Enzo Vogrincic as Numa Turcatti in Society of the Snow (2023)
Photo by Quim Vives
Vitals
Enzo Vogrincic as Numa Turcatti, Uruguayan law student and college soccer player
Andes Mountains, Fall 1972
Film: Society of the Snow
(Spanish title: La sociedad de la nieve)
Release Date: December 13, 2023
Director: J.A. Bayona
Costume Designer: Julio Suárez
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
On October 13th, 1972, an Uruguayan plane crashed in the Andean mountain range. Forty of us passengers and five crew members were on board the plane. Some say it was a tragedy, others call it a miracle. What really happened? What happens when the world abandons you? When you have no clothes and you’re freezing? When you have no food and you’re dying? The answer is in the mountain. We have to go back to the past to understand that the past is what changes the most…
Society of the Snow begins with the narration of Numa Turcatti (Enzo Vogrincic), a 24-year-old law student and footballer encouraged by friends to buy a cheap plane ticket to Chile on Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, joining his friend Gastón Costemalle (LOUTA) who was traveling with the Old Christians Rugby Club to play a match in Santiago. The flight departed from Montevideo 52 years ago today, followed by an overnight stop in Mendoza, Argentina.
The following day—Friday the 13th of October, 1972—Numa became one of 33 initial survivors when this FH-227D crashed into the Andes just inside the Argentinian side of the Chilean border. Numa’s narration describes this inhospitable pocket of nature where the temperature plunges to −22 °F at night as “a place where life is impossible.”
While official search efforts were called off after the first eight days, the young men endured a total of 72 days through an inspiring mix of fierce determination, resourcefulness, and teamwork, all while continually facing hardships like injury, disease, extreme weather, and avalanches that reduced them to less than half of their number. With an already dwindling food supply exhausted, the small group of remaining survivors resorted to cannibalism of their dead companions to stay alive—an unimaginable decision yet one that almost certainly saved the lives of the sixteen who were ultimately rescued in December 1972.
Skillfully directed by J.A. Bayona, Society of the Snow doesn’t shy away from these more disturbing facts of the incident while remaining a tasteful retelling that celebrates the survival of these sixteen while simultaneously honoring the memory of the dead. Wendy Ide of ScreenDaily cited the latter as one of the film’s greatest strengths, applauding that “Bayona is at pains to ensure that the voices that are foregrounded are not necessarily those of the crash victims who eventually make it home.”
Photos of the real Numa Turcatti (1947-1972) accompany Enzo Vogrincic’s credit during Society of the Snow‘s end titles.
Society of the Snow wasn’t the first dramatization of the “Miracle of the Andes,” depicted on screen 20 years earlier in Frank Marshall’s 1993 American film Alive. After the release of Society of the Snow, Bayona and Marshall praised each other’s work, with Bayona asserting that “both films complement each other somehow.”
Premiering as the final presentation of the 80th Venice International Film Festival in September 2023, Society of the Snow went on to receive widespread acclaim after its wider release in December. The film earned 12 awards at the 38th Goya Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and was also nominated for Best International Feature Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 96th Academy Awards.
What’d He Wear?
Costume designer Julio Suárez explained to Peris Costumes Group that he “paid special attention to Numa, who was a young man who didn’t play rugby but played in a football club, and I decided to use as the main garment his lamb jacket, which was very popular at the time and allowed me to have lapels of different colors and textures to enrich the shots; sport trainers with trousers to show the footballer he dreamed of being or really was, and to achieve the slight shift from the clothing of the others.”
Indeed, Numa’s overall appearance is generally sportier than his fellow travelers, many of whom are more formally dressed in suits and sport jackets with knitwear or ties. Director J.A. Bayona elaborated in a Tweet that “…all clothes were handmade. Not only that: they needed to show some level of deterioration. So they were ‘aged.’ For instance, Enzo Vogrincic wore nine different ‘aged’ versions of the costume designed for Numa, his character in the movie.”
Numa stands second from left among most of his fellow travelers aboard Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 for a group photograph before departing Montevideo.
Numa arrives at Carrasco International Airport wearing a trucker jacket made from a warm shade of light-brown medium-wale corduroy, contrasted with a collar faced in a soft beige felt. (Suárez referred to a “lamb jacket”, though lambskin seems absent in this particular jacket’s construction; he may have been merely using a shorthand for the jacket having a lighter collar, similar to some lambskin or sheepskin bomber jackets.)
The waist-length jacket follows the silhouette and styling of contemporary trucker jackets, with seven copper rivet buttons up the front, matching those on the cuffs, side adjusters, and pocket flaps. The tops of both pockets align with the horizontal yoke across the chest, with a rectangular flap closing with a single button over each pocket. Like contemporary Lee trucker jackets, a wide pleat extends straight down from under the pocket flap to the waistband.
Numa’s yellow shirt is patterned with an all-over golden-mustard tonal print resembling small sprigs of leaves. The shirt has a long-pointed collar, consistent with trending fashions of the 1970s. The front placket and barrel cuffs are fastened with yellow plastic buttons. A horizontal seam extends straight across the front, positioned between the second and third buttons and parallel to the straight opening over the top of the breast pocket.
Numa tucks the shirt into dark-blue flat-front trousers, casually styled with slanted front pockets and patch-style back pockets, He holds them up with a cream canvas surcingle belt that closes with a curved silver-toned single-prong buckle through the dark-brown leather ends. After going nearly a week without food following the crash, Numa is unable to tighten his belt through the pre-drilled holes and is forced to create his own holes in the cream-colored cloth to continue wearing the belt on his increasingly underfed frame.
Numa’s cream-colored belt strap presents a sporty and interesting contrast against his darker blue trouser cloth.
Rather than the dark and dressier lace-up shoes that the real Numa reportedly wore during the fateful flight, costume designer Julio Suárez explained his intention to place him in “sport trainers with trousers to show the footballer he dreamed of being or really was,” represented by white leather Adidas Samba sneakers, with the brand’s trademark triple stripes in black leather along each side of each shoe.
Described as “the longest running Adidas shoe in existence” by Abdul Rashid Zakari for Urban Pitch, the Samba was introduced ahead of the 1950 FIFA World Cup. Zakari suggests that Adidas named its new athletic footwear in tribute to the Brazilian dance and music genre to capitalize on Brazil hosting that year’s tournament, though Adidas explained that the name originated at German soccer matches. With its innovative rubber gum outsoles, the Samba was intentionally designed to provide footballers with better traction on icy pitches—a fortuitous choice for the movie’s version of Numa to be wearing in the heavy snow of the Andes.
Between the plain-hemmed trouser bottoms and his increasingly abused Adidas Sambas, Numa wears white ribbed cotton-blend crew socks with black bands around the top.
After the crash, Numa pulls on a heavy wool crew-neck sweater before joining some of his fellow survivors in trekking outside the plane’s fuselage into the snow. Suárez dressed many of the characters in handmade sweaters intended to look like they were hand-knitted by loved ones, and this color-blocked sweater is no exception. The navy-blue top and beige bottom portions of the sweater are separated by a wide burgundy bar stripe across mid-chest and around each bicep.
Roberto Canessa (Matías Recalt) and Numa talk to the mortally wounded first officer in the cockpit.
Likely discovered among his fellow passengers’ luggage, Numa eventually dons a second pair of trousers as an additional layer against the cold. These olive-brown reverse-pleated trousers have side pockets and button-through back pockets (with the right-back pocket closing through a loop), and plain-hemmed bottoms that Numa wears self-cuffed.
Numa continues to improvise methods to battle the cold without appropriate snow gear, including wrapping pieces of the plane’s gray wool blankets around his wrists as makeshift handwarmers, leaving only his fingers exposed.
Even when wearing two pairs of trousers, Numa discovers that he has grown too skinny to pull his belt any tighter without boring new holes into it.
Numa keeps his neck warm with a royal-blue wool scarf detailed with a foulard print, arranged into a burgundy medallion grid.
Once they learn that searches for them have been postponed for months until the snow thaws, the group becomes more determined to realize their survival. Numa joins expeditions in search of the plane’s broken tail section, now wearing gold-framed aviator-style sunglasses against the harsh glare of the white snow. These frames follow the squared lens shape of the HGU-4/P design authorized for U.S. Air Force pilots in the late 1950s, though with a ridged-top “fireplace”-shaped bridge and blackened arms.
NUMA
As Numa joins Nando, Roberto, and Tintin to head out for an attempted expedition on the 36th day of their ordeal, he adds a dark checked sports coat over his jacket and crafts a gray scarf from one of the same airplane blankets he used to create his makeshift gloves.
Numa attempts to stuff his swollen and stockinged feet into a pair of taupe suede three-eyelet chukka boots, but it isn’t long into the walk until the infected cut on his ankle causes Numa to pass out and he is sent back to camp—sadly marking the beginning of the end for poor Numa.
How to Get the Look
Enzo Vogrincic as Numa Turcatti during production of Society of the Snow (2023)
Numa’s corduroy jacket and Adidas trainers bookend a sporty ’70s outfit that also proves to be hardy and versatile when striving to survive against the unsurmountable conditions of spending weeks stranded in the snowy Andes Mountains.
- Light-brown corduroy trucker jacket with beige felt collar, seven copper rivet buttons, straight chest pockets with single-buttton flaps, button cuffs, and button-tab side adjusters
- Yellow tonal leaf-printed long-sleeved shirt with long-pointed collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
- Navy, burgundy, and beige color-blocked wool crew-neck sweater
- Dark-blue flat-front trousers with belt loops, front pockets, patch back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Cream canvas surcingle belt with silver-toned curved single-prong buckle and dark-brown leather ends
- White leather Adidas Samba sneakers with black triple side stripes and rubber gum outsoles
- White ribbed cotton crew socks with black-banded tops
- Blue foulard-print wool scarf
- Gold square-framed aviator sunglasses
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie (streaming on Netflix) and the 2009 source book written by Pablo Vierci.
The Quote
The more we try to get out, the more the mountain resists.
The post Society of the Snow: Numa Turcatti’s Corduroy Trucker Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.