Alain Delon in La Piscine (1969)
Vitals
Alain Delon as Jean-Paul Leroy, moody ad agency writer
French Riviera, Summer 1968
Film: The Swimming Pool
(French title: La Piscine)
Release Date: January 31, 1969
Director: Jacques Deray
Costume Designer: André Courrèges
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
French screen icon Alain Delon died yesterday on August 18, 2024. Today’s post pays tribute to the actor’s cinematic legacy by returning to La Piscine, Jacques Deray’s stylish psychological thriller set at a Saint-Tropez villa where a couple spends an increasingly uncomfortable summer holiday.
La Piscine reunited former real-life lovers Alain Delon and Romy Schneider as the vacationing writer Jean-Paul and his girlfriend Marianne, who welcome Marianne’s past paramour Harry (Maurice Ronet) and his 18-year-old daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin). As is wont to happen among a group so attractive, dissatisfied, and French, flirtatious dynamics emerge among the quartet as Marianne drifts back to the hard-drinking Harry while Jean-Paul focuses his attention on the young Penelope.
After the women retire to bed one night, a drunken Harry confronts Jean-Paul about his advances toward Penelope and takes a swing at him, landing him in the eponymous swimming pool. Initially refusing to help him out, Jean-Paul seizes upon the opportunity and actively keeps Harry’s head below water until he drowns, then stages the scene to look like a drowning accident. Following Harry’s sparsely attended funeral, Inspector Lévêque (Paul Crauchet) returns from Marseilles as he continues investigating the death and confides his suspicions to Marianne.
Jane Birkin’s death last summer left Delon as the sole surviving cast member of La Piscine until yesterday when it was reported that the 88-year-old actor died at his home in Douchy, surrounded by family.
What’d He Wear?
La Piscine is known for its sun-bleached imagery of a scantily clad Delon, Schneider, and Birkin lounging in swimwear designed by André Courrèges, but Harry’s funeral provides an opportunity for the dapper Delon to appear well-tailored in a suit woven from a fawn-and-cream herringbone wool that presents an overall taupe finish.
Though not overly characteristic of the style, Delon’s three-button suit jacket reflects contemporary hallmarks of traditional Italian tailoring, including the curved “barchetta”-style welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, and ventless back. The shirred spalla camicia sleeveheads are specifically Neapolitan, though Delon’s jacket pairs them with more anomalously straight, padded shoulders. This adds an atypical degree of roping that Mr. Cavaliere describes as “structured spalla camicia”. The sleeves are finished with three-button cuffs.
Marianne and Jean-Paul share a pensive—and stylish—moment after Harry’s funeral.
The trousers reflect the lower rise and single reverse-facing pleats that were common to Italian tailoring, with a tailored self-supporting waistband that didn’t require belt or braces. Styled with side pockets, the trousers are gently tapered through the legs down to the bottoms, finished with turn-ups (cuffs).
Jean-Paul’s black leather slip-on shoes are each detailed with a self-strap over the instep that closes on the outside through a small, leather-covered buckle. Unlike monk shoes, this buckled strap appears more ornamental than functional. He wears these shoes with black socks.
Jean-Paul wears a pale ice-blue voile shirt, patterned with tonal satin self-stripes and detailed with a narrow spread collar, plain button-up front, and button cuffs. In Dressing the Man, Alan Flusser defines voile as “woven from fine hard twisted yarns with reverse twist warp threads,” resulting in a sheer fabric that shows Delon’s skin through the shirt—as well as his low-hanging silver chain-link necklace.
His appropriately funereal black tie is made from a matte cloth and knotted in a narrow four-in-hand.
French opticians Roger Pouilloux and Joseh Hatchiguian collaborated with Olympic gold medal skier Jean Vuarnet to launch the Vuarnet brand in 1961, using the sportsman’s name to market sunglasses with the innovative Skilynx lenses they had crafted four years prior. By the end of the decade, the brand’s cultural prestige grew when Delon sported his personal black nylon-framed Vuarnet 06 sunglasses with everything from his suits to swimwear in La Piscine.
This cat-eyed style has remained a Vuarnet staple, rebranded the Legend 06 in tribute to its venerated status as favored by style icons from Delon to Daniel Craig’s characterization of James Bond, as worn in his final 007 movie No Time to Die.
Jean-Paul explains to Inspector Lévêque that his waterproof wristwatch allows him to swim with it on, unlike Harry’s gold watch. During the questioning, Jean-Paul wears the stainless steel timepiece in question over the left cuff of his shirt, a practice associated with “the Rake of the Riviera” Gianni Agnelli.
He wears this same watch with its silver-ringed off-white dial and steel five-piece bracelet throughout La Piscine, though it occasionally resembles a contemporary Omega Seamaster or—as suggested by a Redditor—a Universal Genève Polerouter.
As if to punctuate to Lévêque that he is able to swim with his watch on because he wears a waterproof model, Jean-Paul brashly keeps his wristwatch strapped over his left shirt cuff in the style of Gianni Agnelli.
Alain Delon was a watch enthusiast in real-life, with a personal collection of more than one hundred luxury watches including the likes of Blancpain, Breitling, Bulgari, Cartier, and Rolex, while he prominently sported his own Audemars Piguet, at least two different Baume & Mercier watches (in Le Samouraï and Big Guns), and an Endicar Ultra Dive (in Les Aventuriers) on screen.
How to Get the Look
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider on the set of La Piscine with her 2-year-old son David.
Jean-Paul elevates an otherwise conservative herringbone suit and black tie with fashionable sunglasses, snappy strap-detailed shoes, and his watch nattily worn à la “L’Avvocato” over his shirt cuff—rakish dashes of style that many could attempt but few aside of Alain Delon could effectively accomplish all together.
- Taupe herringbone wool Italian-tailored suit:
- Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, curved “barchetta”-style welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Flat-front trousers with beltless waistband, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
- Pale ice-blue self-striped voile shirt with narrow spread collar, plain front, and button cuffs
- Matte-black tie
- Black leather plain-toe self-strap slip-on shoes
- Black socks
- Vuarnet 06 (VL000600017184) sunglasses with black nylon frames and brown Skilynx lenses
- Stainless steel wristwatch with round silver-ringed off-white dial on steel five-piece bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie, also currently included in the Criterion Channel’s “Vacation Noir” collection.
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