies from Dr. No through For Your Eyes Only (with the exception of Moonraker) as well as several episodes of The Saint and The Prisoner and high-profile films like Cleopatra (1963), Casino Royale (1967), and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976). According to the James Bond Fandom wiki, Cummings ran a greengrocer’s store in Surrey before his death in February 2002.

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Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (1974)

Vitals

Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway, impressionable bachelor and bond salesman

Long Island to New York City, Late Summer 1925

Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: March 29, 1974
Director: Jack Clayton
Costume Designer: Theoni V. Aldredge
Clothes by: Ralph Lauren

Background

Just as the summer began with a look at Nick Carraway’s white linen suit as his portrayer Sam Waterston narrated his arrival at a pivotal dinner with the Buchanans in the 1974 cinematic adaptation of The Great Gatsby, let’s bring it to a close by looking at how Nick dresses when returning to their estate on the climactic afternoon of his 30th birthday, which likely would have been sometime around Labor Day. (The movie updated the setting to 1925, though F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel was set throughout the summer of 1922, which would have placed Nick’s birthday around 100 years ago today on Monday, September 4.)

Following the growing flirtations—and their implied consummation—between his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow) and his mysterious millionaire neighbor Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford), Nick begrudgingly joins Daisy and her hulking husband Tom (Bruce Dern) as they host Gatsby and Jordan Baker (Lois Chiles) for a tense and sweltering afternoon. As Fitzgerald wrote, the “day was broiling, almost the last, certainly the warmest of the summer… In this heat every extra gesture was an affront to the common store of life.”

The crystallic cinematography of The Great Gatsby captures every bead of sweat, whether inspired by heat, passion, or merely those extra gestures, as they drip down the privileged quartet’s foreheads and necks. The tension sprawls from East Egg and into New York City—specifically a suite at the Plaza Hotel—where the love triangle leaves none unscathed… excepting, perhaps, the always-unflappable Miss Baker. After dismissing his wife and her erstwhile lover from the room, Tom gets to work on opening a bottle of whiskey, offering some to a vacant Nick who, in his increasing cynicism, had failed until now to realize the personal significance of the day:

“…I just remembered that today’s my birthday.” I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous menacing road of a new decade.

What’d He Wear?

Despite a humbler lifestyle and financial situation than his wealthy neighbors, the Nick Carraway of this adaptation is still a natty dresser who benefits from Theoni V. Aldredge’s Academy Award-winning costume design. Indeed, if not for the famously pink-suited Gatsby stealing the sartorial attention Nick may be the standout fashion icon in any other movie, deftly balancing elegance, flash, and tradition with his army of summer-ready suits, navy blazers, business suits, and spectator shoes.

On the afternoon of Gatsby’s “goddamn pink suit”, Nick dresses for the boiling late summer heat in a beige suit with the irregular slubs and proneness to wrinkle characteristic of linen and raw silk. Even as social norms loosened over the course of the roaring ’20s, sartorial decorum expected gents to sport three-piece suits even in the oppressive heat of late summer, thus Nick and Gatsby are wise to choose the light-wearing linen, doubtlessly keeping cooler than the more conservative Tom in his dove-gray gabardine suit.

An enduring image from The Great Gatsby showcases Theoni V. Aldredge’s colorful suits for the film’s three male leads through the climactic afternoon. Nick may wear a neutral-toned suit, but his yellow shirt and tie suggest an allegiance with his purer-hearted neighbor in Gatsby’s battle against Tom.

Nick’s beige linen suit uniquely contrasts the bleached white linen sport suit he’d worn to dine with the Buchanans at the beginning of summer. At the time, he was unvarnished and impressionable, vulnerably clad in white while still heeding his father’s advice to give people the benefit of the doubt before they had the opportunity to prove him wrong. Now, several months later, Nick remains generally neutral in his light beige, but he’s seen enough irresponsible behavior from the filthy rich that some of his vulnerability has been replaced by cynicism, a philosophical phenomenon that would only gain momentum over the following days.

The beige suit jacket follows a more traditional design than the sporty white suit with its “action-back” belted jacket and pleated pockets. Instead, the single-breasted beige jacket has a plain ventless back, straight jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket that Nick dresses with a dark brown silk pocket square. He wouldn’t wear this suit to his midtown office, so it’s appropriately detailed with some subtle sportiness like the gently “swelled” welting following the edges of his notch lapels. (The lapels, for what it’s worth, are of a width more consistent with contemporary ’70s fashion than what would have been commonly seen on ’20s suits.)

Nick’s suit jacket has a 3/2-roll (meaning the lapels roll over the top of three buttons), which has a tradition among the major geographic tailoring regions. “Traditional American brands like Brooks Brothers and J. Press popularized this style in the United States with their natural-shouldered un-darted sack suits,” Matt Spaiser wrote for Bond Suits of the 3/2-roll, and a Yale grad like Nick would have been familiar with these Ivy-associated outfitters. However, Nick’s suit has padded shoulders and front darts shaping the silhouette, suggesting a suit that hadn’t been designed to resemble strictly American fashions of the Jazz Age. The sleeves are finished with four off-white buttons that resemble those on the front of the jacket.

A not-so-happy birthday for Nick Carraway.

The suit has a single-breasted waistcoat (vest) with off-white buttons and welted edges that echo the jacket. The waistcoat’s six buttons rise to mid-chest, appropriately high for the era, while Nick also correctly leaves the bottom button undone. The waistcoat has four welted pockets, and Nick wears his gold pocket watch in the lower right pocket with a gold chain strung “single Albert”-style through a hole adjacent the fourth buttonhole with a bar-shaped fob hanging down.

Gatsby’s double-breasted waistcoat presents a dashing contrast to Nick’s more traditional single-breasted waistcoat.

After witnessing Gatsby’s colorful shirt collection supplied by Turnbull & Asser, Nick may have been inspired to depart from his typical white and blue by donning a bright yellow cotton shirt patterned with white pencil-width banker stripes. (As I mentioned earlier, the yellow shirt could be Aldredge’s symbolic stretch to align Nick with both Gatsby’s famous yellow car and even a similarly dressed Daisy… though that feels like I’m just overthinking again.)

The shirt also has a front placket and rounded single cuffs, a more formal alternative to double (French) cuffs, which Nick fastens with a set of flat gold oval links that match his other gold jewelry like his watch chain and collar pin.

The shirt’s spread collar is fastened behind the tie knot by a gold safety-style collar pin, both a handsome period detail as well as an effective character piece for the upright Nick, as the neat presentation of a collar pin generally prevents the wearer from loosening his collar and tie. “Considered by many shirt savants to be the pinnacle of collared carriage, this is not neck trapping to hide behind,” writes Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man. “Unlike the cutaway or button-down, the pinned collar’s stylishness rises or falls in relation to the skill of its execution.”

Nick maintains a low-contrast look with a yellow silk tie, patterned with a repeating print of neatly arranged paisley “teardrops” in navy and cream with prominent burgundy centers.

As these screenshots suggest, Nick and Jordan spend much of this sequence sitting next to each other and looking sullen.

The flat-front suit trousers are detailed with slanted side pockets and turn-ups (cuffs), which break over the tops of his spectator shoes. The term “spectator” may best describe Nick’s role as a mostly silent witness to the brewing love triangle between Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy, though these two-toned lace-ups have also been known through history as “correspondent shoes” in disparaging reference to their association with the “third parties” named as co-respondents in adultery-related divorce cases; uniquely, the “third party” in this case—Gatsby—wears plain white bucks while Nick and Tom each wear spectator shoes.

Unlike Tom’s black-and-white shoes that reflect his uncomplicated notion of how the world should function, Nick wears a gentler brown-and-white configuration. The vamps are white, while the wingtips, lace panels, and heels are russet-brown leather, continued up the leg-line by Nick’s dark chocolate brown socks. These spectator oxfords appear to be among Nick’s favorite shoes when not dressed for the city, as we had earlier seen him wearing them for a solitary dinner at home during one of Gatsby’s parties across his lawn and again with his tan gabardine suit while hosting Gatsby and Daisy’s first reunion after five eight years apart.

Though the novel depicts Nick handing over a straw hat upon entering the Buchanan home, the movie does not feature either Nick or Tom wearing hats, a possible oversight as it would’ve still been an expected practice in the early 1920s for most men to wear hats outdoors. (For his part, at least Gatsby wears a white newsboy cap which—combined with Redford’s flat caps in The Sting the year prior—contributed to this style’s revival through the mid-’70s.)

How to Get the Look

Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (1974)

Though summer is almost over, you can reach out and hold it back by channeling the linen-tailored elegance of The Great Gatsby. Even for those lacking the boldness—or resources—to drape yourself in pink linen like the eponymous millionaire, find inspiration from Nick Carraway’s accessible dashes of color like a yellow striped shirt and tie to spice up an otherwise neutral beige suit, accessorized with gold hardware like collar pin, cuff links, and watch.

• Beige linen suit:
  • Single-breasted 3/2-roll jacket with wide notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single-breasted 6-button waistcoat with four welted pockets
  • Flat front trousers with slanted side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• Yellow (with white banker stripes) cotton shirt with pinned spread collar, front placket, and single cuffs
  • Gold safety-style collar pin
  • Gold oval cuff links
• Yellow mini paisley-printed silk tie
• Brown-and-white leather wingtip spectator oxfords
• Dark brown cotton lisle socks
• Gold pocket watch on gold “single Albert”-style chain

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read the book.

The Quote

She’s got an indiscreet voice.

The post The Great Gatsby: Sam Waterston’s Beige Linen Birthday Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.

Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty in On the Road (2012)

Vitals

Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty, impulsive drifter based on Beat Generation figure Neal Cassady

New York to San Francisco, via New Orleans, Winter 1949

Film: On the Road
Release Date: October 12, 2012
Director: Walter Salles
Costume Designer: Danny Glicker

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This Sunday was the 75th anniversary of when On the Road was published in September 4, 1957. Jack Kerouac’s seminal Beat Generation novel had been years in the making, beginning with his continuous, single-spaced 120-page “scroll” that he typed across three weeks in April 1951, almost immediately after returning from the last of the book’s depicted travels.

With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I’d often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off. Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he actually was born on the road, when his parents were passing through Salt Lake City in 1926, in a jalopy, on their way to Los Angeles.

Though Kerouac hardly shied away from including seedier details of his friend’s life, On the Road became something of a hagiography centered around Dean Moriarty, the alter ego he developed for his real-life pal Neal Cassady. With the same excitement of the Dexter Gordon, Lionel Hampton, and George Shearing performances they celebrate, the impulsive Dean steals the spotlight much as he and his fellow travelers steal to support their travels, or offset “the cost of living”, as they rationalize.

Despite considerable interest—including from the author himself—in cinematic adaptations, it wouldn’t be until more than a half-century passed that cameras would finally roll on bringing On the Road to the screen. Francis Ford Coppola had held the rights since 1979, holding on through decades of development hell until the artistic critical success of The Motorcycle Diaries encouraged him to hand over the reins to director Walter Salles and writer José Rivera. Salles again collaborated with cinematographer Éric Gautier, whose photography brought mid-century America back to life across the small towns, sandy deserts, and snowy hillsides that resisted generations of change.

Garrett Hedlund’s appropriately kinetic performance as the dangerously charismatic Dean also emerged as one of the strongest aspects of Salles’ On the Road adaptation, with Owen Gleiberman writing for Entertainment Weekly that “the best thing in the movie is Garrett Hedlund’s performance as Dean Moriarty, whose hunger for life—avid, erotic, insatiable, destructive—kindles a fire that will light the way to a new era.”

With Dean Moriarty at the wheel, there’s no guarantee about a traveler’s destination beyond the fact that they’ll reach it at rapid speed.

“We were leaving confusion and nonsense behind, performing our one noble function of the time: move,” narrates Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) as he embarks on yet another journey, this time with Dean and Dean’s young girlfriend Marylou (Kristen Stewart), just after New Year’s Day 1949. Their first stop is to see “Old Bull” Lee (Viggo Mortensen) in New Orleans, when they plan to drop off Ed Dunkel (Danny Morgan) with his long-suffering wife Galatea (Elisabeth Moss) before heading west for California, specifically San Francisco.

What’d He Wear?

Dean Moriarty is a generally simple dresser, who needs little more than a plain white T-shirt and his hardy jeans and boots to store his minimal possessions as he aimlessly roams the country.

A standout piece of Dean’s limited road closet is a khaki flight jacket that he pulls on for this wintry leg of their journey. With its mouton fur collar and non-leather shell, Dean’s jacket echoes military styles, specifically the garment marketed by The Real McCoy’s as the MJ1911 U.S.N. Cotton Flight Jacket, which could be described as a contemporary B-10 flight jacket but with the nylon shell replaced with the corded “jungle cloth” cotton of the N-1 deck jacket. Whether the Navy ever actually issued a jacket like this remains a mystery to me, as I can find no record of an “MJ1911” or similar jackets produced during the World War II era or later.

Dean and his traveling companions showcase an array of practical outerwear when they’re pulled over in Virginia.

Dean’s jacket appears to have a softer serge shell, but still follows the overall style with its simple blouson-like design with dark brown ribbed cuffs and hem and slash-style hand pockets. the jacket is lined with a dark brown quilted polyester that provides an additional layer of warmth.

“A weary young fellow, muscular and ragged in a T-shirt,” was Sal’s first description of Dean after not having seen him for a year before arriving on his brother’s doorstep on Christmas 1948. Like the real Neal Cassady, the screen Dean cycles through a variety of plain white cotton undershirts, worn on their own like short-sleeved T-shirts in a style that would be popularized through the ’50s by screen rebels like Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. (Interestingly, Brando had been Kerouac’s own choice to play Dean during early talks of a cinematic adaptation.)

As evident by the signature red tab sewn along the back right pocket, Dean’s light blue denim jeans are the classic Levi’s 501® Original Fit style, naturally distressed from his insouciant nomadic life. Dean’s jeans resemble modern Levi’s, though this is due to the fact that 501 had mostly evolved to its current state by the movie’s late 1940s setting. Belt loops had been a fixture of the 501 since 1922, the red tab since 1936, and the old-fashioned back cinch and suspender buttons had also been removed since before World War II.

In fact, a brief closer look at the back pockets of Dean’s Levi’s suggests an authentic pair of mid-century Levi’s with the pockets sewn over to cover the copper rivets rather than the bar-tacking that replaced the rivets in 1966.

While Sal appreciates the broken-in informality of GI-style khakis, Dean’s already channeling the denim boom that would popularize jeans among rebels of the ’50s… while Old Bull Lee doesn’t seem to have much use for pants at all.

For someone as itinerant as Dean, who may not always have a fast car at his disposal or any means to find one, solid footwear is essential. Dean thus appoints himself with a pair of worn-in and well-traveled brown leather cap-toe work boots with hard leather soles. The derby-laced system consists of four pairs of brass eyelets and another trio of nickeled speed hooks that Dean often ignores when tying the round brown laces.

Dean and Marylou literally knock boots to pass the time during a rainy leg—so to speak—of their road trip. Note their respective jackets strewn above the seats.

What to Listen to

Jazz features significantly in the novel On the Road, not just as the subject to which its characters remain most loyal but also in driving the improvisational rhythm of Kerouac’s fluid writing, particularly in passages depicting Dean Moriarty’s frantically paced lifestyle.

To properly get in gear with Sal and Dean, a Spotify user named Jim Campbell masterfully curated a 24-track playlist of all music specifically mentioned in On the Road:

The 2012 movie somewhat departs from these tunes with its soundtrack, perhaps due to licensing issues or creative choices, though there’s some overlap with artists like Charlie Parker, Slim Gaillard, and Billie Holiday, whose “Lover Man” is mentioned in the book while her 1937 recording of “A Sailboat in the Moonlight” (featuring Lester Young on tenor sax) plays as Dean and Marylou neck in the backseat of his Hudson Commodore sedan.

The Car

After Sal’s first road trip in On the Road comprised primarily of hitchhiking and cramped buses, the second trip offers the luxury of a car, specifically the maroon 1949 Hudson Commodore sedan that Dean brings to his family’s front door on Christmas.

Having left the snowy eastern seaboard behind, Dean pushes his prized Hudson through small towns of the southwest en route San Francisco.

The screen-used sedan echoes the “mud-spattered ’49 Hudson” that Sal describes Dean driving up to his brother’s Virginia home at the start of part two in On the Road. As the real Neal Cassady was a prolific car thief, it would seem that Dean obtained the brand-new Commodore—then the largest and most luxurious of Hudson’s automotive lineup—through less-than-legitimate means, though Dean insists that he purchased it with his savings after a $400/month job working on the railroad with Ed Dunkel. Having spotted the Hudson for sale, Dean describes having bought the car on the spot after withdrawing “his entire roll” from the bank, leaving the newly laid-off Dean broke but in possession of a sleek new sedan.

Hudson had introduced the Commodore for the 1941 model year, halting production after only a year, as the American automotive industry shifted its focus to war materiel for the duration of World War II. Just weeks after V-J Day in August 1945, Hudson resumed production, with the renewed ’46 and ’47 Commodore models following prewar styling cues. For 1948, Hudson introduced a sleeker “step-down” redesign by Frank Spring, with the Commodore available in a trio of body styles and either six- or eight-cylinder engines.

Though initially popular, the Commodore was phased out in 1952 as Hudson trimmed its redesigned cars that were already looking outdated as American automakers vied for supremacy throughout the fabulous fifties.

How to Get the Look

Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart in costume for On the Road (2012), though Hedlund’s hair differs from how he would appear on screen during this sequence.

Depicted several years before big-screen rebels of the ’50s would popularize jackets half-zipped over plain white T-shirts and jeans, Dean Moriarty favored this easy practicality with his fur-collared khaki flight jacket pulled on for hours behind the wheel.

• Khaki cotton-shell flight jacket with taupe mouton fur collar, brass front zip, slanted slash pockets, and dark brown ribbed-knit cuffs and hem
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt/T-shirt
• Light blue wash denim Levi’s 501 Original Fit jeans
• Brown leather cap-toe derby-laced work boots
• Brown socks

Costume designer Danny Glicker may have been inspired to include the jacket for its resemblance to the nylon B-10 jacket that Jack Kerouac had been photographed wearing around the same time with his fellow Beat pal Al Hinkle, who was portrayed as “Ed Dunkel” in On the Road and became the “last man standing” of its colorful characters until Hinkle’s death in December 2018 at age 92.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and read Kerouac’s 1957 novel: both the published version and the author’s “original scroll” are available.

The Astro Zone

As stated in Kerouac’s opening chapter, Neal Cassady had indeed been born in Salt Lake City in 1926, February 8 to be exact, and the magnetic, rootless, intelligent yet unmotivated, and ultimately enigmatic Cassady—and his literary counterpart Dean Moriarty—could be argued to be the quintessential Aquarius.

The post On the Road: Dean Moriarty’s Fur-collar Flight Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Sid Caesar in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Vitals

Sid Caesar as Melville Crump, honeymooning dentist

Southern California, Summer 1962

Film: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Release Date: November 7, 1963
Director: Stanley Kramer
Costume Designer: Bill Thomas

Background

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Sid Caesar, the pioneering comic actor whose influential variety series Your Show of Shows set a new standard during what some call the first “Golden Age of Television”, though I first knew Caesar for his part among the ensemble cast of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

This extravagant comedy holds a special place for me as one I used to watch on countless weekends spent with my grandma, putting the double-VHS set through considerable paces while following a growing number of mid-century entertainers join a madcap pursuit for $350,000. As with so many of the movies I associate with this halcyon period of childhood, it introduced me to the talents of so many great entertainers, many of whom are sadly almost forgotten today.

The movie begins with a black Ford speeding through mountainous desert roads of southern California before careening off a cliff—just sailing right out there—and bringing the four carloads of people he passed braking to a halt as the occupants spill out to check on the driver, a charismatic old crook played by Jimmy Durante who uses his last gasps to inform his limited audience of the buried proceeds of a tuna factory robbery under “a big W” before kicking the bucket.

The five men who witnessed Smiler Grogan’s final words gather farther up Route 74 to confront their own suspicious behavior.

The men—played by Caesar, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, and Jonathan Winters—barely have time to mutually agree to keep the “Smiler”‘s cryptic last words to themselves before the police arrive, though their camaraderie swiftly evolves into competition as each desperately race to find the mysterious treasure first, whether by air, land, or sea, unwittingly enlisting a number of newcomers to the chase… including beleaguered Santa Rosita police captain T.G. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy).

Caesar portrays Melville Crump, a dentist on his second honeymoon with his wife Monica (Edie Adams), who may have the greatest initial advantage as far as relative smarts and abilities as well as a capable partner. Of course, the greater the dollar signs grow in his eyes, the more his judgment is clouded and the Crumps are soon clambering through World War I-era aircraft and stymied by a hardware store backroom so full of dangerous calamities that you’d think they made an enemy of Kevin McCallister.

What’d He Wear?

At least at the start, Melville Crump is the only of the treasure-hunters from Smiler’s Route 74 crash who wears a full suit and tie, evidently dressed to celebrate his second honeymoon in style. The gray suiting has tonal track stripes as well as a sheen and slubbing suggestive of dupioni silk, which makes the suit’s ultimate fate all the more tragic. Characterized by its irregular slubs and lustrous surface, the tightly plain-woven dupioni was a popular fabric for men’s tailoring through the ’50s and ’60s.

Monica and Melville keep a watchful eye on their fellow fortune-hunters.

Crump’s single-breasted suit jacket is structured with straight, padded shoulders and roped sleeveheads. The edge-stitched notch lapels are moderately narrow, though the effect is somewhat reduced as the lapels end higher to accommodate the three-button front that effectively balances Sid Caesar’s 6’2″ height. The recessed black buttons on the front are echoed by three smaller buttons on each cuff. The ventless jacket has a welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets.

J. Russell Finch, Melville Crump, Ding Bell, and Benjy Benjamin marvel at how Smiler’s Ford just “sailed right out there!”

The suit’s matching flat front trousers rise to Caesar’s natural waist, where he holds them up with a narrow belt of smooth black leather that has a silver-toned square buckle pulled off to the left side. The trousers have vertical on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

Crump’s shirt is a very pale blue cotton, styled with a fashionably slim button-down collar, wider front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs. Never actually seen tightened up to the neck, Crump’s narrow black necktie is tied in a tight half-Windsor knot that manages to withstand the rigors of the dilapidated vintage flight, the fiery storage room destruction, digging under the big W, and the ultimate chase that results in the good doctor being launched through the air and crashing into a stairwell.

Crump coordinates his belt and shoe leather with a pair of simple yet handsome black calf leather derbies with short two-eyelet lace panels, which extend the appearance of the plain-toed vamp, a style that Matt Spaiser described for Bond Suits as far more common among English shoemakers than American. The degree of Dr. Crump’s unrelenting physical calamities provide plenty of opportunity for his trouser legs to pull up, showing his plain black cotton lisle socks.

Luckily, Dr. Crump keeps his derbies laced firmly enough that he doesn’t lose his shoes when accidentally stepping through the delicate floor of a nearly 50-year-old aircraft at several hundred feet up.

Sid Caesar amassed an impressive collection of wristwatches over the course of his life, including: a distinctive 18-karat gold Audemars Piguet watch on a woven gold bracelet (Julien’s Live), a gold self-winding Bulova gifted to Caesar by Mike Todd in 1957 (Julien’s Live), a 14-karat yellow gold Concord watch presented by the Friar’s Club in 1983 (Julien’s Live), a 14-karat yellow gold LeCoultre “Wrist Alarm” (Julien’s Live), and a gold Rolex Day-Date worn later in life (Jake’s Rolex Magazine), and a pair of stainless watches made by Hamilton and SEIKO (Julien’s Live).

Caesar’s screen-worn watch in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World doesn’t receive much prominent screen time, though its appearances reveal a light gold finish on the case and expanding band and a ringed silver round dial detailed with non-numeric hour markers, an arced complication across the top, and a bubbled center window.

Dr. Crump’s suit—and prospects of a fortune—meets an ignominious end, but let’s hope that watch kept on tickin’.

The Car

The Crumps had set out for their second honeymoon in a blue 1962 Plymouth Fury station wagon. Plymouth had introduced the Fury as a sub-series of the full-size Belvedere in 1956, introducing it as its own model for the 1959 model year before its first facelift only a year later for the ’60 and ’61 models.

Chrysler introduced the B-body platform for 1962, which included the now-downscaled Fury (and would eventually include classic muscle like the Dodge Charger and Plymouth Road Runner.) ’62 was also the first year that the four-year wagon as driven by the Crumps fell strictly under the Fury nameplate without being marketed as a Sport Suburban. Plymouth sold the now mid-size Fury in a range of engines from the 225 cubic-inch “Economy Six” up to the high-performing 426 cubic-inch “Wedge” V8, though the ’62 four-door wagon models were offered only in mid-range V8 engines (318 and 361 cubic-inch).

Of these, the motor powering the Crump family wagon is likely lost to history, though we can assume by what we see of the wagon—and how it’s “driven”—that said engine is mated to Chrysler’s three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission rather than the optional three-speed manual.

The Crumps’ Plymouth station wagon maintains a tight lead against Ding Bell and Benjy Benjamin’s Volkswagen cabriolet once the race is on.

To my recollection, the Crumps’ station wagon is the only one of the four “original” cars from Smiler’s crash scene to never get damaged, as they leave it on the airfield—dusty but undamaged—after commissioning a vintage plane to fly to Santa Rosita.

Plymouth would continue manufacturing the venerable Fury through the late 1970s, alternating the nameplate between mid-size and full-size model, before it was rebranded “Gran Fury” for a series of boxy sedans and quietly discontinued after the 1989 model year.

How to Get the Look

Sid Caesar and Edie Adams in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Of all the male leads in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Sid Caesar scored a style “W” with his eye-catching striped silk suit that unfortunately gets increasingly mistreated over the course of Dr. Crump’s pursuit of wealth.

• Gray track-striped dupioni silk suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, ventless back
  • Flat-front trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Pale-blue cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Black tie
• Black calf leather 2-eyelet plain-toe derby shoes
• Black cotton lisle socks
• Gold wristwatch with round silver ringed dial on gold expanding bracelet

Do Yourself A Favor And…

Check out the movie. I also recommend finding Ernest Gold’s soundtrack, which can be quite an ear-worm once you get past some of the kitschy choral verses.

The Quote

What kind of a man is gonna play a practical joke on complete strangers with every bone in his body broken?

The post Sid Caesar in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World appeared first on BAMF Style.

Cary Grant as Walter Eckland in Father Goose (1964)

Vitals

Cary Grant as Walter Eckland, crude and reluctant wartime coast-watcher

Pacific Islands, Spring 1942

Film: Father Goose
Release Date: December 10, 1964
Director: Ralph Nelson
Costume Designer: Ray Aghayan (uncredited)

Background

Last month, I reflected on the elegant white suit that Cary Grant wore at the start of his stylish career in the pre-Code drama Hot Saturday. More than 30 years later, Grant was firmly established as one of the most charming—and enduringly best-dressed—stars of the era, subverting his screen reputation for his penultimate movie, the World War II-set comedy Father Goose opposite Leslie Caron.

It’s great fun to watch Grant as essentially a drunken beach bum… or an “undisciplined, self-indulged escapist” as Caron’s character describes him. Grant stars as grumpy beachcomber Walter Eckland who, after being caught “pinching petrol” from an Australian naval station during the evacuation of Salamaua, is coerced into Allied service as a civilian coast-watcher stationed from the deserted Matalava Island in the Pacific (though filmed in Jamaica). To guarantee Walter’s compliance with his unlikely assignment, his old Royal Navy pal Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard) pierces a sizable hole into Walter’s boat to reduce its service into little more than a floating dock fo his dinghy, then hides cases of Walter’s beloved Black & White whisky around the island, only offering instructions to find them with each report.

Walter’s aversion to work is overpowered by his taste for Scotch, and he reluctantly settles into his duties by reporting back on the Japanese bombers flying overhead. He manages to negotiate the remaining cache of whisky after Frank instructs him to retrieve an abandoned coast-watcher from nearby Bundy Island. The thirsty Walter makes the journey by boat, only to find the watcher dead and buried… and the rifle-toting French consular school teacher Catherine Freneau (Caron) with seven schoolgirls under her care.

I am not a father figure, I am not an uncle figure, or a brother figure, or a cousin figure. In fact, the only figure I intend being is a total stranger figure!

What’d He Wear?

Walter Eckland cycles through three different shirts over the course of Father Goose. At the start of the movie, he wears a pink cotton shirt with a button-down collar, front placket, box-pleated back, and button cuffs that he wears partially turned back just as Grant had several years earlier with his off-the-rack OCBD for the finale of North by Northwest. A brief vignette during the opening credits shows Walter wearing the shirt tucked in, as it was intended to be worn, but he otherwise wears it untucked, consistent with his more casual—some may say sloppy—presentation.

He wears gray wool flat front trousers with a black leather belt, styled with slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets (with a button through the back-left pocket), and plain-hemmed bottoms.

As Walter settles into his work on the desert island, he appropriately changes into a chambray work shirt made of indigo and white end-on-end cotton, presenting a lighter indigo appearance. The shirt has a spread collar, plain back sans pleats, and a front placket with slate-colored plastic buttons and white contrast-threaded edge stitching, echoing the barrel cuffs and pocket flaps. The two chest pockets each close through a single-buttoned flap, with a pen slot “buttonhole” sewn through the left flap.

Consistent with the military-influenced chambray shirt, Walter also wears a pair of khaki chino cotton flat front trousers similar to those being issued to American servicemen at the time. He holds up these trousers with a plain brown leather belt with a squared brass single-prong buckle, informing us that even with such a minimalist wardrobe, Walter still keeps multiple belts.

A peek inside the waistband of the trousers flashes what appears to be the red-embroidered label for Western Costume Co., the venerable Hollywood costume house that has supplied scores of movies since it was established in 1912. These trousers have side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. The scene of Walter undressing in front of Catherine reveals a hidden hook-and-bar closure and long zip fly, a feature that had been growing increasing popular on men’s trousers in lieu of the traditional button fly.

Evidently, Walter considers this blue chambray work shirt to be his dressiest attire available, as he launders it and wears it for the ceremonial occasion of his remotely ordained wedding to Catherine. For this, he’s offered a dark green neckerchief by the young Harriet (Jennifer Berrington), but—as it was a necktie that resulted in Walter’s decision to remove himself from society in the first place—Catherine turns it down on his behalf: “Ties don’t suit Mr. Eckland.”

He also wears the work shirt tucked in, having swapped out his greasy khakis for the dressier pair of gray flat front slacks that he wore with his pink shirt during the opening sequence, the tucked-in shirt showing more of his edge-stitched black leather belt with its two leather keepers and silver-toned single-prong buckle. Walter further surprises the girls by wearing socks, especially a set of white ribbed tube socks, explaining to them: “you see, my feet were chilly!”

Walter tidies up his appearance with a shave, socks, and a laundered shirt.

By this point in Cary Grant’s career, the actor had become quite comfortable with slipping down to his skivvies on screen, as evident by his decoy shower in North by Northwest and his dressing in a taxi cab’s backseat in That Touch of Mink.

Father Goose is no exception, as Walter shows the same lack of shyness about slipping out of his trousers in front of Catherine for a Scotch-induced snooze, revealing his plain white cotton boxer shorts.

Hat on, pants off, whisky in hand, Walter settles in for a comfortable sleep.

For the rainy night when Frank issues Walter his added mission of retrieving his intended relief from Bundy Island, Walter protects himself with the light but effective layer of a rain slicker in a martial shade of olive-drab green like the U.S.-issued M1938 of rubberized canvas or the resin-coated M1942, though Walter’s simple slicker has brown popper-style buttons rather than the more traditional buttons on the military slickers.

After Catherine and her seven charges rob Walter’s boat, he’s initially left with little else to wear but his khaki cotton work shirt. Given the nature of his duties, it appropriately echoes the service shirts issued to many Allied branches of the military at the time. The long-sleeved shirt has a front placket, two chest pockets with pointed flaps, and barrel cuffs, all fastened with light brown plastic buttons.

Might Father Goose be one of the few instances of Cary Grant wearing jeans on screen? It certainly befits both the character and context that Walter would have a set of blue denim dungarees that he pulls on for the rigors of his military-sanctioned island life, and the cut, wash, and styling of his pants worn with this shirt indeed suggests jeans. Walter’s jeans have pointed ranch-style belt loops and curved front pockets, detailed with metal rivets in the corners.

Catherine’s oversized button-down shirt may be intended to be “borrowed” from Walter, though her shirt color is a more vibrant hot pink than the lighter pink that Walter had worn when he first arrived on the island.

Walter also rotates through a pair of well-traveled hats, the first being a mariner’s peaked cap apropos his maritime vocation. The cap has a dirty khaki cotton cover, wide black band, and dusty black leather visor.

In his khaki peaked cap and nearly matching service-style work shirt, civilian Walter almost looks the part for the military duties he’s conducting.

Walter also sporadically swaps out his peaked cap for a dark brown felt trilby with a short, self-edged brim and a narrow band of dark brown grosgrain.

Though Walter changes his shirts, trousers, hats, and even belts, the one constant of his wardrobe are the increasingly dirty deck sneakers, designed in the low-top circular vamp oxford (CVO) style with white canvas uppers and thick white rubber outsoles, likely with siped bottoms that would allow him greater traction on the exposed decks of his boat.

From this age of actors wearing their personal jewelry on screen regardless of role (consider also the respective rings worn by Humphrey Bogart and Robert Redford), Cary Grant’s usual gold-chain necklace can be seen around his neck under his shirts, said to be ornamented with religious charms signifying the respective beliefs of his former wives.

Walter wears his wristwatch with the dial on the inside of his wrist. Most frequently, we see a steel wristwatch with a round white dial on a worn dark brown leather strap, though this is occasionally swapped out for a more elegant gold tank watch with a squared dial, likely Grant’s own watch that appeared on screen as the result of a costume-related continuity error.

Of the two different watches, I suspect the simpler round-cased watch was intended to be “Walter’s” watch while Grant’s gold tank watch occasionally slipped into the finished film as well.

What to Imbibe

“When he gets thirsty enough, he’ll drink,” Frank Houghton comments of his old pal Walter, who indeed allows himself to be baited into naval coast-watching service by the promise of stores of Black & White blended Scotch whisky hidden throughout Matalava Island.

After his mission to Bundy Island, Walter proudly replenishes his cache of Black & White whisky.

The Black & White whisky story dates back to the 1880s, when Canadian-born businessman began marketing his “Buchanan Blend” whisky to address what he perceived to be a fruitful market opportunity in England for bottled whisky. The blend was first renamed “House of Commons” in recognition of its legislative audience, though it became even more recognizable for its two-color label that led to the official rebranding of “Black & White” in 1902. The brand would become additionally familiar for the pair of terriers—one black, one white, naturally—illustrating the labels.

Walter’s habitual consumption of this accessible blended whisky disgusts Catherine, who commands him “as for your drinking, that must stop immediately.”

Note the distinctive black Scottish terrier and West Highland White Terrier bedecking the whisky’s famous labels.

The Gun

The Royal Navy arms Walter with a bolt-action rifle in his shack. Admittedly, I’m not much of an expert in long arms, and there’s no existing documentation on IMFDB, but I can observe that the rifle has double-set triggers, a “butter knife”-style bolt handle, and what appears to be a short box magazine. I’ve found limited suggestions online, some suggesting that the rifle is a sporterized Mauser 98 while others suggest a Mannlicher–Schönauer.

Among the tools of Walter’s trade are an aircraft recognition poster and a bolt-action rifle.

Walter carries the rifle on many occasions, including when he and Catherine first encounter each other on Bundy Island while carrying nearly identical rifles, as she likely sourced hers from the now-deceased coast-watcher whom Walter had intended to meet.

Luckily, neither Walter nor Catherine have itchy trigger fingers that would have cut their initial meeting unfortunately short.

Walter also arms himself with an Enfield No. 2 Mk I* revolver, likely also issued to him by the Royal Navy as it was fielded alongside the venerated Webley revolver in British service at the time, both chambered in .38/200 (also known as .38 S&W Short).

The Enfield No. 2 Mk I had been developed at the Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) Enfield in the early 1930s, echoing the familiar top-break frame as seen on the Webley. In 1938, the revolver was retooled as the No. 2 Mk I* with a spurless hammer that rendered it essentially double-action only, compensated for this with a lighter mainspring that eased the shot.

The spurless hammer and large gilt circles on the grips easily identify the revolver in Walter’s waistband as the British-issued Enfield No. 2 Mk I*.

How to Get the Look

Being shipped out to a deserted island to watch for enemy planes? Walter Eckland’s wardrobe may have been intended to make him look slobbish during Father Goose‘s World War II setting, but his limited closet of collared shirts and tailored trousers may be considerable more presentable than the clothes some men take on beach vacations today!

For those curious, the full Walter Eckland island packing list seems to consist of lightweight but hardy workwear:

• Shirts:
  • Pink cotton long-sleeved shirt with button-down collar, front placket, and button cuffs
  • Indigo-blue chambray cotton long-sleeved work shirt with spread collar, two chest pockets with button-down flaps, and button cuffs
  • Khaki cotton long-sleeved work shirt with point collar, two chest pockets with pointed button-down flaps, and button cuffs
• Trousers:
  • Gray wool flat front trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
  • Khaki chino cotton flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
  • Blue denim jeans with ranch-style pointed belt loops, curved front pockets with rivets, and patch-style back pockets
• Belts:
  • Black edge-stitched leather belt with silver-toned squared single-prong buckle
  • Brown leather belt with brass squared single-prong buckle
• White canvas oxford-laced CVO deck sneakers
• White ribbed tube socks
• White cotton boxer shorts
• Peaked mariner’s cap with soft khaki cotton cover and black leather visor
• Dark brown felt short-brimmed trilby with narrow dark brown grosgrain band
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round white dial on dark brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Several years ago, I made peace with the world. Now, if the world isn’t bright enough to make peace with itself, it’ll have to settle things without me.

The post Cary Grant in Father Goose appeared first on BAMF Style.

Bradley Cooper as Jackson Maine in A Star is Born (2018)

Vitals

Bradley Cooper as Jackson Maine, charismatic country-rock star

Los Angeles, Spring 2017

Film: A Star is Born
Release Date: October 5, 2018
Director: Bradley Cooper
Costume Designer: Erin Benach

Background

My friend @thestyleisnotenough recently recommended writing about Bradley Cooper’s style in his directorial debut A Star is Born, in which he starred as Jackson Maine, a rock star with an outlaw country image that belies his self-esteem and substance abuse issues.

Premiering four years ago during the Venice Film Festival, this Oscar-nominated drama was the fourth major cinematic adaptation of the story, which had been previously filmed in 1937, 1954, and 1976. The two earlier versions focused on the movies, while the 1976 and 2018 adaptations shifted to the music industry, as evident from the opening sequence that follows the charismatic yet self-destructive Jack out onto the stage to perform the original song “Black Eyes”.

Jack’s ride home after the Friday night concert gets slowed by traffic so, craving a drink, he has his driver find him a spot to wait it out, the first available establishment being a drag bar where he discovers Ally (Lady Gaga) singing “La vie en rose”, a song that Cooper reportedly insisted be included after the actor was wowed by Gaga’s rendition at a cancer benefit in real life. Smitten with both the performer and her talents, Jack takes Ally out for another drink at a “cop bar”, where her brawl with an aggressive fan of Jack’s results in a late-night run for frozen veggies, gauze tape, and cheese curls… the latter unrelated to healing Ally’s busted hand.

After dropping her off early the next morning—and we all remember the “I just wanted to take another look at you” memes—Jack invites Ally to his show at the Greek Theatre, where he invites her out on stage to introduce her singing/songwriting talents to the world, kickstarting their personal and professional relationship.

What’d He Wear?

Jackson Maine’s costumes ring with as much authenticity as Bradley Cooper’s performance, presenting a rock star with a relatively modest and limited sense of dress, rooted in hardy workwear traditions as much as his bluesy, blue-collar sound. Costume designer Erin Benach approached Jack’s wardrobe as a “uniform” from which he would rarely deviate. “We loved the idea that Jack would have a very small closet and a silhouette he rarely ventures out of,” Benach explained to Magazine Michele Franzese Moda. “He’s not trying to impress anyone anymore. You can almost imagine he doesn’t think about his clothing, that he has three pairs of pants, four shirts, one jacket, and an air of nonchalance about him. You’ll never see him picking out his clothes.”

A staple of Jack’s wardrobe is a tan cotton twill trucker jacket, specifically made for the production by Runabout Goods but presented with gently fraying edges and enough distress to suggest that it’s a well-worn favorite from his closet.

Jack typically reserves his tan canvas jacket for his off-stage life—as the construction would likely limit his movement during performances—but he keeps it on for the impromptu intimacy of a late-night request while waiting for Ally in the drag bar.

Runabout Goods appropriately markets their commercially available version as the Starborn Jacket, made from the same rinsed 12-ounce tan duck canvas in a style that “pays tribute to classic ’50s and ’60s single-pleat jackets produced by the likes of Foremost and Ranchcraft.” Unlike Lee and Levi’s trucker jackets of the era, Foremost and Ranchcraft typically designed their waist-length work jackets with extra hand pockets that brought the grand total of external pockets to four.

Jack’s tan jacket has two patch pockets over the chest, each with a pointed bottom and a rectangular flap that closes through a single button, plus a pen slot above the top of the left pocket flap. In addition, the aforementioned hand pockets have slanted set-in welted entries. Five brass-finished rivet buttons close up the front, echoing the same buttons that close the chest pocket flaps and the squared cuffs. (The buttons are finished with “RISING SUN | L.A., CALIF.” reflecting the company’s original name before its founder Mike Hodis rebranded the brand as Runabout Goods.)

The bright florescent lighting of the Super A brings out every detail of Jack’s canvas trucker jacket.

The center is flanked on each side by a single forward-facing pleat, fastened by three brass tacks that align with the buttons and buttonholes. The sleeves are set-in, with horizontal yokes across the front and back. (Unlike the commercially available Starborn Jacket, Cooper’s screen-worn jacket lacks any buckle-strap side-adjusters.)

In addition to his first-aid items to treat Ally’s hand, Jack satiates one of his less self-destructive cravings.

Shop the jacket: Runabout Goods Starborn Jacket in tan canvas (Runabout Goods, $295)

Jack seems to favor black shirts and pants, a nod to his country rock forebears like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Roy Orbison, the latter of whom would be memorably featured in A Star is Born when a drug-hazed Jack would perform in a tribute to the Big O at the Grammys.

“He had his performance shirt,” explained Erin Benach in an interview with Jazz Tangcay for Awards Daily. “I found a button-down shirt from the ’70s that I loved, but I didn’t like the collar so I changed that. I changed the body a bit. It was a super-curated look. It looks like we went to a store and bought it, but it was all handmade.”

Jack rotates through a collection of mostly identical black shirts, textured with a tonal graph check that presents a subtle sheen under the bright stage lights. He exclusively wears these long-sleeved shirts untucked, letting the long rounded shirt-tails flare out under the cropped jacket hem. These shirts are designed with a point collar, breast pocket, button cuffs, and a plain (no placket) front that Jack typically wears with the top few buttons undone.

Production photo by Clay Enos.

His habit of wearing his shirts untucked with the tails hanging over the back prevent us from discerning much detail of Jack’s usual black jeans from what we see on screen, as the shirt hem covers any potentially telltale detailing on the back pockets. (For what it’s worth, Jack’s brother and manager Bobby appears to wear black Wrangler jeans, as evident by the brand’s signature tan leather patch over the back-right pocket.)

They appear to be designed with the standard five-pocket design—two curved front pockets with a set-in watch pocket on the right, plus two back pockets—and are held up with a wide dark brown leather belt fastened through a thick brass-finished single-prong buckle.

A familiar scene on tour for the Maine brothers as Bobby (Sam Elliott) places a passed-out Jack in bed. Note the distinctive Wrangler patch on the back of Bobby’s black jeans.

Jack’s brown leather boots are styled with buckled straps over the boots characteristic of the classic engineering boots that grew popular among motorcyclists in mid-century, a style that the bona fide biker Jack would have come by honestly. As we see after Bobby puts him to bed, Jack wears plain black boot socks, which cover his shins comfortably enough under the calf-high rise of the boots. (“You know, I can never get used to that… the idea of not wearing socks,” Jack quips to Ally’s new manager Rez, who wears short “female insert” no-show socks with his suede oxfords.)

The boots have brown full-grain leather uppers and Goodyear-welted hard leather soles with honeycomb-textured tread.

The distinctive buckled straps of Jack’s engineer boots are seen as he gets close to Ally in the Super A parking lot as seen in this behind-the-scenes photo credited to W. Blanco (Premiere/BACKGRID), depicting a scene from the film that had been initially interpreted as Lady Gaga nursing a genuine on-set injury in a Daily Mail article that ran prior to the film’s release.

Erin Benach joked with Awards Daily that the process for finding Jackson’s hat involved trying on “150 cowboy hats a million and two times… you would laugh at us if you knew how many times we tried it on. We built them after we found them. We were just trying them on. It’s not just about the head and the fit.”

Unlike some country performers who incorporate cowboy hats as part of their on-stage image, Jack typically reserves his for off-stage, reinforcing the authenticity of his good ol’ boy persona. Made of dark brown felt with very little pinch to the crown, Jack’s wide-brimmed hat has a narrow golden tan woven leather band.

While rehearsing for his show at the Greek, Jack wears a pair of Persol PO0714 sunglasses, designed with a center-folding frame and made famous by the “King of Cool” himself, Steve McQueen. Jack’s Persols are color code 24/31, indicating the “Havana” tortoise frames and crystal green lenses.

While the shirt is more subdued, the degree to which it’s unbuttoned—plus the sunglasses and guitar—remind me of George Harrison’s Cloud Nine album cover.

Shop the sunglasses: Persol PO0714, color code 24/31 (Amazon, $335; Sunglass Hut, $335)

Jack wears a silver-chain necklace with a silver rectangular pendant with a relief of what appears to be a trio of flowers growing out of a single stem. Jack also added a plain gold ring to the chain, which collects around the pendant.

As Jack typically wears button-up shirts, he keeps the necklaces tucked under them against his chest but a brief vignette of Jack and Ally stepping off of the tour bus depicts him wearing a plain heathered gray cotton T-shirt under his tan trucker jacket, with his necklace worn over it.

Production photo of Jack and Ally on tour.

Jack does eventually rotate between several other jackets of similar colors or styles, including a black denim trucker jacket and a tan suede snap-front shirt-jacket with a large ’70s-style collar, but this tan trucker jacket reappears toward the end when Jack returns home and reunites with Ally after his stint in rehab.

What to Imbibe

“You think maybe he drinks a bit much?” Bobby quips after he passes out one night in his hotel room. Admittedly, Jackson Maine does not set a great example when seeking how to imbibe, but his drink of choice appears to be “gin on the rocks” as he orders at the drag bar. He’s often seen pouring from a squared bottle, and he often drinks it with a lime such as seen at the Short Stop, the “cop bar” near Dodger Stadium where he takes Ally.

How to Get the Look

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga on the set of A Star is Born (2018)

There’s nothing shallow about it: Jackson Maine’s lived-in style is as weathered as its wearer—if perhaps more ultimately resilient. His cowboy hat and black shirt and jeans reflect his outlaw country heritage, layered under a functional tan trucker jacket and completed with a pair of engineer boots popular among motorcyclists like Jack himself.

• Tan canvas trucker jacket with front and back yokes, five brass rivet buttons, tack-fastened forward-facing front pleats, two pointed chest pockets with squared button-down flaps, two slanted set-in welted hand pockets, and squared button cuffs
• Black tonal graph-check shirt with point collar, plain front, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Black denim jeans
• Dark brown leather belt with heavy brass single-prong buckle
• Brown leather engineer boots with buckle-straps
• Black boot socks
• Dark brown felt cowboy hat with narrow woven tan leather band
• Persol PO0714 Havana tortoise-framed folding sunglasses with crystal green lenses
• Silver necklace with silver pendant and gold ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie as well as its Grammy-winning soundtrack.

As a country rock star brimming with charisma, if slightly aloof—particularly when his senses are dulled by substances—Jackson Maine’s demeanor, hard partying, and outlaw country image and music style reminded of a modern-day Waylon Jennings.

Waylon had been a contemporary and frequent bandmate of Kris Kristofferson, who portrayed the lead in the 1976 version of A Star is Born. Additionally, the 2018 version includes several references to another Waylon contemporary and friend: Willie Nelson, both as Bobby’s new boss and via the appearance of his son Lukas as a member of Jack’s band, a nod to Lukas having taught and coached Cooper in his role.

For an additional connection, Waylon and his wife Jessi Colter somewhat lived a real-life version of the on-screen drama, albeit with a thankfully happier ending after Waylon finally kicked his extensive drug habit in the ’80s. Waylon and Jessi had married in 1969, a year before she released her debut record album. The title of that album? A Country Star is Born.

The Quote

If there’s one reason we’re supposed to be here, it’s to say something so people wanna hear it.

The post A Star is Born: Bradley Cooper’s Tan Trucker Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ian McShane as Flight Sergeant Andy Moore in Battle of Britain (1969)

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Ian McShane as Flight Sergeant Andy Moore, Royal Air Force pilot

England, Summer 1940

Film: Battle of Britain
Release Date: September 15, 1969
Director: Guy Hamilton
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today commemorates the anniversary of a decisive aerial battle in the skies over England that marked one of the first substantial Allied victories in World War II. Luftwaffe attacks on British ports and fleets had launched the Battle of Britain in June 1940, followed by sporadic and deadly raids that culminated with a German attempt to essentially eradicate any British defenses to clear the way for Operation Sea Lion, Hitler’s intended invasion of England.  On September 15, two waves of German attacks on London were successfully repelled by the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy, primarily the No. 11 Group RAF, a decisive defense that prompted then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill to famously declare: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

29 years later to the day, Battle of Britain was released in the grand tradition of star-studded war epics, boasting a talented cast that included Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Kenneth More, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw, and a relative newcomer named Ian McShane.

Born exactly two years and two weeks after the eponymous conflict, McShane distinguished himself on stage and screen before joining the ensemble cast of Battle of Britain in the memorable role of sergeant pilot Andy Moore, a non-commissioned RAF aviator. The practice of non-commissioned officers training and qualified to fly as active military pilots was generally phased out after World War II but was considerably common among all sides during the first world wars as aviation was gaining an increasing foothold in armed conflict.

This level of non-commissioned participation may have inspired the RAF’s then reputation as “a distinctly middle-class organization, carrying with it a whiff of gasoline and engine lubricants,” as Thomas E. Ricks describes in Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom. “In fact, some aspects of the class system did manage to persist in the RAF… Class differences also reached into the cockpit — RAF officers generally enjoyed the helpful privilege of flying the same aircraft every day, while sergeant pilots were assigned whatever machine was available.”

Fictional but no doubt representative of the many pilots who balanced families and flight duties during the Battle of Britain, the relatively taciturn Moore is almost invariably seen palling around with his outgoing friend Archie (Edward Fox), a commissioned Pilot Officer with a penchant for natty neckwear. Moore returns to London on leave during the Luftwaffe’s September 1940 bombing campaign, dismayed that his family has returned home from their evacuation in the country but enthusiastic about presenting his children with gifts of model Spitfires. He demands that his wife (Isla Blair) again retreats with their two sons, but the couple’s argument is interrupted when an air warden enlists Moore among the volunteers to quickly assist a family trapped in a nearby bombed house.

“I’ll be back, love,” Moore promises his wife, later returning only to discover that his wife and children had been killed by a round of German bombing that destroyed the church where they took refuge, adding a tragic poignancy to the young pilot taking to the skies for revenge during the climactic battle.

What’d He Wear?

In the Air: Flying Attire

While he and his fellow pilots wait to be called into airborne action, FS Moore differentiates himself from the uniformed commissioned officers in his one-piece flight coveralls. Rather than the contemporary Sidcot, Prestige, or Beadon patterns authorized by the RAF, Moore’s overalls resemble British civilian utility workwear that would be permitted the following year under the CC41 rationing scheme. For an example, see these almost identical Beacon coveralls at Militaria Zone, where their presence suggests that they were indeed purchased and worn by British service members. (A similar style would soon be authorized across the pond as the AN-3-31, issued by the USAAF and U.S. Navy and also featured at Militaria Zone.)

Moore’s overalls are made from a slate-colored cotton drill, a shade grayer than the typical blue of RAF uniforms. The top half zips up from below the waist to the neck, where there’s a plain, soft shirt-style collar. A large box-pleated patch pocket is positioned on each side of the chest, each covered by a slightly pointed flaps that each close through a single button. Any possible back pockets go unseen as Moore spends most of the sequence seated, though folded fabrics at his sides indicate side-entry hand pockets.

The set-in sleeves are elasticized at each cuff, with his flight sergeant (OR-7) insignia sewn on each forearm. The rank is signified by the three chevrons that seem to be the universal designation for sergeants, here pointed downward and embroidered in light blue against a navy ground with a brass King’s Crown positioned just above their vertex, the crown differentiating flight sergeants from more junior-ranking sergeants.

Archie and Andy comfortably await their next round of orders.

Moore’s base layer is a trim turtleneck sweater in powder-blue wool with a ribbed roll-neck, a more colorful and fitted alternative to the classic white jumpers that had been approved by the Air Ministry for service.

The legs of Moore’s coveralls are tucked into his black leather flying boots, which may be the only piece of his wardrobe in this scene that I can trace back to contemporary RAF gear as the belted straps over the short vents at the top of each shaft echo the style of the shearling-lined 1936 pattern that RAF fliers wore at the time. Moore also wears knee-high white cotton leg-warmer socks with a wide red band around the top, visible as the portion that rises above the boot openings.

Like the rest of his squadron called to action during the Germans’ ultimately failed Adlertag (“Eagle Day”) attack on August 13, 1940, Moore quickly pulls on flight gear, beginning with the rubberized cotton orange life preserver known as the “Mae West” in reference to wearers’ similarities to the famously voluptuous entertainer. As also worn by his senior officer “Skipper”, Moore’s briefly seen Mae West life vest looks like the anachronistic 22c/1350 “Waistcoat, Jacket, Lfie-Saving, Aircrew, Mk 3” that wouldn’t be issued until after World War II. Though non-commissioned airmen typically wore knitted wool gloves, FS Moore bucks habit with his russet brown 1933 pattern gauntlets.

Moore also wears a dark brown leather flying helmet, with the large-domed and zippered ear-pads suggesting the contemporary Type B that had been issued since 1936. Moore’s olive drab Type D oxygen mask was also the type correctly worn during the Battle of Britain, though it snaps to the outside of his flying helmet rather than the inside as expected.

Despite the correct helmet and mask, Moore’s flight goggles resemble the anachronistic Mk VII (22c/827) that was introduced two years later, characterized by the brown leather nose padding and drab webbed strap extending around the back of his head.

On the Ground: Army Battle Dress

During the post-Eagle Day counter-attack against the Germans, Moore survives some hits to the left wing that delay his return to base. Upon seeing that Moore has returned, Squadron Leader “Skipper” (Robert Shaw) barks at him: “Where the hell have you been?!”

Moore: Learning to swim.
Skipper: You get one?
Moore: All I got was a belly-ful of English Channel.

Based on his appearance, it can be inferred that Moore was removed from his wet clothing and given the first dry gear that could be sourced, a brown wool British Army battle dress jacket and chunky turtleneck. He would later wear the same mixed gray-and-black marled wool jumper with his service dress uniform.

Later in 1940, the RAF would introduce their own blue-gray “war service dress” equivalent to the Army’s established battle dress, as prominently featured in movies like The Great Escape.

No. 1 Service Dress

Back in London, FS Moore proudly wears his No. 1 Service Dress uniform, even enduring the taunting of a young boy who disbelieves the airman’s claim of flying Spitfires. “You’re not a fighter pilot!” the boy shouts, then tests him by demanding “unbutton your top button!” in the unofficial but celebrated tradition of RAF pilots. Moore obeys with a smirk, only for the boy to counter “anybody can do that!”

The No. 1 Service Dress uniforms for both officers and non-commissioned “other ranks” have remained virtually unchanged since the early 1920s, comprised of matching blue wool belted tunics and trousers. Though all ranks follow generally the same dress code, non-commissioned service uniforms are traditionally a heavier wool serge than the smooth barathea of commissioned officers’ uniforms. Representative of the typical class disparity between the ranks, officers’ uniforms were more exactingly tailored with straight shoulders and drape, while service uniforms for “other ranks” (ORs) like our heroic flight sergeant were more loosely constructed.

Moore’s service uniform jacket follows the usual design, with short notch lapels rolling to the top of four crested gilt buttons, the lowest positioned along the bottom edge of the full belt that extends around the waist and closes through a tall gold-toned double-prong buckle. Four pockets are covered with flaps, with the box-pleated chest pockets covered with scalloped single-button flaps and the larger patch-style pockets over the hips covered with non-buttoning flaps.

Note the subtle differences in fabric and tunic design between the No. 1 Service Dress uniforms worn by commissioned Pilot Officer Archie (Edward Fox) and the non-commissioned Flight Sergeant Andy Moore; Archie wears a smoother, darker blue barathea tunic with bellows hip pockets that close with buttoned flaps, while Andy’s is made from a heavier wool and has plainer patch pockets over the hips with non-buttoning flaps. Both pilots have their top buttons undone, of course.

As on his flying overalls, Moore wears his flight sergeant sleeve insignia of three descending chevrons under a brass crown though with the addition of the RAF Eagle badge patched on each shoulder. Designed with a light blue eagle embroidered against a dark blue cotton drill rectangular ground, its eyes and beak turned to the rear.

Per Moore’s status as a pilot, he also wears the silk aircrew brevet badge comprised of the white letters “RAF” embroidered inside a brown laurel wreath, a white King’s crown embroidered above it, and flanked on each side by white embroidered swift’s wings.

FS Moore returns home to find London amid flaming destruction.

Moore wears the standard soft side cap in a blue-gray wool serge to match his uniform, referred to as a “forage cap” in the RAF and distinguished by its longitudinal “fore-and-after” cut and two functional gilt buttons on the front that can be undone to pull down the scalloped side flaps to function as ear-flaps in inclement weather. Introduced in the mid-1930s, the field service forage cap was worn by all RAF ranks through World War II until it was superseded by the newer blue beret around 1950.

Like the uniforms themselves, forage caps differed between officers and ORs, with officers’ caps made from barathea wool to match their respective uniforms while ORs wore caps of rougher blue serge to resemble their own. Cap badges also differed, as officers wore the two-piece crown and wings while ORs like FS Moore wore the larger all-brass badge that featured the letters “RAF” flanked by laurels and topped by a King’s Crown.

Upon its inception in 1918, the RAF differed from the British Army and Royal Navy in that all of its service members wore neckties instead of just officers. We hardly see much of Moore’s light blue end-on-end cotton shirt, but it appears to be the correct pullover tunic-type long-sleeved shirt worn at the time by “ordinary airmen” with a half-placket and neckband for the matching spread collar to be attached and fastened with gold studs. (See Blighty Militaria for an example of a similar shirt from the time.) Moore completes the look with his authorized black cotton tie, knotted in a four-in-hand.

FS Moore and his wife react to a call for volunteers after an ARP warden reports a family in need of assistance.

Moore’s buttoned jacket covers the top of his trousers, but we can assume they’re the contemporary flat-front trousers made to match the blue serge tunic with a long rise detailed with six double sets of buttons to connect to suspenders (braces) that would hold them up in lieu of a belt or side-adjusters. World War II-era service dress trousers were traditionally designed with a button-fly, on-seam side pockets only, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

When on leave in London and not at the airfield, Moore wears black leather low derby shoes, with the correct plain toes rather than the toe-caps reserved only for officers. Moore wears light slate-blue socks that continue the look of his uniform into his shoes, though I can’t tell if these were authorized as I’ve typically only seen white or black wool socks specified for RAF airmen of that era.

Moore’s low black lace-up derbies are visible as he crouches to pull out one of the Spitfire models he brought as gifts for his sons.

For those on the lookout, McShane’s screen-worn service uniform from Battle of Britain was included—but not sold—in a Heritage Auctions lot in 2018, with the listing and photo still online.

FS Moore’s Uniform

Ian McShane as Flight Sergeant Andy Moore in Battle of Britain (1969)

Don’t steal valor by wearing the uniform or insignia that wasn’t deserved, but you can pay tribute to the bespoke nonchalance of “the few” who took to the skies to protect Britain during that September day more than 80 years ago with unique touches like layering turtlenecks with workwear, wearing crested metal buttons (with the top one undone, of course), or showing some boldly striped hosiery.

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress uniform jacket with notch lapels, self-belt with double-prong tall gold buckle, four-button single-breasted front, box-pleated chest pockets with scalloped button-down flaps, patch hip pockets with rectangular flaps, and single vent
  • RAF Flight Sergeant sleeve insignia
  • RAF eagle patches on shoulders
  • RAF aircrew brevet “wings” patch over left breast
• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress uniform flat-front trousers with suspender buttons, on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Light blue end-on-end cotton long-sleeve pullover shirt with detachable spread collar, front half-placket, and button cuffs
• Black cotton tie
• Black RAF 1936 pattern flying boots with plain toe and buckle-tab top strap
• Red-banded white wool knee-high socks
• Blue-gray wool serge RAF “forage cap” with two crested front buttons and scalloped side flaps

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Silly bitch!

The post Battle of Britain: Ian McShane’s RAF Uniforms appeared first on BAMF Style.

Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly in Reilly: Ace of Spies (Episode 3: “The Visiting Fireman”)

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Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly, shrewd and opportunistic Russian-born British agent

Hamburg, Germany, Spring 1905

Series: Reilly: Ace of Spies
Episode: “The Visiting Fireman” (Episode 3)
Air Date: September 14, 1983
Director: Martin Campbell
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller

Background

In honor of Sam Neill’s 75th birthday this week, I want to revisit one of my favorite roles for the New Zealand actor. Almost a decade before his starring role in the groundbreaking groundshaking blockbuster Jurassic Park, Neill had been one of the contenders suggested to replace Roger Moore as James Bond, though the actor himself had been reluctant to take what he’s since called a “mortifying” audition and was likely grateful when the role went to Timothy Dalton instead. Neill may have been considered after his excellent performance earlier in the ’80s as Sidney Reilly, a real-life spy whose early 20th century exploits had been cited by Ian Fleming as one of his inspirations for the literary 007.

Reilly, Ace of Spies debuted on ITV in the fall of 1983, with 12 episodes spanning the first quarter of the 20th century. The stylish series was scripted by Troy Kennedy Martin, adapted from Robin Bruce Lockhart’s biography Ace of Spies, chronicling the man who had spied with his own father, Scottish-born diplomat R.H. Bruce Lockhart. In addition to the overall espionage themes of the series and Neill’s later audition, Reilly, Ace of Spies‘s connections to the Bond series include the work of costume designer Elizabeth Waller—who was costume designer for For Your Eyes Only two years earlier—and a handful of episodes directed by Martin Campbell, who would later direct GoldenEye and Casino Royale.

Premiering on Neill’s 36th birthday, the third episode (entitled “The Visiting Fireman”) was one of the six directed by Campbell. In short, the episode chronicles Reilly’s arrival in Hamburg, replacing a murdered British agent by posing as a German welder and fireman to infiltrate the Blohm & Voss armaments factory, where he seduces his landlord’s daughter Ulla (Joanne Whalley), ruthlessly shifts suspicion onto a less-experienced and increasingly paranoid fellow spy (portrayed by a young Bill Nighy!), and secures plans for a new naval gun before making his swift escape, credited in Michael Bryant’s narration as introducing “a new age of professionalism in European espionage.”

Andrew Cook, author of Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly, acknowledges that “the story of how Reilly infiltrated the Krupps plant in Essen and made away with plans of German’s most secret weapon bears all the hallmarks of a classic Reilly storyline, with the courageous and resourceful ‘Master Spy’ triumphing against the odds,” but ultimately dismisses the story as wholly fabricated, a by-product of Reilly’s own self-aggrandizing legend. Cook dedicates an entire appendix to his investigation of Reilly’s supposed alias of Karl Hahn, which included poring through the Krupps factory archives to such an extent that he leaves little doubt that it never happened. Still, the series’ primary duty to entertain is indubitably fulfilled by this tale of espionage, seduction, and betrayal in the 007 style, though Reilly’s coldness to the situation is better established as a primary differentiation between him and the fictional James Bond.

As September 17 is recognized as Von Steuben Day, celebrating a famous German figure in the American Revolution, it further felt appropriate to highlight Reilly’s warm garb for disguising himself as a German factory worker.

What’d He Wear?

Like the cinematic spy he inspired, Sidney Reilly maintains a dashing closet of tailored suits, but he wisely adopts a hardier costume when posing as the swaggering German welder “Fricker”. The linchpin of Fricker’s workwear is a variation of a classic pea jacket, a ard-wearing short woolen coat that had been favored by seamen for centuries. Now a winter style staple that defies class and gender, the pea coat’s maritime roots had established it as a working man’s outerwear by the early 20th century when Reilly smartly chose it to anchor his limited wardrobe for his mission to Germany.

Reilly’s pea coat appears to be made from the traditional dark navy “pilot cloth”, the coarse and heavy wool that had long protected its seafaring wearers. As modeled by Reilly, pea coats are characterized by their short length, relatively trim cut, broad lapels, and double-breasted front. Reilly’s coat has widely notched lapels, swelled along the edges, with a 6×3-button double-breasted arrangement that closes the thigh-length coat over his torso. The only external pockets are horizontally positioned along his hips at hand level and covered with non-buttoning flaps. The set-in sleeves appear to have some trim along the cuffs, perhaps made from black leather.

Reilly wears a black mariner’s cap that’s consistent with the garb of a worker who may have learned his trades at sea, though—despite the name—this headgear had also been a favorite among European factory workers since the early 19th century. These caps are characterized by stiff black leather visors and soft round covers like the all-black crown on Reilly’s hat.

Around his neck, Reilly knots a paisley neckerchief in muted tones of dark navy, burgundy, green, and gold.

Reilly’s intermediate layer under his pea jacket is a gray wool waistcoat (vest) with a high-fastening four-button front, detailed with short notch lapels, a straight-cut bottom, and a dark brown satin-finished back.

Reilly settles into his undercover living situation by sharing drinks and discussing politics with Herr Glass.

Appropriate for an era where men’s shirts typically had detachable collars, Reilly’s working-class disguise cycles through a series of pencil-striped cotton collarless shirts. The neckbands have buttonholes onto which a separate collar could be attached with studs, but Reilly—as the insouciant Herr Fricker—never attaches one, leaving the top open.

He most frequently wears a white shirt with gray stripes, designed with a white contrasting neckband, front placket, and button cuffs. On occasion, he also wears a tan shirt with brown stripes, though the neckband matches the rest of the shirt and the cuffs appear to be double (French) cuffs, fastened with links.

Reilly wears dark taupe wool flat-front trousers with tall belt loops, slanted side pockets, split “fish-tail” back for braces, and plain-hemmed bottoms with a full break that envelop the tops of his black leather derby-laced work boots. His boot leather coordinates with his wide black leather heavy-duty belt, which closes through a large squared silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Perhaps given the rough nature of his work, Reilly relies on the redundancy of “belt and braces” by additionally wearing a set of suspenders (braces) that fasten to buttons along the inside of his trouser waistband. These suspenders are a gradient effect of blue along the edges, gradating to a light gray center with two dark-blue hairline stripes.

Reilly’s roommate writes of being scandalized by Reilly’s affair with Ulla Glass but makes no mention of his roommate’s penchant for belt and braces.

How to Get the Look

Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly in Reilly: Ace of Spies (Episode 3: “The Visiting Fireman”)

“The Visiting Fireman” centers around Sidney Reilly’s unique professionalism as an early 20th century spy, which no doubt includes his well-researched garb to effectively portray a lower-class factory worker whose everyday wardrobe would consist of a well-traveled pea coat and mariner’s cap over his hardy layers.

While such a costume would look just that more than a century later, there are certainly classic workwear philosophies that could be incorporated into a modern outfit without looking like you’re out to sabotage an armaments factory… unless that’s what you’re going for.

• Dark navy heavy wool pea coat with wide notch lapels, 6×3-button double-breasted front, straight flapped hip pockets, and set-in sleeves with leather-trimmed cuffs
• Gray wool four-button high-fastening single-breasted waistcoat with short notch lapels and straight-cut bottom
• White (with gray pencil stripes) cotton collarless shirt with white neckband, front placket, and button cuffs
• Dark navy, burgundy, gold, and green paisley neckerchief
• Taupe wool flat-front trousers with tall belt loops, slanted front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Blue-to-gray gradient-striped suspenders/braces
• Wide black leather belt with large squared steel single-prong buckle
• Black leather derby-laced work boots
• Black peaked mariner’s cap with black soft wool crown and black patent leather visor

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

I also recommend Andrew Cook’s Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly and Richard B. Spence’s Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly, both published in 2002 and seeking to work through the many myths to learn the truth about this secretive but significant agent of the early 20th century.

The post Sam Neill’s Peacoat as Sidney Reilly appeared first on BAMF Style.

Guy Pearce as Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential (1997)

Vitals

Guy Pearce as Ed Exley, by-the-book LAPD detective-lieutenant

Los Angeles, Spring 1953

Film: L.A. Confidential
Release Date: September 19, 1997
Director: Curtis Hanson
Costume Designer: Ruth Myers

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today is the 25th anniversary since the official release of L.A. Confidential, which premiered at Cannes in May 1997 but would finally hit theaters four months later on September 19, introducing audiences to James Ellroy’s murky world of corrupt cops, crooks, celebrities, and courtesans in ’50s Los Angeles.

Among its ensemble cast, L.A. Confidential centers around three LAPD officers: the tough but unsophisticated “Bud” White (Russell Crowe), the smooth yet morally compromised Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), and the ambitious and stubbornly upright Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). Not to spoil too much of the plot for those who have missed this gem in the last quarter-century, but one of my favorite Letterboxd reviews—submitted by user David Sims—compares the movie to The Wizard of Oz as “Bud gets a brain, Jack gets a heart, Ed gets the courage.”

Ed’s journey to Oz begins after the 30-year-old patrol sergeant aces his lieutenant’s exam and elects—despite the urging of his superior, Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell)—to join the detective bureau… leveraging his willingness to condemn crooked fellow officers to get what he wants.

The newly promoted Detective-Lieutenant Exley’s first day at the new gig begins with a rough start, running into one of those very officers—the doomed Dick Stensland (Graham Beckel)—who treats him and his box of personal effects to some middle-school bullying before Ed settles into his new desk. Hungry for success, Ed finds himself alone in the bureau office when a late-night call comes in for a homicide at the Nite Owl Coffee Shop, a bloody massacre that includes the disgraced Stensland among its half-dozen victims in a scene gruesome enough to jar even the otherwise unflappable Ed.

Though he’d built his career as a by-the-book desk jockey, fate finds Exley delivering 12-gauge justice on the trio suspected of the massacre, though “Shotgun Ed” himself remains unsure that his pump-action punishment was rightly placed. Finding surprisingly allies first in the disillusioned Sergeant Vincennes and then the impulsive Officer White, Ed embarks on a private investigation that leads him down a yellow brick road paved with drugs and deceit.

Exley: If we’re going to figure this out, we need to work together.
White: The Nite Owl made you. You want to tear all that down?
Exley: With a wrecking ball. You want to help me swing it?

Exley and White’s tenuous teaming leads them down a corpse-strewn noir alley that ends at the ironically named Victory Motel, a dilapidated series of motor cabins where White had brutally served on Smith’s “not-so-welcome wagon.” Sensing the trap closing in, the duo take up arms and hole up in one of the cabins, where they cover the windows, load their guns, and prepare for their potential fate.

Exley: All I ever wanted was to measure up to my father.
White: Now’s your chance… he died in the line of duty, didn’t he?

What’d He Wear?

Of L.A. Confidential‘s trio of primary leads, Ed Exley displays the most sophisticated and timeless sense of dress. Often clad in flashy silks and fashionable atomic fleck jackets, Jack Vincennes is arguably the trendiest of the trio—hence getting the majority of BAMF Style attention prior to today—while Bud White, per his nature, looks uncomplicated and grounded in his off-the-rack brown separates.

Comparatively, Exley looks more uptight when dressed for his first day in “the bureau” in his tweed jacket, trad striped tie, sweater vest, and—after his fellow officers leave—the glasses that both Smith and the chief had advised he stop wearing, and which make Vincennes roll his eyes when Ed fumbles for them as they prepare for an armed raid.

On the 20th anniversary of L.A. Confidential‘s release, costume designer Ruth Myers recalled to Entertainment Weekly how she, Guy Pearce, and director Curtis Hanson had went through 185 similar pairs, ultimately choosing the semi-rimmed pair with gold wire frames as “they were slightly less in-your-face… a really good analogy for his character—the thin wire, rather determined, not quite fashionable enough.”

The semi-rimmed shape of Exley’s reviled gold specs work neatly with the dramatic angles of Guy Pearce’s face.

Myers further explained her intended color palette for each character’s costumes, specifically the grays and blues of Ed Exley’s business-wear that reflect “a kind of coldness there and also a uniformity.”

One of Exley’s most repeated pieces—and worn for the standout scenes of his discovering the Nite Owl massacre and ultimately fighting off assassins with White at the Victory Motel—is a single-breasted sports coat made from a mixed Donegal tweed that presents an overall gray-blue finish. Originally woven in County Donegal, Ireland, Donegal tweed is characterized by irregular colorful slubs against what Sir Hardy Amies described as “a rough, ‘knobbly’ surface” in The ABCs of Men’s Fashion, continuing to describe the cloth as:

… often woven with dark and light flecks of the same color, or with specks of different bright colors, making what is generally called a “pepper-and-salt” pattern. In the combing of the yarn, small flecks of colored yarn are literally dropped in at random. When the yarn is finished, it is given a slight twist to hold these flecks of color in place.

Ed Exley presents the more conservative sartorial approach compared to Vincennes’ fashionable atomic fleck jacket and “painted” tie, though Exley’s style could generally be effectively worn almost 70 years later while Vincennes’ sleek duds would be relegated to fabulous fifties costuming by the end of the decade.

It’s a standard practice for costume departments to produce multiple versions of clothing worn by a movie’s principal actors, and especially the damage incurred by Exley’s tweed jacket at the Victory Motel would require several almost identical tweed jackets in rotation. Several undamaged jackets have survived the production, as visible by a 2016 Nate D. Sanders auction and a Worthpoint display, both indicating jackets worn during similar scenes, though differences in the slub patterns illustrate that more than one jacket was used. Both jackets include tags from Western Costume Co., the venerated supplier for countless Hollywood productions since its inception in 1912.

Echoing his rigid personality, Exley’s clothing is tailored with more structure than the fashionably loose cuts of the ’50s worn by some of his colleagues, specifically Vincennes. The two-button Donegal tweed jacket has straight shoulders that slope down to heavily roped sleeveheads, with the ventless jacket itself shaped with front darts in opposition to the classic “shapeless” sack suits popularized as an American favorite by outfitters like Brooks Brothers in the early 20th century. The sleeves are finished with three-button “kissing” cuffs, and the jacket’s casual nature is further signified by patch pockets over the left breast and hips, a sportier alternative to the traditional set-in pockets on business suits.

Ed gets the last laugh—albeit, a very somber and tight-lipped one—as he emerges the last man standing in his tweed jacket and, yes, those glasses.

Of the principal leads, Exley is the most reluctant to shed his jacket to work in his shirt sleeves, making the only significant exception when he’s still dressed with the intermediate layer of a sweater vest.

Let’s address the sartorial elephant in the room and point out that sticks in the mud like Ed Exley are among the type who have contributed to sweater vests being disparaged as “uncool”, an unfortunate reputation not helped by wearers like Rick Santorum, Jim Tressel, and Steve Urkel. Despite this, many are seeking to salvage respect for the sleeveless sweater, such as style writer Tracy Moore, who suggested in an August 2018 issue of MEL Magazine that the sweater vest is merely “misunderstood”, citing BAMF Style icons like “Dirty Harry” Callahan (Clint Eastwood) and Sidney Reilly (Sam Neill) in its favor.

The history of sweater vests could also help their case, originated among the most widely accepted of “cool” pursuits—sports—beginning with rowers in the 1880s before extending into the athletic worlds of football and golf, at least remaining a staple garment of the latter.

Of course, a man by Ed Exley—driven by practicality and decorum—would appreciate the flexibility that sweater vests could offer when dressing for the office, specifically the shifting weather patterns of Los Angeles in late January, where highs of 86°F could be countered by lows of 43°F, as they were during the last week of January 1953, when this sequence takes place. If Exley’s going to remove his jacket (on his first day, no less!), he’s still going to look more presentable than his colleagues in his sweater vest, made of navy-blue widely ribbed-knit wool. Under his already warm tweed sports coat, it offers an added layer of warmth without the confinement of sleeves which could both overheat while also preventing comfort in action, should Lieutenant Exley be called into duty.

On his first day, Exley wears a white nailhead-woven cotton shirt with his usual semi-spread collar, front placket, and squared button cuffs. After taking the call for the Nite Owl massacre but before arriving at the morgue, Exley has changed into a similar shirt but made of pale-blue cotton.

Through the sequence, he wears one of the most traditional ties, patterned in alternating navy and crimson block stripes that follow the classically English “uphill” direction (rather than the American “downhill” stripe.) Each block stripe is separated by a narrow trio of crimson, white, and navy stripes. Exley regularly secures his ties with a straight gold-plated tie bar with a matte finish and a center left smooth, presumably for the addition of the wearer’s monogram.

The colorful mixed yarns slubbed in Exley’s Donegal tweed jacket call out the red and dark blue of his tie.

Two months after the Nite Owl killings, Exley again pulls on the Donegal tweed jacket he had worn when he discovered them. (Historical records for March 1953 show that the weather didn’t differ much from January, making the same attire appropriate.)

Rather than the striped tie, he nows wears a dark slate-blue silk tie, patterned with a field of navy dots though the most visible print is the brighter white dots, spaced apart like stars against a night sky (though more consistently organized as every other row of stripes seem to align vertically.)

Ed evidently lost his tie bar during the day’s scuffle with Bud White, who inflicted visible damage on both Ed and Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger).

Exley wears dark navy wool double reverse-pleated trousers, a shade darker than his blue sweater vest. The trousers rise to Guy Pearce’s natural waist, where the belt loops are slightly dropped in the fashion of trousers commonly produced through the early ’50s, as seen in this Worthpoint listing. These trousers also have side pockets with vertical, on-seam entries, and the bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) with a full break.

Exley carries his LAPD-issued Colt Detective Special in a dark brown leather belt holster, with a retention strap over the back holding the revolver in place. He wears the holster on the left side of his waist, butt-forward, for a right-handed cross-draw.

Consistent with his cool tones and conservative shades of gray and blue, Ed wears smart black calf derby shoes, detailed with a straight toe-cap. He further avoids flash by wearing dark socks, likely either navy or black.

L.A. Confidential delivers for watch aficionados with several shots of the timepieces dressing the wrists of our protagonists, from Jack Vincennes’ distinctively strapped Bulova Surf King to Ed Exley’s stainless Rolex Precision. Chris Petersen neatly described the watch for Oracle Time as “a nice, minimal 1940s-style Rolex Bubbleback, complete with bombe lugs and lovely silver-white dial,” though suspiciously powered by a quartz movement rather than the era-correct automatic movement, suggesting a prop watch rather than a genuine vintage timepiece.

Petersen suggests the watch was an heirloom inherited from Exley’s famous father, though I can’t find any indication of such in the script or finished film, instead supposing that the pristine-looking watch was a gift to himself to celebrate his promotion. Indeed, Rolex was a hot horological commodity by the early 1950s, fresh off the innovative introduction of the Datejust in 1945 and looking ahead to the subsequent rollout of the iconic Submariner dive watch in 1953, followed by the pilot-favorite GMT Master in ’54 and the elegant Day-Date in ’56.

Exley’s stainless steel Rolex has a recessed fixed bezel encircling the silver-white dial, detailed with 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock numbered in silver while the other hour markers are non-numeric. There are two silver hands for the hours and minutes, with a separate 60-second sub-register above the 6:00 position. The watch secures to Exley’s wrist on a silver expanding bracelet comprised of center-ridged links.

Ed checks his Rolex, possibly a prop built for the production to resemble contemporary bubbleback watches.

I’ll save any further detective work for horologists better informed than I, though the plain “Rolex” marking on the dial (with the five-pronged crown logo that had been in use since the early 1930s) suggests that the watch also lacks the brand’s venerated waterproof “Oyster” case as it would otherwise be marked as such.

The Guns

Colt Detective Special

L.A. Confidential presents the appropriately named Colt Detective Special as the designated sidearm of most its plainclothes gumshoes, specifically Ed Exley and Bud White, with Ed even briefly disarming the latter of his own when they two scuffle in the records room. (Deviations from the Detective Special users include the flashy Jack Vincennes, who likely chose a pearl-gripped Colt Commander to better match his image, and Captain Dudley Smith, of whom Freud might have some comment about his need for a longer-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver.)

Colt introduced the Detective Special in 1927, responding to an overall need for policemen to carry easily concealed handguns that were still reliable and relatively powerful. Up until then, police seeking “belly guns” would either use shorter-barreled variants of the Smith & Wesson .38 Hand Ejector (later known as the “Model 10”) or the smaller-framed Colt Police Positive, or they would revert to increasingly obsolete sidearms like the British Bulldog.

With its “snub-nose” two-inch barrel (that retained a relatively aimable front sight) and a six-round cylinder of the trusted .38 Special round that Smith & Wesson had pioneered around the turn of the 20th century, the Colt Detective Special marked an influential trend for concealed firearms that would appeal not just to cops but also civilians and criminals.

The most obvious visual differentiation between Colt and Smith & Wesson revolvers of the era is that Colts—like Ed Exley’s Detective Special—had a “hanging” ejector rod that lacked a covered shroud or lug which would connect the front end to the barrel.

By the early 1950s, Colt was finding newfound competition in the market for .38 Special “belly guns”, specifically after Smith & Wesson introduced the five-shot Chiefs Special (soon to be re-designated the “Model 36”) at the 1950 convention for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Still, the Detective Special’s extra sixth round in the cylinder gave it a capacity-driven edge over the Smith & Wesson.

Ed Exley would surely appreciate having the additional round in the cylinder while he and Bud White battled Dudley Smith’s army of hired goons and corrupt cops at the Victory Motel, though Exley also balanced being outgunned by arming himself with a secondary weapon, White’s M1911A1. The squared butt of Exley’s Detective Special dates it as an early model as Colt began phasing out the square butts through the ’40s in favor of the rounded grips introduced in 1933.

Exley may not have had his glasses for his raid with Vincennes or the Bunker Hill gunfight that resulted in his “Shotgun Ed” moniker, but he’s likely sporting them when fighting for his life at the Victory Motel.

M1911A1

As Exley and White realize their meeting at the Victory Motel is a trap intended to kill them, White retrieves a Colt M1911A1 Government semi-automatic pistol from his Chevy and generously tosses it—and an extra magazine—to Exley, choosing instead to arm himself primarily with a shotgun for the coming battle.

Primarily chambered for the powerful .45 ACP round, the single-action M1911A1 (and its John Browning-designed predecessor, the M1911), had served as the U.S. military’s service pistol almost from the time of its inception. The film never comments on if Bud White had served during World War II, but this could explain his familiarity and ultimate possession of an M1911A1, though the stamped text “COLT’S GOVERNMENT MODEL” on the right side of the slide implies a commercial variant.

Under heavy fire, Ed hits the deck while keeping his grip on Bud White’s cocked M1911A1 pistol.

As with the Smith & Wesson .32 Hand Ejector revolver that White had previously used to secure evidence against a rapist, there appears to be tape around the grips to presumably avoid leaving fingerprints, suggesting that White would consider this to be a relatively expendable piece kept for the purpose of planting on a suspect. (Alternatively, the grips could be cracked or broken, requiring some field dressing to keep the gun more practically functional.)

Ithaca 37

Ultimately, in the end, it’s yet again an Ithaca 37 that “Shotgun Ed” uses to get justice, this time more decidedly. This pump-action shotgun was designed in the 1930s, inspired by a patent by the late John Browning that incorporated a novel loading/ejection port on the underside of frame, leaving the sides unexposed to the elements.

Production had been several years in the making as the Ithaca Gun Company sought for several patents to expire before producing what they hoped would be a worthy competitor to the Winchester Model 1912 shotgun. The Great Depression and coming war made the late 1930s a difficult time for Ithaca to introduce a new sporting firearm, so the New York-based company kept the lights on during World War II by producing M1911 pistols and M3 grease guns for the military, though the Ithaca 37 would see degrees of military usage throughout the war as well as in Korea and especially Vietnam.

After the Allies won the war, Ithaca resumed production of the Model 37 and ultimately won the shotgun wars, remaining the only pre-World War II shotgun still in production with more than two million models manufactured and indeed surpassing the Winchester Model 1912 for the longest pump-action shotgun production run in history. Its almost-ubiquitous use by the LAPD in L.A. Confidential is rooted in history, as the NYPD and LAPD were the largest users of the Ithaca 37 outside the military, though Ithaca Gun Co. wouldn’t formally enter the law enforcement market until 1962 when it introduced two shotguns uniquely suited for police usage.

Thanks to Bud White’s discarded Ithaca 37 shotgun, Exley finally gets the chance to exact his long-awaited revenge on the mysterious Rollo Tomasi.

How to Get the Look

Guy Pearce as Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential (1997)

Less a fashion plate than his colleagues, Ed Exley’s sartorial sensibilities reflect his own practical nature as he dresses in a manner that outlasts the film’s era as tweed jackets and striped ties have yet to fall out of style… though YMMV when it comes to sweater vests.

• Gray-blue mixed Donegal tweed single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, “kissing” 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White or pale-blue nailhead-woven cotton shirt with semi-spread collar, front placket, and squared button cuffs
• Navy-and-crimson block-striped tie or dark slate-blue dotted silk tie
• Navy ribbed-knit wool sweater vest
• Dark navy wool double reverse-pleated trousers with dropped belt loops, on-seam side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather belt
• Black calf leather cap-toe derby shoes
• Dark navy socks
• Dark brown leather cross-draw belt holster with snap-fastened retention strap
• Gold wire semi-rimmed glasses
• Stainless steel vintage Rolex Precision watch with round silver-white dial (and 6:00 sub-dial) on stainless expanding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

I’ve not yet read James Ellroy’s source novel (though I hope to change that soon!), but I’ve heard that this is one of the best book-to-movie adaptations, distilling the sprawling and complicated plot into something concise enough to be told over the course of two hours but retaining the spirit of Ellroy’s original narrative.

The Quote

A hero… in a situation like this, you’re going to need more than one.

The post L.A. Confidential: Ed Exley in Donegal Tweed appeared first on BAMF Style.

Paul Muni as Tony Camonte in Scarface (1932)

Vitals

Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, ruthless Italian-born bootlegger and mob enforcer

Chicago, Summer 1929

Film: Scarface
Release Date: April 9, 1932
Director: Howard Hawks

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Several years ago, I published a high-level overview of the various black tie ensembles across the male cast of the original 1932 version of Scarface, adapted from Armitage Trail’s pulp novel of the same name, which had been inspired by the then-contemporary exploits of the infamous Al Capone.

Now, after eight more years of learning, I want to focus specifically on the evening-wear worn by the eponymous Tony Camonte, portrayed by Paul Muni—who was born on this day in 1895—as Tony’s tuxedo had long been one of the driving sartorial influences in my choice to have a double-breasted dinner jacket made for my wedding, which will be one month from today.

If you’re familiar with the 1983 remake with Al Pacino but haven’t yet seen the pre-Code original, you may be surprised by just how similarly the plots align: an impulsive gangster named Tony violently rises through the ranks of the era’s prevailing crime organization, lusting after both his boss’ blonde girlfriend… as well as his own sister, who generally spurns his incestuous advances in favor of Tony’s slick young protégé. The resulting tension and violence results in a high-caliber showdown at Tony’s fortified home, where the violent gangster dies, mocked by his own repeated affirmation that “the world is yours.”

The 1930s version reveals that Tony had taken his motto, “the world is yours”, from the global offerings of real-life travel agency Cook’s Tours. Little would Tony realize that, for him, orbis non sufficit.

At the time, Hollywood’s cinematic output was in a time of transition as filmmakers still sought to tell mature stories despite the growing oversight of the Production Code passed by Will H. Hays’ Motion Picture Association that sought to censor elements considered unacceptable for general audiences. Howard Hughes, the aviation pioneer who was producing Scarface and was never one to follow the rules, reportedly sent director Howard Hawks a memo regarding Scarface: “Screw the Hays Office. Start the picture and make it as realistic, as exciting, as grisly as possible.” Luckily for audiences at the time, Hawks complied, but it was controversial movies like Scarface that resulted in a three-decade enforcement of the Production Code beginning in 1934.

One of my favorite sequences in the 1932 version depicts Tony’s consolidation of power over the course of one night. Tony and “the boys”—including his loyal right-hand man Guino Rinaldo (George Raft) and his dimwitted “seck-a-tary” Angelo (Vince Barnett)—are enjoying a production of the melodramatic 1922 play “Rain” when they receive a tip that rival gang leader Gaffney (Boris Karloff) has emerged from hiding. Still in their tuxedoes, Tony’s crew loads up with their newfound Thompson submachine guns and head to a bowling alley on the North Side, where Tony rains down enough .45-caliber firepower to put his enemy out of business for good.

In celebration, Tony’s crew continues the party at the Paradise No. 2 nightclub, entering triumphantly to the strains of Gus Arnheim’s orchestra playing “St. Louis Blues”. Confidently riding on his own success, Tony spies his spineless boss Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) dining with the platinum blond Poppy (Karen Morley) and decides it’s time to make a few moves for his personal life as well, seating himself at their table and demoting Johnny to a third wheel within his own relationship. Poppy’s shifting allegiance is signaled when she prepares a cigarette and chooses Tony’s match over Johnny’s lighter… indicating who truly lights her fire and sealing Johnny’s choice to rid himself of both a pesky employee and a romantic rival.

Mel Thompson’s artistic rendition of this scene depicts Paul Muni with a debonair, William Powell-style mustache. I love this drawing so much that I purchased a print of it to hang in my home—and you can too!

Tony and Poppy grow close on the dance floor to the tune of “Some of These Days”, but their flirtation is interrupted when Tony spies his younger sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak) dancing with an anonymous man, igniting Tony’s jealousy as the man goes home with a dented jaw… and Cesca gets dragged back to the Camonte family home with Tony, where she deflates his ego by calling out and condemning his incestuous desire.

“I don’t know what it was with Hughes and incest,” screenwriter W.R. Burnett later recalled of producer Howard Hughes’ icy reception to his initial script, which resulted in a rewrite by the prolific Ben Hecht who “turned the Capone family into the Borgias of Chicago, incest and all,” according to Mark A. Vieira in Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934).

Siblings, eh?

The dejected Tony nearly gets assassinated by a carful of gunmen as he leaves the house, though the action snaps him back into action and gives Tony enough adrenaline to pull together the two men he can trust most—his pal Guino and his barber Pietro (Henry Armetta)—to entrap the boss he rightly suspects of having double-crossed him.

What’d He Wear?

About a half-century after the tuxedo sprung to popularity following a meeting between Tuxedo Park member James Brown Potter and the Prince of Wales, black tie attire had evolved from a “semi-formal” dress code reserved for intimate dining at home or private clubs into the designated men’s evening-wear of the roaring ’20s, an era that balanced its decreasing sense of decorum with an emphasis on style. The lessened uniformity from full evening dress meant a more widely acceptable variance in dinner jacket styles, with wearers choosing between shawl collars or peak lapels (notch lapels were swiftly vanquished), silk lapel facings in grosgrain or satin, and—as the code grew more accepted—even single- and double-breasted models, the latter ushered into fashion by Edward, then Prince of Wales (and later, after his abdication, Duke of Windsor.)

Tony stands apart among his crew as the only reveler to sport a double-breasted dinner jacket, with the sweeping 4×1-button front collaborating with its wide shoulders and roped sleeveheads to craft an imposing silhouette apropos a rising gangster celebrating his violent success. The arrangement of four buttons in a “keystone” formation with only the bottom row fastening was popularized at the time as the “Kent” configuration due to its contemporary adoption by Prince George, the Duke of Kent. Tony’s four front buttons and each trio of cuff buttons are left uncovered.

Amid a sea of henchmen in nearly identical black single-breasted dinner jackets, wing collars, and white pocket squares, Tony the boss stands apart in his double-breasted jacket, turndown collar, foppishly floppy pocket square, and white boutonnière.

Another change with the onset of the 1930s was the amelioration of dinner suits crafted from a midnight blue cloth rather than true black. Alan Flusser explains in Dressing the Man that this shift was the result of dark blue retaining its richness under artificial light, as opposed to black appearing somewhere on the rust-to-green spectrum. The color of Muni’s screen-worn tuxedo in Scarface may be lost to history, though Tony already embracing a fashion-forward double-breasted dinner jacket suggests that he may be equally inclined to adopt the newly fashionable midnight blue suiting.

Tony’s ventless dinner jacket has straight jetted hip pockets, which had by now eclipsed flapped pockets as the more formal standard for black tie. He dresses the welted breast pocket with his usual colorfully Deco-checked silk kerchief, rakishly dangling from his pocket with more panache than the usual folded or puffed pocket square. Tony had attended Rain with a white carnation pinned to his left lapel, which he removed at some point before his arrival at Paradise No. 2.

The world isn’t quite yours yet, Tony.

Though shirts with soft pleated fronts were being normalized particularly with double-breasted dinner jackets at the time, Tony still wears a more formal evening shirt with a stiff front bib detailed with two spherical pearl studs closely spaced above the jacket’s buttoning point. Additionally, the shirt maintains the link-fastened single cuffs, rather than double (French) cuffs, that remain de rigueur with full evening dress. The most “modern” aspect of Tony’s evening shirt is the long, sharp point collar that foretells the more dramatic spearpoint collars that would be popularized over the following decade during the “Golden Age” of menswear.

Tony himself fares better this evening than his clothes and car.

Per the dress code’s nomenclature, Tony wears a black silk bow tie in the traditional “butterfly” (thistle) shape, albeit with a pointed end that typically signifies a self-tying tie. That Tony would wear a self-tying bow tie is almost beyond question, though it’s made especially clear after his car accident when he wears the tie loosely knotted.

In the process of stealing his boss’ girlfriend, Tony grows furiously distracted by the sight of his sister dancing with another man.

The full wrap of a double-breasted dinner jacket doesn’t require waist coverings like the evening waistcoat or cummerbunds prescribed for single-breasted models, but this guidance doesn’t stop Tony Camonte from layering a white cotton marcella waistcoat neath his jacket. The waistcoat smartly fastens low enough that it wouldn’t be seen under his buttoned jacket and has a short vent on each side. Though the Prince of Wales had also helped usher in acceptance of the backless waistcoat in warmer climates by this point, Tony’s vest appears to be of the more traditional full-backed variety.

A narrow shawl collar follows the outline of the horseshoe-shaped opening, meeting at the waist where four cloth-covered buttons are closely spaced above the sharply notched bottom. The waistcoat has two narrowly welted pockets at hip level, with a chain hanging from the left pocket suggesting where Tony either keeps his watch or keys.

A little worse for wear after Lovo’s men try to send him on a one-way ride, Tony strips down to his waistcoat as he confers with the only two men he can trust: Guino Rinaldo (George Raft) and his barber Pietro (Henry Armetta).

Even when Tony has his jacket removed in Pietro’s shop, we barely see enough of the trousers to discern their pleats, but we can be almost certain that he wears them held up with suspenders (braces) that remain covered by his waistcoat.

Tony’s formal trousers would be made from the same black or midnight blue wool as his dinner jacket, detailed with the requisite satin braid striped over each leg’s side seam down to the plain-hemmed bottoms, which break over the tops of his black patent leather cap-toe oxfords. Oxfords were and remain the most acceptable—and arguably practical—black tie alternative to the exquisitely formal slip-on opera pumps, particularly when crafted with high-quality black patent leather uppers.

As Guino’s gunshots ring out behind him, the victor strolls to retrieve his spoils.

Now that he is “going in for jewelry,” as Poppy observes, Tony regularly wears a pinky ring that gleams from his right hand in every scene despite Tony’s proud insistence that it was a “bargain”.

Old vs. new. In his wing collar, Johnny Lovo resembles the old-fashioned “mustache Petes” who were replaced during the 1930s mob wars by younger gangsters like Tony, representing modern mafiosi in his voguish double-breasted dinner jacket, turndown-collar shirt, and flashy pinky ring. (That said, one could argue that Tony’s match is considerably more analog than Johnny’s modern lighter… but that may be a commentary that Tony doesn’t need any fancy gadgetry to, ahem, light Poppy’s fire.)

Rather than swapping for a more formal homburg—the chosen headgear of his slow-witted lackey Angelo—Tony continues wearing his everyday fedora, made of black felt with a black grosgrain ribbon.

The gangsters’ range of headgear includes Angelo’s homburg, Guino’s light-colored fedora with the bow aftward against the band, and Tony’s all-black fedora.

My Wedding Tuxedo

As I mentioned, Tony's double-breasted dinner jacket had long informed my wish to have something similar in my wardrobe. I had tracked down a black vintage dinner jacket that served adequately when I played a bit part in a community theater production of State of the Union, but I knew I'd need something more intentional for my wedding. In addition to Scarface, I was influenced by other cinematic evening-wear like those worn by Roger Moore's James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me and Matt Bomer's tuxedo in the 1930s-set Amazon series The Last Tycoon.

Yours truly, trying on my wedding tuxedo for the first time in March 2022. There are still a few alterations to be done, but to answer any other questions: yes, I'll have a [slight] haircut and professional styling in time for the wedding one month from now, and yes I'll have a bow tie, pocket square, and boutonnière for the day.

Working with the team at Surmesur Pittsburgh, I selected a dark navy cloth, a shade lighter than midnight blue. Surmesur has made many several single- and double-breasted suits for me before, so—in addition to my measurements—they know my preferences for a 1930s-style cut with wide shoulders, roped sleeveheads, and wide peak lapels. I had the lapels faced in a black silk to match the cloth covering the buttons, the gauntlet cuffs, and the dress stripe down the sides of the trousers. Our wedding color is burgundy—as will be presented by the bridesmaids' dresses, the groomsmen's ties, and my pocket square—so I also had the suit lined in a rich dark red paisley, which also presents on the reverse-side of the gauntlet cuffs.

The shirt is a lightweight white cotton with a miniature nailhead weave, detailed simply with a plain front and shaped double (French) cuffs, which I'll fasten with monogrammed cuff links. The black silk twill bow tie will be of the self-tying variety (of course), though I'll have a pre-tied backup at the ready in case of any snafus. I selected a few instances where I'm willingly "breaking the rules" of black tie with a pair of plain-toe single-monk shoes in black calf.

Finally, the watch I've chosen to wear for the day is a vintage gold Omega Constellation on a black leather strap, an heirloom purchased in the early 1960s in my fiancée's family and which I was honored to be given last year.

How to Get the Look

Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak in Scarface (1932)

Styled during a transitional period for black tie, Tony Camonte blends burgeoning fashionable elements like a double-breasted dinner jacket, long-pointed shirt collar, and printed pocket square with old-fashioned pieces like the shirt’s stiff front bib and single cuffs and the redundant white waistcoat, finding an individuality within the dress code more sophisticated than its wearer.

• Black wool tuxedo:
  • Double-breasted 4×2-button dinner jacket with wide silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Pleated formal trousers with side pocket, silk side stripes, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton marcella single-breasted evening waistcoat with low-fastening 4-button front, cutaway notched bottom, and shallow hip pockets
• White cotton evening shirt with point collar, plain front with two pearl studs, and single cuffs
• Black satin silk bowtie with pointed ends
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black silk dress socks
• Black wide-brimmed fedora with black grosgrain band
• Pinky ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie or the Deluxe Scarface Gift Set which offers both the 1932 and 1983 versions as well as collectible lobby cards and featurettes on both discs.

In my earlier post about Scarface‘s black tie kits, I also waxed poetic on my pre-Code crush Ann Dvorak, though it wasn’t until recently that I read in depth about her fascinating life and unique personality in Christina Rice’s richly researched biography, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’ Forgotten Rebel.

The Quote

Tony: I just finish up tonight. Now I play a while.
Lovo: You get your own table, Camonte.
Tony: Why is that?
Lovo: This is a table for two.
Tony: (winks at Poppy) Well, maybe you get another table, huh, Johnny?

The post Paul Muni’s 1932 Tuxedo in Scarface appeared first on BAMF Style.

Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy in The Nice Guys (2016)

Vitals

Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy, unlicensed private detective

Los Angeles, Fall 1977

Film: The Nice Guys
Release Date: May 20, 2016
Director: Shane Black
Costume Designer: Kym Barrett

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I was pleased to again join my friends Pete Brooker and Ken Stauffer on another episode of Pete’s podcast From Tailors With Love, this time discussing the fun ’70s style of Shane Black’s action comedy The Nice Guys.

For those unfamiliar, the “nice guys” in question are Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, bringing back Black’s signature buddy comedy style in a big way as competing private eyes Jackson Healy and Holland March, respectively.

The older and worldlier yet paunchier Jack is more an enforcer than investigator, balancing his limb-breaking toughness with at least some remaining scruples, particularly when compared to the younger and less experienced Holly, who’s not above taking a case agreeing to help an aging woman track down her “missing” husband… whose ashes rest in an urn just a few feet away from them.

Like Crowe’s star-making turn almost twenty years earlier, The Nice Guys’ conspiratorial heartbeat is driven by Kim Basinger’s role at the intersection of corruption and porn in the City of Angels forty years prior, but the villains’ overcomplicated scheme are certainly secondary to the comedic chemistry between Crowe and Gosling, whom I—and Crowe himself—would love to see re-team for a follow-up… and with a built-in sequel title like The Nicer Guys, what’s stopping them?

What’d He Wear?

When Pete asked during the podcast what prop or item from The Nice Guys I’d be most eager to own, I enthusiastically responded that it would be Jack Healy’s light blue leather jacket, distinctive not just for its offbeat color but also unique detailing. Would I be able to pull it off? Probably not, but that wasn’t the question.

Healy is considerably less concerned about his appearance than March, who rotates through a series of suits and sport jackets while Healy almost exclusively relies on the same blue leather jacket, sneakers, and jeans with his limited rotation of blue sport shirts. (The rare exceptions are when the situations call for something dressier, such as a charcoal flannel suit and tie for the climactic auto show… or an evidently dressier black leather jacket and tie for a dinner date.)

Got a dinner date? Even Jack Healy knows the blue leather is far too informal… swapping it out for black leather and an embroidered tie instead.

Healy’s light blue leather jacket extends to his thighs, slightly shorter than a traditional car coat. The ulster-style collar presents the same beige contrast stitching present on the jacket’s edges and seams, including the chest yoke across the front, around the pockets and pocket flaps, and around the ends of the otherwise plain cuffs.

The four squared patch-style pockets are covered by wide flaps, each with a concave arc toward the center where a long strap hangs down to be fastened through a gunmetal-toned buckle sewn onto the pocket itself, an overly complicated but certainly distinctive closure system. The jacket itself has a more conventional closure, with four brown woven leather buttons from mid-chest down to Crowe’s natural waist, coordinated through buttonholes on the left that have been reinforced by a contrasting dark navy stitch.

Like Healy himself, the jacket had likely seen some better days: slightly faded in color, worn at the seams, and no longer fitting its wearer as well as it might have when he picked it up during his glory days earlier in the decade. This is particularly seen around the shoulders and back, where the leather pulls toward Healy’s armpits, accommodating his added heft.

This unfortunate effect may have been mitigated if Healy had sprung for a jacket with bi-swing pleats behind the shoulders, an “action back” affectation from the ’30s that was briefly revived in the ’70s, though the less flattering look nicely serves the character by visually signaling that Healy’s best days may be behind him. The half-belt sewn across the back does recall this vintage style, but without the benefit of added fabric to ease the larger man’s movement within the stiff confines of his leather.

Healy’s first shirt under this jacket gets limited screen-time, but it’s enough to see the busy blue floral print stenciled against a white ground. Almost certainly short-sleeved, the shirt has a long, ’70s-style point collar and a front placket with recessed light brown faux-wood buttons. Following the example set by this first shirt, all of Healy’s shirts worn with his jacket include blue to a prominent degree.

The day Healy meets March (and gives him a thorough thrashing in his own kitchen), Healy again wears a shirt with a tropical-influenced design, this time more of a panel print anchored by a beach scene that works its way up from the dunes and waves around the hem through the silhouetted palm trees up to the light blue mottled clouds and sky comprising the upper body of the shirt. To learn the basics of aloha shirt designs, including the subtle difference between a “border print” and “panel print”, check out this helpful visual guide by Aloha Spotter.

Though it may not be an authentic Hawaiian shirt, the shirt follows conventional aloha styling with its camp collar, short sleeves, and plain front (no placket), which buttons up with dark brown buttons.

One of Healy’s most frequently worn shirts is a light sky-blue short-sleeved shirt, styled like a work shirt with its pair of flapped chest pockets as well as a shaped point collar and wide placket with seven cornflower-blue plastic buttons.

This shirt may be made from the “light blue fabric” that costume designer Kym Barrett had found in the Anto Beverly Hills archives when researching from the film and—upon learning that it dated to the ’70s when Anto brought it from Lebanon to the United States—used it to create a screen-worn shirt.

Healy also wears a darker navy blue short-sleeved two-pocket shirt, albeit with subtle differences in style such as a flatter-laying collar and a plain front (no placket) with seven large recessed 4-hole buttons in navy plastic to match the shirting.

Healy regularly wears a pair of likely vintage jeans in a dark blue denim wash, identified as Levi’s by the telltale red tag sewn onto the right of the two back pockets, each further decorated with the brand’s signature arcuate stitch. The jeans are roomy through the legs, with an apparent boot-cut as was more fashionable in the ’70s than today, even though Healy doesn’t share his partner’s penchant for boots.

As March takes cover beside him, Healy fires a few rounds from March’s .38 at a retreating John Boy.

The one aspect of Healy’s wardrobe that remains surprisingly consistent, even when dressed in a suit and tie, are his worn-in sneakers, consisting of navy-blue leather (or synthetic leather) uppers and pale-gray rubber outsoles, and most often worn with dark blue socks. The plain-toe sneakers follow the circular vamp oxford (CVO) design with four sets of nickeled eyelets for the flat light-gray woven laces.

In a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moment as Healy slips into his shoes in the morning, the brown leather tongue tabs are visible that reveal the brand to be ECCO, the family-owned Dutch shoemaker that has been producing footwear since 1963.

Healy rotates between two different pairs of glasses, his black-framed reading glasses and a set of silver-framed aviator sunglasses. The latter design had been introduced decades earlier for military airmen but underwent a revival through the ’70s into the ’80s, when its popularity was reinforced by Tom Cruise’s swaggering Naval aviator in Top Gun.

When you’re on the job, you need to be readily able to switch between reading glasses and sunglasses.

Style purists could likely—and justifiably—take issue with almost every part of Jack Healy’s wardrobe, but there’s little argument to be made against his tasteful timepiece, an Omega Speedmaster chronograph that had reached contemporary stardom as the watch issued to NASA astronauts and worn by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins during the 1969 moon landing.

While I couldn’t speculate as to Crowe’s role in choosing his screen-worn watch, I do know the actor is a watch enthusiast as evident from the range of luxurious pieces he included in his Sotheby’s Australia auction “The Art of Divorce”, commemorating his marital split. Though the auction included an Omega Speedmaster, it was one he had purchased a replacement for the Speedy that Ron Howard gave him and which he had subsequently regifted to his brother. (Hodinkee has confirmed that the auctioned watch differed from the black-strapped 50th Anniversary Speedy he wore in the 2009 thriller State of Play.)

Healy’s screen-worn Speedmaster follows the classic configuration of a steel case, fixed black-finished tachymetre bezel, and black dial with the requisite trio of sub-registers at the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions. Rather than the classic black leather strap or matching steel link bracelet, Healy wears the watch on a silver-toned Speidel “Twist-O-Flex” expanding band as was popular through the ’70s.

Healy may never make it any farther into orbit than the upper floors of an L.A. hotel during an international auto show, but he still faithfully straps on his “Moon watch” Omega Speedmaster every morning.

Even Healy’s undershirt is blue, as he invariably wears a rotation of navy ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirts in the style named “A-shirt” (for “athletic shirt”) upon their development by Jockey in the mid-1930s before they received the unfortunate metonym “wife-beater” the following decade.

Mood.

What to Imbibe

“At least you’re drinking again,” March quips during the Christmas-set denouement when he finds Healy taking shots directly from a bottle of Captain Morgan in reaction to the latest headlines. Unlike most movies where we’re often rooting for a hard-drinker to give up their destructive habit by the end, March hilariously turns the trope on its head by celebrating his newfound partner’s rediscovered fondness for the bottle.

Named for the Sir Henry Morgan, the Welsh privateer who ascended to the position of Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica in the late 17th century, this 70-proof spiced rum had been distilled in Jamaica for forty years before it was finally introduced to the American market in 1984. Unfortunately, this timing makes it an anachronism for Healy to be drinking it so openly in a Los Angeles bar seven years earlier.

Yo-ho-ho-ho!, and a bottle of rum.

Looking for a less destructive way to toss a few back in the spirit of one of our favorite “nice guys”? Thanks to March’s precocious daughter Holly (Angourie Rice), Healy learns of his appreciation for Yoo-hoo.

No anachronism here, as Yoo-hoo has been continuously produced since this “chocolate drink” was introduced in New Jersey in 1928. Based on its ingredients—primarily consisting of water, high-fructose corn syrup, and whey—we can’t legally call it chocolate milk… but Yoo-hoo fans already know it’s so much more than just milk.

Healy embraces Yoo-hoo before going the yo-ho-ho route.

The Guns

Jack Healy is considerably less trigger-happy than his partner, depending primarily on his brass knuckles when a weapon is needed though he certainly has access to—and a familiarity with—firearms as needed. When Healy returns home to a few thugs in his room, he pulls from under his bed an Ithaca 37, the same 12-gauge pump-action shotgun that Russell Crowe had used to effectively repel corrupt cops during the climactic gunfight in L.A. Confidential, released nearly 20 years earlier.

Unlike the stock riot-length shotgun wielded by Officer Bud White, Healy’s Ithaca 37 has been cut down to a maneuverable “scattergun” for close quarters combat, particularly with a shorter barrel (though with the front sight intact) and a removed stock that results in a pistol grip. Even with these modifications, the Ithaca 37 is quickly recognizable for its novel loading/ejection port located on the underside of the frame, leaving the sides unexposed to the elements.

Healy’s sawed-off Ithaca 37 shotgun sends a couple of henchmen packing.

When outside his home, Healy arms himself with SIG-Sauer P230, a compact semi-automatic pistol that had been newly introduced to the global market in 1977, the same year The Nice Guys is set. It does stretch believability to some degree that such a low-rent enforcer like Healy would have access to an innovative new Swiss handgun rather than a venerated .38 snub-nose like March keeps, but it’s possible that he took it from some rich mook he had earlier been hired to beat down.

As evident by its similar profile, the double-action P230 was developed as a modernized successor to the aging Walther PPK design, primarily offered in the same .32 ACP and .380 ACP calibers as the PPK—with the same 8-round and 7-round magazine capacities, respectively—as well as both blued and stainless finishes. After nearly 20 years of production, SIG-Sauer replaced the P230 in 1996 with a modernized P232 that retained much of the aesthetic but with more than 60 improvements to its design and operation.

For what it’s worth, a continuity error during the gunfight at March’s home does briefly swap out Healy’s blued SIG P230 for a Walther PP, the longer-barreled pistol that the PPK had been derived from. Though the pistols may look similar to an untrained eye, the P230 most immediately differentiates itself from the Walther pistols with its almost continuous “ramp” between the muzzle and trigger guard.

Healy aims his SIG-Sauer P230, most clearly differentiated from the Walther PP and PPK by its ramped front silhouette.

March dreams that Healy carries a snub-nosed revolver butt-forward in a tan leather ankle holster. Little more of this non-existent gun can be seen behind the smooth walnut grips, positioned butt-forward, though the “Camel Hump”-covered hammer suggests that March envisions Healy carrying a variation of the Smith & Wesson Model 38 “Bodyguard” that was developed in the 1950s specifically for concealed carry, with a light “Airweight” aluminum alloy frame and a shrouded hammer to prevent the weapon from snagging on a wearer’s clothing when rapidly drawn. Built on the same J-frame platform as the Model 36 “Chiefs Special”, the Model 38 and its carbon steel cousin, the Model 49, each carried five rounds of .38 Special in the cylinder.

March: Is that an ankle gun?
Healy: That is an ankle gun, yeah.
March: Pretty sweet.

March should have been tipped off that Healy’s ankle gun didn’t exist when he actually had to hand over his own nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Model 36 for Healy to use as a second weapon during the gunfight at his home, as well as a speed-loader with five additional rounds of .38 Special to fill the cylinder.

After March accidentally tosses one of his revolvers out the window instead of to Healy, he pulls a matching Model 36 and speed-loader from his cookie jar.

How to Get the Look

Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy in The Nice Guys (2016)

Down on his luck by the time we meet him in the fall of ’77, Jackson Healy’s got a right to sing the blues… and wear them. Though his shirts and jeans are rooted in classic casual and workwear styles, Jack embraces the excesses of the disco decade in an eye-catching blue leather jacket, distinctively detailed but—like its wearer—having seen better days.

• Light-blue leather thigh-length vintage jacket with ulster collar, four brown woven leather buttons, four squared patch pockets with arced strap-down flaps, and half-belted back
• Blue short-sleeved work shirt with point collar and two flapped chest pockets
• Dark blue denim Levi’s boot-cut jeans
• Navy leather plain-toe 4-eyelet CVO-style sneakers with light-gray laces and outsoles
• Dark blue socks
• Navy ribbed cotton sleeveless A-shirt/undershirt
• Black narrow-framed reading glasses
• Silver-framed aviator sunglasses
• Omega Speedmaster chronograph watch with stainless steel case, black tachymetre bezel, black dial with 3 black sub-registers, and silver-toned “Twist-O-Flex” expanding bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and the latest episode of From Tailors With Love to hear us chatting about its costume design.

You should also read some of the authors that Shane Black cited as his inspiration in a Reddit AMA: Richard S. Prather, Warren Murphy, Ross MacDonald, and Ed McBain.

The Quote

Marriage is buying a house for someone you hate.

The post The Nice Guys: Russell Crowe’s Blue ’70s Leather Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Hi, BAMF Style readers! Today is the 10th anniversary of my first-ever post, analyzing the iconic suit worn by Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest. In the ten years since that post went live on September 26, 2012, I’ve been honored to connect with so many great people as I’ve felt welcomed into the online menswear community.

It’s been a lifelong journey for yours truly, from being a 7th grader hobbling together a rusty pinstriped suit with my grandfather’s flat cap in the hopes of emulating Robert Redford in The Sting to taking countless screenshots from my James Bond and Mad Men DVDs in my college dorm to try to crack the secrets of sartorial success to ultimately—and quite nervously—clicking “Publish” on that first post detailing my observations of Mr. Grant’s attire as the wrongly accused Roger Thornhill.

While I could never look quite as stylish as the erstwhile Archie Leach, this was certainly how my anxiety felt when I decided to begin a ridiculously titled blog about men’s style in my favorite movies.

To tell the truth, I almost never hit “Publish” on that first post… after all, we all know the internet can be a vicious forum that brings out the worst in people. I even considered just making this a private site, accessible only to me, where I could curate my growing knowledge about the style in movies that I admired without fear of criticism, either for my lack of knowledge or the topic itself. Slowly but surely, I realized that there was not only an audience for this type of blog but an actual community of people who cared about the same things! I would have never guessed that, within 10 years, I would have nearly 10 million views from people around the world reading my humble scribblings about the intersection of my interests. (And, if I had known, I surely would have put more thought into what I called it!)

The last decade has been filled with plenty of exploring, connecting, learning, and—most importantly—getting to know so many of you through your comments and emails, and I remain grateful each day for the empowering impact of those with whom I share this digital space. I was a green 23 years old when I started the blog and now, somewhat grayer at 33, I’m lucky that this little hobby has remained fun and fruitful to a rewarding degree. While I’m not 100% sure what the future may hold for BAMF Style, I hope to continue writing for as long as it stays fun… and we’ll see if my anxiety can continue stubbornly resisting the current trends in content sharing, be it TikTok, starting a podcast, or the next great thing.

With much gratitude, I thank you all!

— Nick

Should any of you be curious, I delved into my web insights and metrics to deliver a few morsels of BAMF Style trivia…

Total number of BAMF Style posts: 1,365
Total number of views: 9,486,372
Total number of visitors: 4,041,718

Top 10 most-visited posts:

1. John Wick’s Suit
2. John F. Kennedy’s Ivy League Style
3. Daniel Craig in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Brad Pitt’s Aloha Shirt and Champion Tee
5. Bond Style — Bolivian Combat in Quantum of Solace
6. Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone
7. Collateral — Vincent’s Suit
8. Aaron Cross’ Biker Jacket in The Bourne Legacy
9. Dexter’s Kill Outfit
10. Aaron Cross’ Winter Attire in The Bourne Legacy

A downside of this decade-long longevity? So many of these popular posts are many years old and, in my opinion, require substantial overhauls!

Top 5 decades most represented in BAMF Style posts:

1. 1960s (282 posts)
2. 1970s (192 posts)
3. 1950s (163 posts)
4. 2000s (145 posts)
5. 1930s (120 posts)

Top 5 actors most represented in BAMF Style posts:

1. Sean Connery (44 posts)
2. Daniel Craig (41 posts)
3. Jon Hamm (40 posts)
4. Robert Redford (39 posts)
5. Robert De Niro (35 posts)

The post 10 Years of BAMF Style! appeared first on BAMF Style.

John Forsythe as Sam Marlowe in The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Vitals

John Forsythe as Sam Marlowe, touchy artist who scores the town with his belting baritone

Vermont, Fall 1954

Film: The Trouble with Harry
Release Date: September 30, 1955
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Costume Designer: Edith Head

Background

As we settle into what looks like a comfortable autumn—at least for fallphiles like me—I want to highlight what must be one of the earliest movies to truly capture the season’s striking colors.

Though regarded as the “Master of Suspense”, Alfred Hitchcock had long incorporated humor into his movies. The Trouble with Harry differentiates itself among Hitch’s more earnest thrillers and mysteries by emphasizing the comedy, resulting in what may be among of the director’s least suspenseful outfit but still entertaining and certainly aesthetically satisfying.

Surprisingly, much of the foliage seen on screen was artificial, as the production team was shocked to find that much of the foliage had already turned by the time they arrived in Craftsbury, Vermont, for principal photography on September 27, 1954, 68 years ago today. Hitchcock’s team compromised by gluing leaves to the trees to present the full autumnal effect that was intended for the town, which was renamed “Highwater” on screen.

The setting was crucial for Hitchcock, who explained to François Truffaut that part of why The Trouble with Harry continued to appeal to him was that he “took melodrama out of the pitch-black night and brought it out in the sunshine. It’s as if I had set up a murder alongside a rustling brook and spilled a drop of blood in the clear water.”

In the case of The Trouble with Harry, there may or may not have been a murder, but there’s certainly a body. Harry’s body, to be exact, with the titular trouble resulting from no one being quite sure how Harry met his end, though the self-accusing suspects include eccentric hunter Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn), Harry’s estranged wife Jennifer (Shirley MacLaine), and the shoe-wielding spinster Ivy Gravely (Mildred Natwick). Though he doesn’t suspect himself of any complicity in Harry’s demise, local artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe) inserts himself into the drama by setting out to sketch the mysterious corpse and then providing help to the trio that each suspects themselves.

Truffaut summed up that “the whole humor of the picture hinges on a single device: an attitude of disconcerting nonchalance. The characters discuss the corpse as casually as if they were talking about a pack of cigarettes,” to which Hitchcock responded with satisfaction: “That’s the idea. Nothing amuses me so much as understatement.”

What’d He Wear?

Sam Marlowe dresses in the textured layers associated with fall, clad in knits, flannel, and tweed that suit the season but in subdued colors that don’t threaten to clash with his colorful surroundings. The effect of his conservative but seasonally appropriate grays and dark blue presents Sam as a neutral palette in the matter of the eponymous trouble with Harry; as one of the few leading characters who doesn’t suspect he may have taken any actions resulting in Harry’s death, he is the only in the main group of four with total neutrality, assisting only out of a morbid curiosity and—ultimately—romantic interest.

Sam’s colder grays and blues set him apart from the lush autumnal environment.

Sam’s base layer is a heathered gray long-sleeved polo shirt made of jersey-knit cotton, comfortably oversized as evident by the seams falling off John Forsythe’s shoulders. The shirt’s short placket is devoid of any buttons, with the only button presumably under the right collar leaf to connect to the loop that extends from the left, though Sam rakishly wears the shirt with the neck totally open and the long sleeves rolled up his forearms.

Adding both a comfortable layer against the falling autumn weather as well as an element of color to disrupt the shades of gray, Sam wears a dark navy-blue wool sweater vest with a ribbed hem and narrowly ribbed V-neck and armholes.

There may be some historical basis in layering a sweater vest over polo shirts, though I believe standard sweater-vest practice by the ’50s (as today) is to wear them with button-up shirts; thus, Sam wearing a sweater vest over his knitted polo shirt adding a quietly Bohemian element consistent with his artistic vocation.

I earlier referred to Sam as a figuratively palette in the case of the trouble with Harry, though the paint that subtly stains his dark gray woolen flannel trousers suggests he’s also a literal palette, allowing himself to become collateral damage in his art as much as his complicity in helping at least one of Harry’s possible murderers would make him an accessory-after-the-fact.

Consistent with trending fashions of the ’50s, these trousers rise to Forsythe’s natural waist with double sets of reverse-facing pleats. Sam’s sweater vest hem covers his trouser waistband so we can’t confirm if they’re rigged with side-adjusters or held up with a belt, but we can discern that there are “quarter-top” slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets with a button through the back-left pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms that Sam has cuffed himself, harmonizing with his casually rolled-up shirt-sleeves.

No lace-ups or loafers for Sam, who dresses appropriately for one of his usual jaunts into the woods with his low-calf work boots, crafted from russet-brown leather uppers that have been worn to comfortable suppleness. Reflecting typical work boot styling of the era, Sam’s boots are designed with a straight toe-cap and derby-style lacing with brown laces pulled through eight sets of eyelets. His socks are plain white ribbed cotton tube socks.

As the conspirators’ plans take them into the evening, Sam dons an additional layer with a Donegal tweed sports coat, crafted in the traditional “salt and pepper” combination of black and white yarns to create an overall gray effect, further detailed with irregular slubs and “small flecks of colored yarn… literally dropped in at random,” as described by Sir Hardy Amies in The ABCs of Men’s Fashion.

Like the rest of his clothing, Sam’s single-breasted jacket has a fashionably large and loose fit, though it’s neither baggy nor oversized. The shoulders are wide and padded, with roped sleeve-heads and two buttons at each cuff. The two-button jacket has wide notch lapels, a ventless back, and patch pockets over the breast and hips that further distinguish its sporty nature.

Sam’s overall look of a Donegal tweed sport jacket, navy sweater vest, and dark gray flannel trousers may recall the straitlaced Ed Exley in L.A. Confidential, covered on this blog just last week, though Sam’s more insouciant approach swapping out the shirt, tie, and black derbies for a soft polo shirt and work boots illustrates the versatility of these wardrobe staples.

For the brief vignette that ends the film as Sam and his co-conspirators peer out from behind a log, Sam appears to be wearing the same dark-blue sweater vest but with an ecru button-up shirt patterned in a green-and-gold graph check and detailed with a long point collar that he wears open at the neck.

The fearsome foursome takes cover behind a log as they ensure that the trouble with Harry will truly be over.

Sam secures his slim yellow gold wristwatch around his left wrist on a textured brown leather strap, though thew watch appears to have stopped working as we observe Sam gauging time by the sun. (Of course, this could merely be an artsy eccentricity.)

How to Get the Look

John Forsythe as Sam Marlowe in The Trouble with Harry (1955)

One of Hitchcock’s less-discussed heroes, Sam Marlowe may have lacked the natty tailoring of the heroes played by the likes of Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart, but he was still dressed appropriately—and comfortably presentable—in layered knitwear, tweed, and flannel that add character to otherwise somber colors.

• Gray heathered jersey-cotton long-sleeved polo shirt with loop collar
• Dark navy-blue wool sweater vest
• Black-and-white color-flecked Donegal tweed single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, patch pockets, 2-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Dark gray woolen flannel double reverse-pleated trousers with slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and self-cuffed plain-hemmed bottoms
• Russet-brown leather cap-toe 8-eyelet derby-laced work boots
• White ribbed cotton tube socks
• Gold wristwatch with round gold dial on textured brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. And if you like seeing autumnal New England richly captured by 1950s Technicolor, check out Douglas Sirk’s melodrama All That Heaven Allows, released the same year.

The Quote

If I can do anything to make it a little harder for you, you let me know.

The post John Forsythe’s Autumn Attire in The Trouble with Harry appeared first on BAMF Style.

Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum on Magnum, P.I., Episode 1.10: “Lest We Forget”

Vitals

Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, private investigator and former Navy SEAL

Hawaii, early 1980s

Series: Magnum, P.I.
Episodes:
– “China Doll” (Episode 1.03, dir. Donald P. Bellisario, aired 12/18/1980)
– “Lest We Forget” (Episode 1.10, dir. Lawrence Doheny, aired 2/12/1981)
– “From Moscow to Maui” (Episode 2.04, dir. Michael Vejar, aired 10/29/1981)
– “Did You See the Sunrise?, Part 2” (Episode 3.02, dir. Ray Austin, aired 9/30/1982)
– “The Arrow That Is Not Aimed” (Episode 3.14, dir. James Frawley, aired 1/27/1983)
– “Paradise Blues” (Episode 4.15, dir. Bernard L. Kowalski, aired 2/9/1984)
– “On Face Value” (Episode 4.19, dir. Harry S. Laidman, aired 3/15/1984)
Creator: Donald P. Bellisario & Glen Larson
Costume Designer: Charles Waldo (credited with first season only)
Costume Supervisor: James Gilmore

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

So the fall weather’s getting cooler but you still want to find ways to dress like Thomas Magnum? You’re in luck, you esoterically inclined person, you!

In addition to his famed aloha shirts, Hawaii’s most in-demand—and dashingly mustached—private investigator of the ’80s included a variety of short- and long-sleeved rugby shirts in his wardrobe, including one prominently featured at the end of the pivotal two-part “Did You See the Sunrise?” that kicked off Magnum, P.I.‘s third season when it aired 40 years ago tonight.

Much to the possible horror of long-term Magnum, P.I. fans, I was actually unfamiliar with this now-classic episode until an episode of Archer, specifically “Placebo Effect” in which the animated eponymous spy’s rampage upon learning he’s been taking fake cancer medication leads to him shooting down an Irish mobster after asking him “did you see Regis this morning?”, echoing a question he was often asked by an elderly woman who died due to the false medication.

I’m a sucker for Regis Philbin-related humor (there’s dozens of us!), and I could tell by the framing of the scene that this had to be a reference to something… lo and behold, Youtube led me to the finale of “Did You See the Sunrise?” and Magnum’s cold-blooded confrontation with the ruthless KGB agent Ivan, portrayed by Bo Svenson, a go-to badass of ’80s movies and TV.

After “the third sunrise since Mac died,” Magnum finally gets the opportunity to confront Ivan, who had been his sadistic Soviet nemesis in Vietnam, following him from the Russian consulate as the U.S. government’s policy of détente prevents them from proactively pursuing justice for Ivan’s war crimes. Having lured Ivan’s driver away, Magnum leads Ivan at gunpoint into the woods, where the unarmed Russian coolly reveals what he’s been doing, taunting Magnum’s “sense of honor and fair play” with the assumption that he won’t kill him: “I have plane to catch. If you are going to shoot me, do it now… you won’t, you can’t. I know you, Thomas.”

Defying Ivan’s expectations and accepted TV hero logic at the time, Magnum simply asks, “Ivan… did you see the sunrise this morning?” and when Ivan answers in the affirmative—having seen the sunrise that Mac couldn’t—Magnum fires a single fatal round.

What’d He Wear?

Years before Thomas Magnum led Ivan from his limousine out into the woods, he debuted this off-white long-sleeved rugby shirt in the third episode, “China Doll” (Episode 1.03), and would continue to wear it over at least seven episode across the show’s first four seasons.

The body of the shirt is a cream-colored cotton with a slubby texture, finished with tightly ribbed cuffs and hem like a sweatshirt. A member of the Magnum Mania! fan forum has suggested that Magnum’s shirts are consistent with those made by Merona, then a contemporary sportswear brand before it was reconfigured as a Target house brand.

The basic rugby shirt design echoes the pullover polo shirts that need no explanation, but rugby shirts—or “rugger shirts”—are typically differentiated by stiffer collars and stronger fabrics to withstand the rigors of the sport. Magnum’s stiffer collar is beige, providing a gentle contrast against the body of the shirt. Magnum’s shirt has a three-button placket with a fly that covers the buttons when fastened, though Magnum almost always wears his placket completely open. Sport-intended rugby shirts were made with rubber buttons that would easily unfasten when pulled, but more fashion-oriented shirts like Magnum’s rugger often had more traditional buttons like the three mixed brown plastic buttons on Magnum’s placket.

Hand-level pockets are also fixtures of rugby shirts like this, whether the full-width “kangaroo” pockets with an opening on each side like on a hoodie or two separate hand pockets with a subtle set-in entry as seen on Magnum’s cream-colored rugby shirt.

In “From Moscow to Maui” (Episode 2.04), Magnum practices this cream rugby shirt being his go-to garb when he has to shoot evil Russians.

Shop the shirt:

As it's been more than 40 years since the Magnum, P.I. costume team first sourced these shirts, this particular rugger design has fallen mostly out of fashion. However, there are still a few potential options if you want to scratch that particular TM itch.

---

The Men's Rugby by KULE offers a darker tan contrast collar against the white 100% cotton body, which is lighter than Magnum's shirt and lacks pockets but offers a similar panache.

Similarly colored shirts that unfortunately lack the hand pockets:

• Banana Republic Rugby Shirt (Banana Republic, $31.97)
• KULE The Men's Rugby (KULE, $88)
• Proper Cloth Cotton and Silk Rugby (Proper Cloth, $125)
• Wax Beck Rugby Shirt Ecru (Wax London, $115)

Long-sleeved rugby shirts with hand pockets but different colors:

• Champion Men's Rugby Shirt with Kanga Pocket (Amazon, $45)
• Free Assembly Men's Rugby Pullover Polo Shirt (Walmart, $28)

Earlier in Magnum, P.I.‘s run, Magnum was often outfitted with a pair of gold-framed aviators with green lenses, a buff-toned reinforced brow bar, and a round “bullet hole” centered amidst it all, similar to the Ray-Ban model now marketed as the Ray-Ban RB3138 Shooter. Legend has it that this center hole had been designed to secure the wearer’s cigarette when both hands were required for shooting, though the eminent Hunter S. Thompson—a fan of this very frame—still favored his cigarette holder over the risky maneuver of wearing a Marlboro on his forehead. (You can purchase Ray-Ban Shooters from Amazon and Ray-Ban.)

Magnum paired his Shooter shades with this shirt when he debuted his now-famous Detroit Tigers baseball cap in “China Doll” (Episode 1.03), made of a dark navy cotton twill and emblazoned with the white embroidered Middle English “D” to represent the Tigers’ logo. As with all MLB teams, the Tigers’ caps are widely available (including from Amazon) though they’re considerably more popular than many other teams due to their association with Magnum, P.I.

Between the introduction of his Tigers hat in these scenes and the debut of his red “jungle bird”-printed aloha shirt at the end of the episode, it’s clear that “China Doll” was instrumental in forming the now-iconic Thomas Magnum style.

Magnum’s Detroit Tigers hat made its first appearance with this rugby shirt in “China Doll” (Episode 1.03).

For the shirt’s initial appearance in “China Doll”, Magnum wears it with a pair of his usual Levi’s jeans in a light blue wash, held up by his khaki webbed cotton belt that closes through a gold-finished box-frame friction buckle. (For now, the buckle is left plain, though it would be personalized with his last name and a naval emblem from the second season onward.)

Consistent with his more laidback style, Magnum regularly rotates between sneakers and boat shoes, here wearing a pair of the latter with tan canvas uppers and thick white outsoles, heavier than the original siped soles that Paul A. Sperry had pioneered for his nautical-inclined Top-Siders back in the 1930s. Magnum’s tan boat shoes are rigged with the signature 360° lace system and two sets of silver-finished eyelets for the derby-laced fronts.

Magnum rushes to the rescue of a dehydrated Mai Ling (Susie Elene) in “China Doll” (Episode 1.03), though he’s attired a little warmly for the beach in his long-sleeved rugger and jeans.

Magnum looks a little more beach ready when he steps out onto the sand in “Lest We Forget” (Episode 1.10), wearing short camo shorts and brown leather boat shoes with his cream-colored rugger. His untucked shirt hem covers the top of his flat-front shorts, which are likely styled with belt loops and held up by his usual khaki web belt, but we do see the slanted front pockets, flapped back pockets, and cuffed bottom hems that further shorten an already skimpy inseam.

The shorts are patterned in the green-dominant “lowland” variation of the ERDL camouflage pattern, developed for the U.S. Army in 1948 but not put into practice until twenty years later when it was adopted by the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, followed shortly by the Army and—in a more limited capacity—the Navy. As a SEAL, Magnum would have been more familiar with the distinctive “tiger stripe” camo that he still wears on occasions requiring more tactical attire.

On the beach in “Lest We Forget” (Episode 1.10), Magnum enjoys some brews with Maku (Merlin “Sonny” Ching), an old Hawaiian surfer and former bartender who asks Magnum if he’s married… perhaps in reference to his attractive granddaughter Kiki (Elizabeth Lindsey). “No, I’d make a terrible husband!” Magnum laughs in response.

Magnum returned to wearing lighter-wash Levi’s jeans for the shirt’s following three appearances, first during this third-degree questioning of the KGB agent Tarisoff in “From Moscow to Maui” (Episode 2.04) and then again when delivering some .45-caliber justice to the KGB when confronting the sadistic Ivan in “Did You See the Sunrise?, Part 2” (Episode 3.02).

When Magnum’s got you dead to rights with a bristling mustache and a .45 in his hand, chances are you ain’t gonna be seeing another sunrise… détente be damned.

A dozen episodes later, Magnum is considerably more laidback—in every sense of the word—when he reappears wearing the shirt at the start of “The Arrow That Is Not Aimed” (Episode 3.14), again wearing blue Levi’s jeans but now with a camo baseball cap and his blue-trimmed white leather Puma Easy Rider sneakers. Puma had invented the Easy Rider running shoe in 1977, with stable uppers and shock-absorbing soles intended for distance running.

Magnum kicks back in Robin Masters’ hammock at the start of “The Arrow That Is Not Aimed” (Episode 3.14).

Beginning midway through the second season, Magnum had added another baseball cap to his collection, this one in the mesh-backed “trucker hat” style with a lowland ERDL camouflage front and brim. Stitched front and center across the two panels of the crown, Magnum wears an olive-drab patch with the black-embroidered Navy SEAL emblem of an eagle clutching a rifle and trident against an anchor. The mesh netback signifies that the cap is a civilian item rather than military gear. The only time this hat appears with the cream rugby shirt is the opening vignette of “The Arrow That Is Not Aimed”.

The shirt makes two final appearances in the fourth season, each time worn with shorts and Magnum’s red Tigers hat… no, not those Tigers. This trucker hat is unquestioningly of civilian origin, detailed with a white mesh back and a red cotton front and brim.

A red-and-white circular patch across the front celebrates the “TIGERS”, though not the Detroit baseball team but rather the services of “Al’s Automotive and Muffler King”. According to the forums at Magnum Mania, Selleck had first worn this hat in the 1979 made-for-TV movie The Chinese Typewriter, in which he and James Whitmore Jr. starred as a pair of private detectives in Hawaii.

As seen here in “Paradise Blues” (Episode 4.15), the Tigers baseball cap that Magnum debuted with this rugby shirt in the first season was replaced by this red mesh-backed cap celebrating a different group of Tigers through the fourth season.

In “Paradise Blues” (Episode 4.15), both Higgins (John Hilerman) and T.C. (Roger E. Mosley) ask Magnum to account for the resources he’s “borrowed” over the course of his P.I. career. He wears a pair of short gray polyester shorts with a sage cast, detailed like his SEAL-issued UDT shorts with a self-belted waist, covered button fly, and a sole patch-style pocket on the back right.

Magnum again wears Puma sneakers, though with all-white uppers save for a black leather logo patch sewn over the top of each heel. These shoes have white laces and heavy white rubber soles with a gray wave effect that curves over the front of each shoe.

“Paradise Blues” (Episode 4.15)

The shirt’s final appearance comes after working in the tide pool with the injured Emily Jackson (Talia Balsam) in “On Face Value” (Episode 4.19), pulled on as a cover-up after they’re summoned to lunch with Higgins. Even in the water, he wears his red Tigers trucker hat as well as his now-favorite tortoise-framed aviators on a black cord around his neck.

His short sea-to-shore shorts are the khaki polyester trunks once issued by the Navy to Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), which had been established during World War II prior to their evolution into the Navy SEALs, though the UDT name lives on through these shorts, which remain available from military surplus outfitters and even Amazon. Minimally designed to avoid interfering with these frogmen’s operations, the shorts are sparsely detailed only with a self-belted waist, a covered button fly, and a back-right patch pocket. These were evidently Magnum’s USN-issued shorts, as “MAGNUM. T.” is stenciled in black over the left thigh.

“On Face Value” (Episode 4.19)

Especially with this outfit, Magnum favors his sporty Vuarnet Skilynx Acier aviator sunglasses, crafted with dark tortoise frames and silver temple detailing and often worn on a thin cord around his neck.

Through the first three seasons of Magnum, P.I., including in flashbacks to Vietnam, Magnum wears a stainless steel Chronosport Sea Quartz 30 dive watch, likely chosen to reflect the actual Chronosports worn by select Navy SEALs during the early ’70s. Worn on a black tropic rubber strap, Magnum’s Chronosport Sea Quartz 30 has a slim black tick-marked rotating bezel, a black dial with luminescent markers and numerals for 12, 6, and 9 o’clock with a black day-date window at 3:00. Episodes that show close-ups of the watch reveal it to be a pre-1982 model that just says “Quartz” on the dial before Chronosport added the full “Sea Quartz 30” designation on the dial.

Magnum checks the load in his 1911 in “From Moscow to Maui” (Episode 2.04).

Beginning with the excellent fourth season premiere episode “Home from the Sea”, Magnum’s watch is retconned to be a Rolex GMT Master that is established as having belonged to his aviator father, bequeathed to young Thomas following his father’s death during the Korean War. Thus, the watch’s origins are somewhat anachronistic as the GMT Master wasn’t launched until 1954, the year after the Korean Armistice Agreement ended the war.

Magnum, P.I. featured a GMT Master with the blue-and-red “Pepsi” bidirectional bezel, a black Matte dial with painted non-numeric hour markers and a 3:00 date window, and a steel “Oyster”-style three-piece link bracelet. Some debate has endured as to whether or not the screen-worn watch was a ref. 1675 or the ref. 16750, with Danny Milton providing evidence for the latter in the March 2021 Hodinkee article, “Why The Rolex GMT-Master Pepsi Is The Perfect Watch For Magnum P.I.“ Milton points out that the ref. 16750’s production timeline of 1980 to 1988 neatly aligns with the series run and would have been readily available to be sourced for the production.

At the start of the fourth season, Magnum, P.I. retconned our hero’s watch from his SEAL-style Chronosport diver to his father’s Rolex, as seen here in “Paradise Blues” (Episode 4.15) with its distinctive red-and-blue “Pepsi bezel”. T.C. appears to be wearing a Chronosport-style watch on the tropical rubber strap, however.

Magnum began wearing his silver POW/MIA bracelet around the same time as the Rolex GMT Master, though he actually started wearing it in the eighteenth episode of the third season. The POW/MIA bracelet program was launched on Veterans Day 1970, beginning a nationwide practice of wearing bracelets to increase awareness of and remember service members who were prisoners of war or missing in action. The simple silver bracelets are engraved with the service member’s name, rank, and the date they were taken prisoner or listed as missing. Magnum’s bracelet honors Kenneth Ray Lancaster, a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant from Maryland who was listed as missing on January 3, 1969.

SSGT Lancaster’s information etched on Magnum’s POW/MIA can be clearly seen as he completes a jigsaw puzzle in “Paradise Blues” (Episode 4.15).

Magnum wears a large gold “team ring” to match those worn by his pals T.C. and Rick, signifying their shared service in Vietnam. The black enamel-filled surface with a gold patriarchal cross recalls the Croix de Lorraine that had emerged as a symbol of resistance in wartime France. In the pilot episode and throughout the series from the second season onward, Magnum wears the ring on the third finger of his right hand.

The Guns

Given his high-caliber surname, it shouldn’t be surprising that Thomas Magnum is familiar with firearms, regularly packing a 1911-style pistol presumably retained from his service as a Navy SEAL. The series hit a few stumbling blocks before appropriately arming Magnum (more on that later), but the production eventually landed on a Colt MK IV Series 70 Government Model, a full-sized commercial variant of the venerated single-action M1911 that was the U.S. military’s designated service pistol dating back to around World War I.

Frequent mention is made of Magnum’s “.45”, which makes sense given the standard .45 ACP chambering of the military M1911 and M1911A1, though this style of pistol had been notorious among Hollywood armorers of the era for its difficulty cycling .45-caliber blanks. In addition, IMFDB cites a former film armorer who worked on Magnum, P.I. that mentioned the hassle of getting .45-caliber blanks on location.

To accommodate this, the screen-used Colt was actually chambered in the smaller 9×19 mm Parabellum ammunition as proven by a June 2007 auction listing from the Stembridge Armory Collection, where it was described in the catalog as: “Colt MK IV Series 70 Gov’t Model semi-auto pistol, 9mm Luger cal., 5” barrel, #70L33101. The barrel is adapted for firing blanks, approx. 95% blue finish remaining with slight holster wear, checkered brown plastic grips, correct Colt 9mm Luger marked magazine.”

Magnum rarely killed in cold blood, but his shot heard ’round Hawaii at the end of “Did You See the Sunrise?” (Episode 3.02) remains an iconic moment from the series.

Full-size .45-caliber Colt 1911 pistols had been featured on screen as early as the first episode, though their aforementioned difficulty in firing blanks resulted in the armorers seeking alternative solutions during the show’s early days. In a practice dating back to the ’60s and ’70s with movies like The Wild Bunch, Dillinger, and Three Days of the Condor, when the 1911 was required to be fired on screen, it was often swapped out for a Star Model B, a Spanish-made 1911 clone introduced in the late 1920s and chambered in 9×19 mm Parabellum. The smaller ammunition allowed for a greater capacity, as the Model B fed from nine-round magazines as opposed to the standard .45-caliber 1911’s seven-round mags.

The Model B could be visually differentiated by the lack of a grip safety and, most tellingly, a brass-colored external extractor along the right side of the slide’s rear grooves. It would be continually swapped out for the 1911 through the ’80s, most prominently in The Untouchables.

In “China Doll” (Episode 1.03), T.C. suggests that Magnum “don’t be no hero, man, use the .45!” as he checks the magazine load in his 9mm Star Model B.

In yet another weapons-related snafu in “China Doll” (Episode 1.03), a continuity error substituted the Star Model B in Magnum’s hand with the down-scaled Star Model BM, presumably to prevent potential damage to the Model B when Magnum takes a ninja star—coincidentally enough—to his hand, sending his pistol sprawling to the ground.

The Model BM was introduced in 1972 as a down-scaled variation of the older Model B, similar to Colt’s introduction of the shorter-barreled Commander. The barrel measures 3.9 inches, more than an inch shorter than the 5″-barreled 1911 and Model B. The Model BM was chambered in 9×19 mm Parabellum, fed from eight-round magazines. More than 200,000 were produced before Star ended production in 1992.

Note the shortened slide, indicating a Star Model BM that has been swapped in for the larger, 1911-sized Star Model B. This smaller pistol also has a blacker finished than Magnum’s parkerized Model B, and a more substantial Novak-style rear sight than the simplified stock sights on the Model B.

What to Imbibe

Rather than running afoul of corporate lawyers by prominently featuring any real-life brands, Magnum, P.I. joined legions of other TV shows by serving its characters fictional beers. For instance, Magnum’s go-to beer: Coops, with its name and golden-tinted label reminiscent of Coors Banquet.

Magnum enjoys a Coops at the King Kamehameha Club in “Lest We Forget” (Episode 1.10).

Hawaii is arguably west of the Mississippi River, but was Coors exported there at this time? … or were we robbed of yet another Smokey and the Bandit sequel opportunity, this time featuring Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed speeding a shipload of Coors across the Pacific with Jackie Gleason in hot pursuit?

(For those genuinely curious, Coors was not exported to Hawaii until the brewery expanded to national distribution in 1986, ending its era of hyper-regionalization that led to Big and Little Enos making their high-octane challenge to the Bandit.

How to Get the Look

Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum on Magnum, P.I., Episode 1.03: “China Doll”

Especially compared to his famous aloha shirts, rugby shirts like this cream-colored long-sleeved pullover with its twin pockets offer a subdued—and warmer—alternative for fans of Thomas Magnum’s style.

• Cream slubbed cotton long-sleeved rugby shirt with tan collar, three-button covered-fly placket, set-in side pockets, and ribbed cuffs and hem
• Medium-blue denim Levi’s jeans
• Khaki web belt with gold-tone USN “Surface Warfare” belt buckle
  • Available via Amazon
• White sneakers or boat shoes
• Gold Croix de Lorraine team ring
  • Replicas available via Amazon
• Chronosport Sea Quartz 30 stainless dive watch with black dial and black tropic rubber strap or Rolex GMT Master stainless steel watch with “Pepsi” blue-and-red bezel, black dial (with 3:00 day-date window), and stainless “Oyster”-style bracelet
• Silver POW/MIA bracelet
• Vuarnet Skilynx Acier tortoise nylon sport sunglasses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series, and peruse the extensively researched fan site Magnum Mania!

The Quote

I didn’t exactly panic… but I was glad I hadn’t had lunch.

The post Thomas Magnum’s Cream Rugby Shirt appeared first on BAMF Style.

Tim Roth as “Mr. Orange” in Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Vitals

Tim Roth as Freddie Newandyke, aka “Mr. Orange”, member of an armed robbery crew with a deep secret

Los Angeles, Summer 1992

Film: Reservoir Dogs
Release Date: October 9, 1992
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Costume Designer: Betsy Heimann

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This month marks the 30th anniversary since the wide release of Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino’s influential debut that introduced many of the director’s own cinematic trademarks and has been described as one of the greatest independent films of all time.

As we’ve come to expect from QT, Reservoir Dogs pays homage to classic noir and crime films, including Kansas City Confidential (1952), The Big Combo (1955), and—most specifically—The Killing (1956), with a plot centered around a gang of tough guys hired for a what should be a straightforward diamond heist… only to be stymied when it becomes evident that a member of their crew is an informant.

Suspicions abound, but few are leveled at the unfortunate “Mr. Orange” (Tim Roth) as the ocherously named bandit lays gut-shot in the gang’s rendezvous location; naming the crooks after colors was yet another homage, this time to The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974). Slowly, the surviving members of the crew—the professional Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), the spastic Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), and the crazily cold-blooded Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen)—desperately try to figure out what happened and what to tell Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his track-suited son “Nice Guy Eddie” (Chris Penn), who had organized the caper and stood to profit from its success.

What’d He Wear?

Costume designer Betsy Heimann helped elevated Reservoir Dogs to its now iconic status by dressing the gang somewhat identically in their black suits, white shirts, black ties, and sunglasses, an image that gained staying power from the slowed-down opening titles as the gang struts out to their cars to the tune of George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag”.

In the spirit of the film opening at a diner, Heimann recalled to Esquire that her initial conversation with Tarantino was at Denny’s before they returned to the director’s home to watch the French New Wave films that had provided his initial inspiration, including plenty starring Alain Delon.

“Quentin wanted to pay homage to French New Wave films. He also wanted the robbers to have certain anonymity. When he showed me some film clips, I remarked that the men were all wearing dark suits with white shirts and dark ties. This provided the anonymity we were looking for,” Heimann explained to Clothes on Film.

Tarantino’s October 1990 screenplay mentions the men’s “black suits” on the first page, but Heimann expanded this idea by exploring who would wear suits… and which characters would need to improvise. As Heimann further explained, “In my mind, these guys had been in/were just released from prison, which would leave them without many choices of clothing. If their instruction was to wear the dark suit and tie, they could put that together easily and for very little money at a thrift store. That is how the concept came together.”

The experienced Mr. White wore a suit provided via French designer agnès b.’s professional relationship with Harvey Keitel while Mr. Brown (played by Tarantino himself) would also wear a suit. Mr. Blonde appears to wear a full suit, but both he and Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker, a real-life bandit who had earlier written an autobiography called Little Boy Blue) instead sported mismatched black jackets and trousers. This left just Mr. Pink and Mr. Orange, who both wore jeans and boots with jackets sourced from “a cache of 1960s dark navy, charcoal, and black jackets” that Heimann had discovered and made good use of, given her $10,000 costume budget.

“If you went to a thrift store you’re not going to find a complete suit, so it’s a case of ‘here’s the jacket, here’s the pants.’,” Heimann later explained to Esquire. “I wanted different silhouettes for different characters—the collar stands, the length of the collar, the width of the tie, the type of shirt fabric, the style of the jacket—and that’s what creates the unique look of Reservoir Dogs.”

Mr. Orange and Mr. White—both shaded and suited in black and white—make their escape.

Mr. Orange’s thrifted black single-breasted jacket reflects the desired ’60s-style silhouette with its relatively fuller cut but narrower features like slim notch lapels. Tim Roth isn’t a tall man—I’ve read his height is somewhere around 5’7″—but his lean physique and angular features coordinate with the jacket’s shorter fit to ensure that he doesn’t look dwarfed by his three-button jacket. Likely once part of a suit, the orphaned odd jacket has the usual features of a welted breast pocket and straight, flapped hip pockets. The ventless jacket does have front darts that add shape, though it still provides a full fit… which also offers a tactical advantage to better conceal the full-size Smith & Wesson semi-automatic in Mr. Orange’s shoulder holster. The shoulders are padded, and the sleeves are finished with three-button “kissing” cuffs.

Mr. Orange wears the requisite white shirt, though it doesn’t stay white for very long. The shirt has a short semi-spread collar, breast pocket, and front placket. Mr. Orange never removes his jacket to prove this, but the fact that we never see his shirt cuffs leads me to suggest that he’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, consistent with his persona as a scrappier member of the crew as opposed to its more established crooks like Mr. White. His skinny black tie reflects some slubbing under the florescent diner lighting, suggesting a silk like shantung (which has less dramatic imperfections than dupioni.)

A red flag that a guy’s a going to be a bad tipper? He can’t even afford a shirt with long sleeves to wear with his suit.

Not only does Mr. Orange mismatch the suit jacket and trousers, he takes the additionally informal step of pairing his tailored jacket with black jeans! This was one of the happy costume-related character details that emerged from Heimann’s intentional planning… and limited budget.

Quentin now tells this story: I went to him and said, “I’m going to use these black jeans on Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi, and I’m going to put them with these really narrow, black, ’60s-cut jackets, and nobody’s going to know it isn’t a complete suit.” He said, “Well, she’d done a lot more movies than I had, so I believed her. And I guess she was right!” — Betsy Heimann to Nick Pope, Esquire

Though its history with black denim trousers dates back to shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Levi Strauss & Co. wouldn’t formally introduce black denim to its iconic Levi’s 501® Original Fit lineup until the 1980s. The gutshot Mr. Orange spends much of the film on his back, so we can’t see the arcuate stitch or red tab to be certain, though the cut, styling, and visible button-fly would suggest he wears the Levi’s 501 in black denim.

Mr. Orange holds up his jeans with a plain black edge-stitched leather belt that closes through a squared silver-toned buckle. Assuming that Mr. Orange wears the same type of shoulder holster as Mr. Blonde, with two wide black vinyl straps securing to each side of his waist, a strong belt would have been a must.

Mr. Orange wears a pair of black leather Chelsea boots, each detailed with a perforated cap toe that adds a distinctively dressier element borrowed from semi-brogue shoes. He wears black ribbed cotton lisle crew socks that rise high enough to cover the above-ankle shafts of his boots, which slip on with the aid of black elastic side gussets.

Though not as prominently featured as Mr. Blonde’s cowboy boots (and how!), these subtly detailed boots are one of my favorite costume aspects from Reservoir Dogs, as these versatile boots could be effectively executed with jeans as well as a jacket and tie, or—in Mr. Orange’s incongruous case—both.

Mr. Orange keeps his accessories simple, slipping a plain yellow-gold wedding band onto his left ring finger before going with the gang. On the same wrist, he wears a vintage-looking gold wristwatch with a round off-white dial and gold “twist-o-flex” expanding bracelet.

Mr. Orange may wear black jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with a black suit jacket and tie, but he does arguably earn back some style points with his choice of eyewear, shielding his eyes through a pair of Ray-Ban Clubmaster sunglasses with black “browline” frames, gold rims, and dark green lenses.

These specs recall the Shuron frame pioneered in the late 1940s and popularized through the ’60s thanks to wearers like Vince Lombardi, Malcolm X, and LBJ, then ultimately revived toward the end of the ’80s when Tom Cruise generously included Clubmasters as part of his Ray-Ban renaissance when he wore them in Rain Man. Clubmaster sunglasses as worn by Cruise and Roth suggest a retro cool that differs from their clear-lensed cousins, which carry a more conservative or old-fashioned connotation as sported by Kevin Costner in JFK, Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) through early seasons of Mad Men, and the reactionary businessman-gone-postal played by Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

Shop the sunglasses

The Ray-Ban Clubmaster Classic RB0316 in "black-on-gold" with green (G-15) lenses.

Now marketed as the Ray-Ban Clubmaster Classic RB3016, these browline-framed sunglasses are available from:

• Amazon ($146.70)
• Ray-Ban ($163)

Prices and availability current as of Sept. 30, 2022.

A Redditor has pointed out that, of the main robbery crew, Mr. Orange differentiates himself by wearing these Clubmasters rather than Wayfarers or wayfarer-style shades. As is wont to happen on Reddit, a few commenters suggested this was likely mere coincidence (given the lack of glasses on the Cabots and Mr. Blue), though I’m always inclined to believe in costume-informed intentionality.

The Gun

Joe Cabot armed his colorfully monikered heist team with nearly identical Smith & Wesson 659 pistols, likely a reflection of their fitness for the job as well as to provide additional uniformity that would make it more difficult for potential witnesses to differentiate the gang by their choice of weapons. (That said, the choice was likely made by Mr. White, the most senior and arguably professional of the crew, as he’s the only member to carry a second pistol—the similar Smith & Wesson 639—and a deleted scene includes a look at the rap sheet for “Lawrence Dimmick” that further describes his preferred pistol as a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson.)

The history for this model dates back to the 1950s, when Smith & Wesson responded to the 1954 U.S. Army service pistol trials with the introduction of the Model 39. Though the trials were ultimately abandoned, the Model 39 was Smith & Wesson’s segue into the semi-automatic handgun market, in which it had only contributed modest offerings in earlier years. For nearly two decades, the Model 39 reigned as Smith & Wesson’s primary semi-automatic pistol until the Model 59 was introduced in 1971, made from an aluminum frame that allowed the weapon to feed from a double-stack magazine that carried 14 rounds rather than the eight rounds in the Model 39’s single-stack magazine.

The nomenclature evolved when the “second generation” of these pistols was rolled out across the early 1980s, with the single-stack “39” and double-stack “59” designations relegated to the latter two of the new three-digit model names; the first digit was reserved to distinguish whether the finish was blued alloy (“4xx”), steel-framed (“5xx”), or stainless steel (“6xx”), thus the Model 659 pistols as seen in Reservoir Dogs were stainless steel and fed from double-stack magazines.

Mr. Orange dumps at least a dozen bullets from his Smith & Wesson’s 14-round magazine into Mr. Blonde. The rounded trigger guard indicates that Mr. Orange carries a Model 659 from earlier in its production history.

The decade saw increased additions to the line, including the all-steel single-stack 539, the compact yet double-stack stainless 669, and the .45-caliber 645. The lineup continued to expand with the dawn of a new decade as Smith & Wesson introduced the four-digit “third generation” in the 1990s, in calibers ranging from the original 9×19 mm Parabellum through .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and the newer 10mm Auto.

Though these somewhat bulky steel-framed Smith & Wesson semi-autos continue to have proponents (including yours truly, who owns a third-generation 5906), their heft made them increasingly unpopular and obsolete as users grew accustomed to lighter-weight polymer-framed pistols like Glocks. By 2000, Smith & Wesson had mostly phased out these steel-framed semi-autos, first with the poorly received Sigma series and now the considerably more successful M&P (Military & Police) series.

How to Get the Look

Tim Roth as “Mr. Orange” in Reservoir Dogs (1992)

This is a Reservoir Dogs character, so just a black suit, white shirt, black tie, and black shoes, right? Not so fast… Freddy Newandyke likely would have had access to a full suit but for his undercover persona as the youthful crook “Mr. Orange”, he—via costume designer Betsy Heimann, of course—cobbled together a vintage black suit jacket with black jeans to wear with the de facto white shirt and black tie, completing the look with browline-framed sunglasses, black boots, and a wedding ring.

Looking to make Mr. Orange your Halloween costume this year? Aim to make that white shirt more red than anything else!

• Black single-breasted 3-button suit jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, ventless back
• White short-sleeved shirt with spread collar, front placket, and breast pocket
• Black narrow tie
• Black denim jeans
• Black leather belt with silver-toned squared single-prong buckle
• Black leather perforated cap-toe Chelsea boots
• Black ribbed cotton lisle tube socks
• Black-framed browline-style sunglasses with gold rims and dark green lenses
• Gold wedding ring
• Gold wristwatch with round off-white dial and gold expanding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Listen to me, Marvin Nash… I’m a cop.

The post Reservoir Dogs — Mr. Orange appeared first on BAMF Style.

Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No (1962)

Vitals

Sean Connery as James Bond, sophisticated and resourceful British government agent

Morgan’s Harbour, Jamaica, Spring 1962

Film: Dr. No
Release Date: October 5, 1962
Director: Terence Young
Wardrobe Master: John Brady
Tailor: Anthony Sinclair

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

With the release of Dr. No sixty years ago today, October 5 has since been immortalized as Global James Bond Day in commemoration of when Sean Connery first uttered that now-iconic character introduction:

Bond. James Bond.

Dr. No had actually been Ian Fleming’s sixth novel featuring the worldly secret agent, set primarily in Jamaica as he penned the novel from his Jamaican estate Goldeneye. The author had tired of the character and left Bond’s fate somewhat ambiguous at the end of his previous novel From Russia With Love, though ultimately choosing that the agent would live to die another day and beginning Dr. No with 007’s recovery from the poison inflicted by the sharp-shoed Rosa Klebb.

Back to relatively full health, Bond finds his punishment in the form of a simple assignment meant to ease him back into duty (and possibly penalize him for letting his guard down), investigating the disappearance of a station chief and his secretary in Jamaica. There, Bond learns that the late chief had been investigating an eccentric recluse with the equally eccentric name of Doctor Julius No (Joseph Wiseman). With the help of his CIA buddy Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) and local contact Quarrel (John Kitzmiller), Bond ultimately determines that he and his newly issued Walther owe the good bad doctor a long-overdue visit.

From the start, the movie adaptation of Dr. No laid much of the groundwork for what would be familiar elements in the James Bond film series, including his shaken-not-stirred vodka martinis, his suits sharply tailored with just enough room under the left armpit for a Walther, the beautiful women that helped or hampered his missions, and the famous “James Bond Theme” composed by Monty Norman and arranged and performed by John Barry.

The straightforward plot and limited locations made Dr. No ideal for 007’s first cinematic adventure, produced on a modest budget of a million dollars and with a little-known Scottish actor in the role that would catapult him to fame.

What’d He Wear?

Felix Leiter: Where were you measured for this, bud?
James Bond: My tailor, Savile Row.

Witticism at gunpoint aside, the exhaustive research of James Bond scholars like Matt Spaiser of Bond Suits has informed fans that Sean Connery’s suits as 007 were crafted by Anthony Sinclair, a London tailor whose shop was located on Conduit Street, roughly two blocks away from Savile Row.

Matt has also written comprehensively about the light gray suit in this sequence, made from an attractive blend of mohair and wool, a wrinkle-resistant combination that wears cool and reflects an elegant silky sheen that serves Bond well under both the Jamaican daytime sun and the artificial light of Puss-Feller’s nightclub after dark.

Bond’s mohair-blended suit shines under the nightclub lights during an evening at Puss-Feller’s.

Bond’s two-button suit jacket reflects Sinclair’s “Conduit Cut”, a term referring to Sinclair’s tailoring style that retained its elegant essence even while the exact details and cut slightly evolved over Connery’s near-decade portrayal of 007. Sinclair’s suit jackets for Connery followed classic English tailoring principles with soft shoulders, full chests with gentle drape, and waist suppression. (You can read more about the Conduit Cut from Bond Suits.)

The moderate lapel width balances the breadth of the ’50s and the narrower shape popularized through the ’60s, though Sinclair never wavered from notch lapels on Bond’s lounge suits (of course, dinner jackets are a different story!) Sinclair variously cut Bond’s suit jackets with no vents, single vents, and double vents; this suit features the latter. The sleeves are finished with four-button cuffs, the straight hip pockets are jetted (sans flaps), and Bond foregoes his usual white pocket square that he wears straight-folded in his welted breast pocket with his other suits in Dr. No.

Two sleek suits, though the narrow notches on Felix Leiter’s tan suit date it to the early ’60s while Bond’s elegantly proportioned details make his gray suit more timeless.

The turned-back “cocktail cuffs” on his shirts stand out as a signature detail of Sean Connery’s style as James Bond. To over-simplify, cocktail cuffs blend the double-layered aesthetic of French cuffs with the practicality of standard button cuffs, resulting in a quietly fussy and sophisticated design. The origins of these distinctive cuffs remain in dispute, but they were visibly present on shirts that Frank Foster made for his stylish client Yul Brynner in the 1950s, and Turnbull & Asser had already mastered the cuff by the time director Terence Young introduced them to the young Connery to be outfitted as agent 007. (You can read more about cocktail cuffs from Bond Suits.)

With his suits, Connery’s Bond typically wore cotton poplin shirts along the white and blue color spectrum, here favoring a plain white that Bond Suits describes as the “Sea Island cotton” favored by Bond across Fleming’s novels. The cutaway collar features a wider spread than Connery would wear in subsequent movies, though all spread collars flatteringly balance the actor’s sharp, angular facial features. (This very philosophy explains why this post’s more rotund-faced author prefers point collars!)

Dr. No also established the essential Connery era neckwear—the navy grenadine silk tie, distinguished by its woven texture and tied in a Windsor knot that suitably fills the wide space under his collar… despite the literary Bond’s bias against Windsor knots as stated in Fleming’s novel From Russia With Love. (Read more about 007’s favored grenadine ties at Bond Suits.)

Bond keeps his finger on the trigger of his Walther while surrendering it to Leiter. Note his shirt’s distinctively crafted two-button cocktail cuffs.

Connery wears almost-identically cut and styled suit trousers through his tenure as Bond, specifically through the ’60s when all of his trousers were rigged with double forward-facing pleats. These trousers have his usual straight vertical pockets with openings cut along the side seams, though we can assume that they also feature the button-through back-right pocket that we see on his other tailored trousers throughout Dr. No. The trouser legs taper to the cuffed bottoms.

The waistband is secured with a hidden hook-and-eye extended tab in the front and three-button “DAKS Top” adjusters on each side, a self-suspended system developed by Simpsons of Piccadilly in the 1930s. Bond’s side-adjusters not only hold his trousers up at Connery’s natural waist, they also provide an external button for him to secure his shoulder holster to his waistband.

The shoulder rig consists of a simple wide strap of blue vinyl that extends across Bond’s back, loops around the right armpit, and returns to where it appears to be velcro’d onto itself in front of the left armpit, below which hangs the tan chamois leather holster for his Walther.

Quarrel confirms that Bond doesn’t keep an extra Walther in his shoulder holster, which the agent secures in place by fastening it to his trousers’ side-adjuster buttons.

Bond wears his usual black calf leather cap-toe derby shoes, laced through three sets of eyelets though he would also occasionally wear two-eyelet derbies later in the series. His dark socks are either black or, more likely, navy blue.

Quarrel searches Bond for weapons hikes up Bond’s trousers to allow future style bloggers to ascertain the color of his socks.

Unless it’s covered by shirt cuff, Bond appears not to be wearing the Rolex Submariner ref. 6538 steel-cased dive watch that had debuted in Dr. No, strapped to Sean Connery’s left wrist on a dark exotic leather band.

The Gun

Even those not interested in firearms could probably tell you that James Bond’s signature sidearm is a Walther PPK, which the agent dutifully carried—with only few exceptions—across the novels and films.

The weapon had been introduced to the series after British firearms expert Geoffrey Boothroyd wrote to Ian Fleming to share his admiration for the character… but not his armament. Boothroyd believes the .25-caliber Beretta in Bond’s shoulder holster across the first few novels to be “a lady’s gun,” offering his expertise in finding a more appropriate alternative. The timing was fortuitous as Bond’s failure to draw his suppressed Beretta from his holster at the end of the novel From Russia With Love led to his questionable fate on the final page.

The second chapter of Fleming’s next Bond novel, Dr. No, thus introduced an armorer—named Major Boothroyd, in tribute to the author’s benefactor—who replaced Bond’s aging and anemic Beretta with a Walther PPK in 7.65mm, describing it as “a real stopping gun… about a .32-caliber as compared with the Beretta’s .25.” When Dr. No was chosen to be Bond’s first cinematic adventure, the scene was was retained—perhaps unnecessarily—in the spirit of providing a faithful adaptation.

“Walther PPK, 7.65-mil with a delivery like a brick through a plate-glass window. Takes a Brusch silencer with very little reduction in muzzle velocity,” Major Boothroyd describes as he loads the weapon and hands it to Bond. “The American CIA swear by them,” he adds, a Chekhovian suggestion that would pay off in a later scene.

Bond and Leiter are each armed with a Walther upon their first meeting in Puss-Feller’s back room.

Unfortunately, Dr. No‘s limited budget and the lack of attention to firearms accuracy on screen resulted in the production sourcing not a .32-caliber Walther PPK but rather a .380-caliber Walther PP to fill Bond’s shoulder holster. (Additionally, the anemic .25-caliber Beretta was portrayed on screen by a larger Beretta M1934… hardly appropriate solely for a ladies’ handbag as it had indeed been the Italian military’s service pistol, and its .380 ACP ammunition would have made it equal in power to the PP that Boothroyd issues Bond, if not more-so than the intended .32-caliber PPK. But I digress.)

The Walther PP had actually been the first of the series, introduced in 1929 and intended for use by German police as its designation—Polizeipistole—suggests. Within two years, Walther released the downscaled PPK with a shorter barrel, frame, and grip that made it more appropriate for plainclothes officers and undercover work. Similar to earlier blowback-operated pistols like the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, the Walther PP and PPK were primarily chambered in both .32 ACP (7.65x17mm) and .380 ACP (9x17mm), with the PPK taking shorter magazines that carried one round less than the PP.

Though the James Bond franchise presents the Walther PPK as a relatively rare gun—particularly suggested in films like You Only Live Twice and GoldenEye to be used uniquely by the agent—it was really anything but, having been produced in great numbers during World War II, including its notorious usage by Adolf Hitler to commit suicide in May 1945. The PP and PPK didn’t die with Hitler, and its compact size and reliability made it a favorite among cops, criminals, civilians, and even celebrities, with Elvis Presley owning a few himself, including a gold-plated PPK that he gifted to Jack Lord—the actor who portrayed the PP-carrying Felix Leiter in Dr. No.

Two Walther PP pistols were thus sourced for Dr. No, only appearing on screen at the same time when Bond and Leiter meet. One of Sean Connery’s screen-used Walthers from Dr. No was auctioned in 2020, along with a letter of provenance from Bapty, the British prop house that had provided screen-ready weapons to the Bond series since Dr. No.

One of Sean Connery’s two screen-used Walther PP pistols from Dr. No, marked with serial number “19174A” and stamped “MADE IN WEST GERMANY”. The other side of the slide identifies the “Modell PP—Cal. 9mm kurz”, an alternate designation for the .380 ACP ammunition.
The grips were evidently replaced with black Pachmayr grips sometime between the completion of Dr. No in 1962 and 2006, when the pistol was first auctioned by Christie’s. (Source: Julien’s Live)

Indeed, swapping the Walther PP in for the PPK was hardly the only firearms-related error in Dr. No, as a close-up of Bond attaching his famous silencer also shows that he now carries an FN Browning Model 1910, likely the only pistol that could host a suppressor that was available for the film. Additionally, shots of Bond firing what should be his Walther on Crab Key depict him firing a full-size M1911A1, perhaps the only available semi-automatic pistol that could cycle blanks.

After Dr. No proved that James Bond would indeed return to the screen, the production team worked more carefully to ensure that 007 would carry a proper PPK when the situation called for it, likely the result of increasing product placement deals with Walther that landed their respective new pistols—like the P5 in the ’80s and P99 in the ’90s—in the agent’s holster as well.

What to Imbibe

Dr. No establishes the “shaken not stirred” vodka martini as James Bond’s preferred cocktail, but it also presents the diversity of agent 007’s palette. After meeting Felix Leiter and Quarrel, the trio split a bottle of Black & White blended whisky at Puss-Feller’s bar, where they also force the company of Dr. No’s camera-toting operative Annabel Chung (Marguerite LeWars).

After ruining her livelihood, Bond could have at least offered Annabel a dram of their dwindling Scotch reserve.

The Black & White whisky story dates back to the 1880s, when Canadian-born businessman began marketing his “Buchanan Blend” whisky to address what he perceived to be a fruitful market opportunity in England for bottled whisky. The blend was first renamed “House of Commons” in recognition of its legislative audience, though it became even more recognizable for its two-color label that led to the official rebranding of “Black & White” in 1902. The brand would become additionally familiar for the pair of terriers—one black, one white, naturally—illustrating the labels.

BAMF Style readers may recall recently reading about Black & White—and, indeed, the same passage above—as it featured as Cary Grant’s favored booze in Father Goose (1964). Additional pop culture references and appearances of Black & White include Dashiell Hammett’s 1924 Continental Op story “The Golden Horseshoe”, movies like Mogambo (1953), A Night to Remember (1958), Beat Girl (1960), La Dolce Vita (1960), and Frenzy (1972), as well as in Connery’s last “official” Bond movie, Diamonds are Forever (1971), when Bond and Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) each enjoy a dram of her whisky.

How to Get the Look

Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No (1962)

While the character and his style were still being established for the screen, James Bond adapted his quintessential gray tailoring for a warm Jamaican day in his light-wearing mohair-blended suit, accompanied by his staples of a “cocktail cuff” shirt, navy grenadine tie, and—of course—a shoulder-holstered Walther.

• Light gray mohair/wool-blend suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and double vents
  • Double-forward pleated trousers with “DAKS Top” 3-button side-adjusters, straight/on-seam side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton poplin shirt with cutaway spread collar, front placket, and 2-button turnback/”cocktail” cuffs
• Navy grenadine silk tie
• Black leather three-eyelet cap-toe derby shoes
• Navy cotton lisle socks
• Tan chamois leather shoulder holster with blue vinyl straps

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I hope he cooks better than he fights.

The post Dr. No: Bond’s Gray Mohair Suit and Walther in Jamaica appeared first on BAMF Style.

Al Martino as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather (1972)

Vitals

Al Martino as Johnny Fontane, down-on-his-luck crooner

Long Island, New York, Summer 1945

Film: The Godfather
Release Date: March 14, 1972
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Anna Hill Johnstone

Background

Today in 1927, Al Martino was born in Philadelphia to two Italian immigrants from Abruzzo, the same southern Italian region from which much of my family hails. Following his U.S. Navy service during World War II, the singer began earnestly following his career in entertainment. Twenty years after his first single, “Here in My Heart”, reached #1 in the U.S. Billboard and UK Singles charts, Martino joined the cast of The Godfather as Johnny Fontane, an Italian-American crooner whose early career parallels that of Martino’s contemporary Frank Sinatra.

“When Johnny was first starting out, he was signed to this personal service contract with a big bandleader, and as his career got better and better, he wanted to get out of it. Now, Johnny is my father’s godson, and my father went to see this bandleader and he offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go. The bandleader said ‘no.’ So, the next day, my father went to see him, only this time with Luca Brasi. And, within an hour, he signed a release for a certified check of $1,000…,” Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) explains to his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton), in an incident said to be inspired by the Mafia’s role in easing Sinatra out of his contract with Tommy Dorsey. “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse… Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.”

His arrival heralded by excitedly screaming teeny-boppers and autograph-seekers, Johnny Fontane arrives at a Corleone family wedding, though his attendance has a two-fold purpose, knowing that Sicilian tradition—one invented for the story, it’s said—dictates that the Don can’t refuse a favor request on his wedding day. After having his arm twisted to sing the contemporary hit “I Have But One Heart”, Johnny asks for his godfather’s influence in securing him a role in a “new war picture” that would guarantee his comeback… another biographical detail echoing Sinatra’s salvation from a career slump by his Oscar-winning performance in From Here to Eternity. Much to the entertainment of his colleagues, Don Vito (Marlon Brando) takes the opportunity to mock Johnny’s self-pity before assigning the task to his capable consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall).

Vito: You spend time with your family?
Johnny: Sure I do.
Vito: Good. (with a look at his philandering son Sonny) ’cause a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.

Though as much as art imitated life, life would again imitate art through Al Martino’s own quest to secure the role of Johnny Fontane, which author Mark Seal chronicles in Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather. Martino’s campaign reportedly began after fellow crooner Vic Damone exited the role in 1970, working to convince Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, Mario Puzo, and Al Ruddy to cast him, before taking a page straight from Puzo’s text. According to Seal, no severed horse’s heads were required as “Martino said he went to the crime boss Russ Bufalino and asked him to intervene. When the official cast list was announced, the role of Johnny Fontane was his. The answer to how he got the role, Martino said, was simple: ‘I went to my godfather!‘”

As this is the 50th anniversary year of The Godfather as well as the month of my own wedding, it feels appropriate to celebrate Al Martino’s birthday by analyzing the loud suit that Johnny Fontane wears for his appearance at Connie’s wedding reception at the sprawling Corleone estate in Long Island.

What’d He Wear?

There’s something undeniably 1970s about Johnny Fontane’s attire for the Corleone family wedding, his cream silk suit, ruffled pink shirt, and oversized bow tie providing a garish contrast to the staid black wool tuxedoes and wing collars worn by the old-school mobsters. It’s the sort of look that one might find when rifling through your parents’ prom photos—or your own, not to disparage BAMF Style readers who lived through the disco decade!

Johnny’s cream-colored suiting is slubbed with a sheen indicative of raw silk. The suit is undeniably a lounge suit rather than a dinner suit or tuxedo, though he dresses it up in a creative black tie manner.

Johnny may have but one heart, though he certainly has many ruffles.

Tailored to flatter Al Martino’s broad-shouldered frame with front darts that shape and pull in the waist, the single-breasted suit jacket has notch lapels of a substantial breadth, rolling to two cream-colored buttons that match the suiting. The notch lapels and two-button front are enough of a deviation to signify that Johnny isn’t wearing a traditional black tie jacket, though the distinction is further made by the jacket’s single vent and wide flaps over the hip pockets.

Johnny dresses his welted breast pocket with a unique pocket square that’s all black on one side, with the reverse showing a magenta pink within the black rolled edges of the silk. The scheme echoes the same coloring of his oversized butterfly-shaped bow tie, which presents as black silk but with magenta-lined reverse peers out from where the tie has been folded over itself.

“You can act like a man!”

While already dressed loudly, especially in contrast to the Corleones, the most flamboyant aspect of Johnny’s attire is arguably his pale pink ruffled shirt. The ruffles flourishing Johnny’s front placket and pleats are detailed with a subtle black trim that harmonizes with the black-and-pink bow tie and pocket square. We also find ruffles along the outer edges of the shirt’s double (French) cuffs, which Johnny holds in place by ornate detailed gold links, each with a gleaming diamond framed in the center.

Ruffles had been reawakened from their Regency-era height during the Peacock Revolution that began in the swinging ’60s, sartorially characterized by colorful challenges to menswear tradition. Though perhaps anachronistic to see on a men’s dress shirt in the ’40s, Johnny’s ruffles—on a pink shirt, no less—visually communicate what Don Vito sees Johnny’s effete weakness.

Johnny also wears a hefty ring on the third finger of his right hand, almost wide enough to fill the space between his knuckle and the rest of his hand, with a shining square-cut diamond.

It must’ve been hard for the Don to buy Johnny’s down-on-his-luck sob story with that diamond staring back at him.

As the matching trousers are part of a lounge suit rather than a dinner suit, they lack any silk side braiding, instead plainly detailed with a flat front, side pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs). Through the trouser belt loops, he wears a cream belt that matches the suit but contrasts against the leather of black lace-up dress shoes.

Johnny arrives with a straw Panama hat in his hand that harmonizes with the summer cloth and setting, though he discards it as he makes his way to the reception, with the hand ending up in the hands of one of his dark-suited escorts.

How to Get the Look

Al Martino as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather (1972)

Compared to the conservatively dressed Corleones, Johnny Fontane isn’t doing his reputation from the Don as “a Hollywood finocchio” any favors by showing up in a pink ruffled shirt to his daughter’s wedding, paired with a cream silk suit and oversized bow tie rather than a proper tuxedo, but his attire presents an immediately obvious visual contrast between the celebrity and the crime family… at least until Fredo Corleone would slip into his own bold dinner jacket several years later in The Godfather, Part II.

• Cream-colored raw silk suit
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale-pink evening shirt with wide collar, ruffled front pleats, and ruffled double/French cuffs
  • Round gold cuff links with diamond center
• Black silk butterfly-shaped bow tie with magenta reverse
• Cream leather belt
• Black leather lace-up dress shoes
• Square-cut diamond ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series and read Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel that started it all.

The Quote

Oh, Godfather, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do…

The post The Godfather: Johnny Fontane’s Cream Silk Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.