Jake Johnson as Doug Renetti on Minx (Episode 1.10: “You happened to me”)
Vitals
Jake Johnson as Doug Renetti, easygoing porn publisher
San Fernando Valley, California, Summer and Fall 1972
Series: Minx
Episodes:
– “Mary had a little hysterectomy” (Episode 1.06, dir. Carrie Brownstein, aired 3/31/2022)
– “You happened to me” (Episode 1.10, dir. Stella Meghie, aired 4/14/2022)
Creator: Ellen Rapoport
Costume Designer: Beth Morgan
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
After the show’s fate seemed uncertain at the end of last year, Minx returns this Friday, July 21 on Starz. The streaming platform had rescued the series after it was unceremoniously canceled by HBO Max in December 2022 and removed from its service, alongside other original series like Westworld and The Nevers. Though its future was in doubt, Minx completed filming the second season within a week and, exactly a month after HBO Max canceled it, Starz announced on January 12, 2023 that Minx would be adopted onto its service.
Also set in the San Fernando Valley during the so-called “golden age of porn”, Minx could be described as a lighter-hearted companion piece to Boogie Nights, to the extent that Jake Johnson told Brooke Marine for W Magazine that he “used to play it in my trailer [during Minx] to remember the certain energy and bounce to that movie. When it would be early in the morning and I’m putting on tight pants, it would instantly make me happy to be at work.”
The first season is primarily set through 1972, a pivotal year for both the country (Watergate!) and the adult entertainment industry (Deep Throat!), as lovably sleazy Van Nuys publisher Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson) is all too happy to cash in on the opportunities that adult entertainment has offered him. However, his new business partner—feminist writer Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond)—is considerably more reluctant, having teamed up with Doug’s Bottom Dollar Productions only out of a desperate desire to have her perspectives in print, while he sees the moneymaking opportunities of publishing erotica for women as capitalizing on a largely untapped market. Both are forced to make compromises, though it’s initially Joyce who is forced to compromise to a much greater degree, sacrificing her vision that began as the progressive zine The Matriarchy Awakens and has evolved into Minx, a flashy volume with her thoughtful articles dumbed-down among photos of naked firemen.
“Johnson’s empathetic but tough performance makes clear who Doug is, and the complicated motivation that lies behind his scruffily direct exterior,” Daniel D’Addario reviewed for Variety. “Doug doesn’t want to wholesale change who Joyce is: He just wants to bundle her ideas, Trojan-horse style, into a package that women outside the academy will embrace.”
Doug and Joyce continue to disagree on what direction to take Minx, with his unintentionally dominating her appearance on The Dick Cavett Show finally fissuring their business relationship. By the finale, Doug makes amends with Joyce, inviting her back to the team as Minx‘s editor, but “as partners this time.” When Joyce answers that she would rather see what she can accomplish on her own, and not as a partner, Doug hands over total control of the magazine, earnestly encouraging that “I can’t wait to see what you do.”
What’d He Wear?
For a lover of ’70s fashion like me, the parade of polyester through each episode of Minx is almost as pornographic as the pages produced by Bottom Dollar Publications. Costume designer Beth Morgan zeroed in on some of the most delightfully dated fads for most of the characters in Doug Renetti’s charmingly tacky world. (I’d make an exception when discussing Joyce’s wardrobe, as she strikes me as a tasteful dresser—still adhering to many trends of the ’70s but with smarter sensibilities than most of her colleagues.)
“Beth Morgan, the head of wardrobe, is brilliant,” Jake Johnson explained to Brooke Marine for W Magazine, adding, “The clothes are not comfortable. This was one of the first jobs for me where someone put so much thought into the clothes… She was choosing clothes to define a character.”
The last time we see Doug, he’s striding away from Joyce’s apartment complex while clad in a pink leisure suit—a standout from his closet full of colorful leisure suits and one of the few pieces he repeats over the course of the first season.
Leisure suits evolved from sporty apparel developed throughout the 20th century, including function-oriented safari jackets and the leisure-oriented “Hollywood suits” and loafer jackets. As synthetic materials presented cheaper alternatives for making clothing around the same time that American culture was rebelling against formal clothing and office dress codes, the leisure suit emerged as an almost inevitable byproduct.
Doug’s leisure suit is made from chambray, a lightweight yet hardy cloth often used for workwear. Though chambray is traditionally blue, Doug’s leisure suit is plain-woven with a red warp and white filling yarns, presenting a mottled pink appearance.
The lightweight chambray cloth and shorter cut makes the top half of Doug’s leisure suit more of a shirt-jacket than a traditional jacket. Some leisure suits, specifically lighter-weight ones more adjacent to safari style, were designed to be worn like an untucked shirt-jacket and trousers, though we always see Doug wearing this particular pink leisure jacket layered over another shirt.
The jacket has a flat collar and five silver-colored snaps up the front placket from the waist to just below the neck, where the top snap is positioned lower so that the long-pointed collar would still present flat and open should Doug choose to fully snap his jacket up to the top. The shoulders have epaulet straps with pointed ends that snap against the jacket (on the side nearer the neck), and the set-in sleeves are finished with squared cuffs that have a snap to fasten through one of two studs. (Not the same kind of stud that poses in Minx.)
The two chest pockets are outlined in the same white contrast stitch that details the edges of the jacket, and each pocket is covered with a gently pointed flap that closes through a single snap. The jacket also has a pair of vertical-entry hand pockets, and a vent on each side aligns with seams running down from the armpits. The jacket is lined in bright red, with a pink chambray square positioned low on the left side to provide an inner pocket.
While leisure jackets were very distinctively detailed, their matching trousers often typically resembled conventional trousers. Aside from their eye-catching color, Doug’s flat-front trousers are no exception, with belt loops, gently slanted side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms with a subtle flare, consistent with trending cuts of the ’70s.
Doug holds the trousers up with a black-edged belt of tan leather, affixed to his brass statement belt buckle that he rotates through a variety of belts. The buckle’s shape reminds me of a fish, “facing” Doug’s right with swirls on the top and bottom and a circle indented through the center.
Doug wears his usual russet-brown leather bicycle-toe ankle boots. The uppers closely follow the shape of his feet over his ankles, and the heels are slightly raised.
Doug’s shirts are typically solid-colored knits or wildly printed button-ups, and costume designer Beth Morgan has Jake Johnson modeling both styles with this particular leisure suit.
He debuts the pink leisure suit in “Mary had a little hysterectomy” (Episode 1.06) with a bright red knit short-sleeved polo shirt, detailed with a contrasting broken white stitch along the edges of the collar, placket, and along the top of the patch-style breast pocket. The placket has four red cloth-covered buttons that he wears totally undone. (He had earlier worn a dark-green version of this shirt in the first episode.)
Tina (Idara Victor) joins Doug at the airport bar, where he drowns his sorrows about being unable to get a meeting in Tempe with the Thrifty stockist.
For the final scene of the finale, “You happened to me” (Episode 1.10), Doug wears another shirt that coordinates to the suit—albeit in a different way. The shirt has a black ground, hardly seen against the all-over pink and purple print of varying flowers and leaves. The shirt has a long collar that Doug wears purposely flat atop the collar of his leisure suit jacket, with the top few black buttons of his shirt placket undone to show his chest. The long-sleeved shirt has button cuffs.
Doug’s floral shirt echoes his blooming maturity in the season finale, willingly handing control of one of his publications to Joyce.
No man could rightfully claim to be a deity of the ’70s porn world without an array of gold jewelry, to which Doug dutifully complies with a hefty necklace and no less than four rings, a gold watch, and a gold bracelet to balance out his wrists. Worn on a gold snake-chain necklace, Doug’s large gold pendant depicts a figure who appears to be carrying two large gems: an amber stone in his right hand and a purple stone in his left. (The purple stone appears to have fallen off by the end of the series.)
Worn on a gold snake-chain necklace, Doug’s large gold pendant features an angel carrying an amber stone in their right hand and an amethyst hanging from a heart-shaped setting in their left. “It’s this genuine piece we found thrifting and I decided his mother gave him,” costume designer Beth Morgan explained to Carolyn Twersky for W Magazine. “I like to think it’s a piece that has a lot of sentimental meaning to Doug.”
Though his jewelry configuration changes, he begins “Mary had a little hysterectomy” with a pair of rings on each hand. On his right index finger, he wears a gold ring with a diagonally set black oval stone. On the ring finger of his right hand, he wears another gold ring with a black stone, though this squared stone is set flush with the ring’s band and appears to be flanked by Masonic symbols on each side.
From the second episode on, Doug wears a gold wristwatch with a gold-and-brown gradient dial detailed with non-numeric hour indices. The watch’s gold bracelet has a rice-grain textured finish, though it’s a solid bracelet.
Doug rallies his Minx troops to brainstorm how to boost sales.
On his left index finger, Doug wears a braid-textured gold ring with a squared “face”. His usual pinky ring on this hand is also gold, flaring out to accommodate a large round “tiger’s eye” stone.
Doug typically wears a chunky and ornately textured gold link bracelet on this wrist, though a continuity error at the end of “Mary had a little hysterectomy” (Episode 1.06) finds him nursing his airport beer with a thin gold rope-chain bracelet instead. He typically wears this thinner bracelet on his right wrist with his watch.
By the episode’s end, Doug looks hardly able to rally himself.
How to Get the Look
Jake Johnson as Doug Renetti on Minx (Episode 1.06: “Mary had a little hysterectomy”)
Little of Doug’s wardrobe, characterized by outfits like this pink leisure suit and trove of gold jewelry, would work well outside of the 1970s—and even then, it was probably best contained to the San Fernando Valley porno industry. Yet, there’s a rakish sensibility about how comfortably Jake Johnson pulls it off that I can’t help but to admire.
- Pink chambray leisure suit:
- Shirt-jacket with wide flat collar, five-snap front placket, shoulder straps (epaulets), two chest pockets (with snap-down flaps), two vertical-entry hand pockets, squared single-snap cuffs, and side vents
- Flat-front trousers with belt loops, gently slanted side pockets, and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
- Red knitted short-sleeved pocket polo shirt or black, pink, and purple floral-print long-sleeved shirt
- Russet-brown leather bicycle-toe ankle boots
- Gold gemstone-accented pendant on gold snake-chain necklace
- Four gold rings
- Gold rope-chain bracelet
- Gold quartz watch with gold-and-black gradient dial on gold bead-textured bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the series, currently streaming on Starz.
The Quote
How do you think we built this place? We built this place with hustle!
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