Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro (2023)
Vitals
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, acclaimed conductor
New York City, Thanksgiving 1971
Film: Maestro
Release Date: November 22, 2023
Director: Bradley Cooper
Costume Designer: Mark Bridges
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy Thanksgiving!
Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-nominated sophomore directorial effort Maestro was released one year ago this month on Thanksgiving Eve 2023, the day before Cooper himself spent Turkey Day with the family of Leonard Bernstein, the legendary American conductor he portrayed on screen.
Also co-produced and co-written by Cooper, Maestro spans nearly fifty years of Bernstein’s life—prominently chronicling his tumultuous marriage to the stylish Costa Rican performer Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).
The real Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), conducting rehearsals at London’s Royal Albert Hall for the Igor Stravinsky Memorial Concert in April 1972.
“There’s one scene in particular that I cannot stop thinking about,” wrote Britt Hayes for The Mary Sue. “And it involves a certain little guy from Peanuts.”
Lenny returns home on the morning of Thanksgiving 1971, dismayed to find a stuffed Snoopy in the vestibule of their luxury apartment (“I mean, it’s his day!” he insists to his children) but even more frustrated during an argument with Felicia, which ends with her warning him that, unless he’s careful, he’ll die as “a lonely old queen.” Just then, the scene comes full circle as Snoopy’s parade float passes outside the window, casting a grim shadow through the room.
What’d He Wear?
Two-time Oscar-winning costume designer Mark Bridges had previously dressed Bradley Cooper’s characters in Silver Linings Playbook and Licorice Pizza before he signed on for Maestro, a project spanning four decades of Leonard Bernstein’s life from the 1940s through the ’80s. Bridges accurately depicts Bernstein’s wardrobe as generally keeping up with the times (partly thanks to the influence of the fashionable Felicia), even as the conductor reached middle age by the time this Thanksgiving scene was set during the fall of 1971.
As indicated by Bridges’ original costume sketch (sourced from Vogue), Lenny wore a shearling coat over his houndstooth jacket and turtleneck, though this is only briefly glimpsed on screen when he hangs it in the vestibule before turning his attention to poor, abandoned Snoopy.
“For Lenny, in that scene, we found what I call a ‘holiday houndstooth,’ which was this green, maroon, harvest gold, and burnt orange jacket,” costume designer Mark Bridges explained to Hugh Hart for The Credits. The double-breasted jacket has peak lapels that roll to a 4×2-button arrangement over Cooper’s waist, as well as a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and a jetted ticket pocket (sans flap) on the right-hand side. The sleeves are finished with two spaced buttons at the cuff, and there are double side vents.
For the record, the script confirms that it was Bernstein’s 16-year-old son Alex who left—who abandoned—poor Snoopy in the vestibule.
“Starting in the late sixties, you get the groovier look with the boots, and it’s also what I call Lenny’s turtleneck period. He’s aging, so it covers up the neck, and also, the kids are wearing turtlenecks. In movies from the late sixties, you’ll often see four male characters wearing them. Turtlenecks were really a thing,” Bridges elaborated to The Credits. This reflects the actual Bernstein’s habit from the era, as detailed by Simon Mills in an Esquire feature: “archive images of the great man at both work and play suggest a wardrobe of multiple roll-necks in many hues and knits, worn either solo, with slacks, or, jazz style, under a jacket.”
Cooper’s Lenny follows the latter sartorial philosophy for Thanksgiving 1971, sporting a brick-red turtleneck sweater that neatly calls out the maroon checks in his jacket. Likely knitted from a fine merino wool, the turtleneck has set-in sleeves and a narrow-ribbed neck, cuffs, and waist hem. “Most of the roll-neck sweaters we bought on Madison Avenue,” Bridges confirmed during his appearance on From Tailors With Love.
Lenny strides through the apartment in a pair of black wraparound sunglasses until Felicia screams at him to “Wake up! Take off your glasses!” The frames resemble the Ray-Ban Balorama, which was launched four years earlier in 1967 and was famously worn by Clint Eastwood as the titular detective in Dirty Harry, released just one month after this scene was set.
The cloth and cut of Lenny’s flat-front trousers coordinate with his jacket, as the solid dark-brown cloth balances the jacket’s busier houndstooth check while the soft napped flannel harmonizes with the countrified sports coat. The trousers rise appropriately high to Cooper’s natural waist, where the top is covered by the hem of his untucked turtleneck. They have on-seam side pockets and jetted back pockets with a button to close the left one. The flattering cut gently tapers to the plain-hemmed bottoms, which break just over the tops of his usual brown leather cap-toe monk-strap shoes.
Lenny cycles through several wristwatches over the course of Maestro, beginning with an era-appropriate dress watch in the black-and-white scenes set through the 1940s and transitioning to a stainless dive watch on a black tropic rubber band in the 1960s—perhaps a stand-in for the real Bernstein’s Seiko “Turtle” diver.
This Thanksgiving scene debuts the new gold watch he would wear for most of the 1970s-set scenes, consisting of a hefty yellow-gold cushion case on a gold-finished Speidel Twist-O-Flex
expansion band with ridges running across the top and bottom of the links. The round champagne dial is detailed with gold non-numeric indices marking each hour except for the 3 o’clock position to accommodate a white-wheeled date window.
Educated guesses on Reddit have included Bulova Accutron, Rado Conway 30, or a vintage Tudor, though differences in the dial keep me from confirming either as the likely contender. I’m almost positive it’s an automatic Bulova of late ’60s vintage, though I haven’t been able to definitively identify the model.
Lenny wears a thick gold wedding band on the ring finger of his left hand. The band is wider than the typical wedding ring, likely somewhere around eight to 10 millimeters wide.
What to Imbibe
After accepting milk from his family maid and taking a few swigs, Lenny alternates dairy with a dram when he pours himself a few fingers from a crystal decanter to brace for his argument with Felicia. He settles back onto the couch with the carton of milk in one hand and rocks glass full of whisky in the other, there’s a brief second where I—and surely a few other viewers—feared that Lenny would actually pour the milk into his Scotch. (While there’s no confirmation that Lenny is drinking Scotch, we do see a fifth of Ballantine’s blended whisky next to the decanter.)
The moment had me recalling another contemporary American musician who was known to have enjoyed the uncommon combination of Scotch-and-milk—bandleader Duke Ellington. Terry Teachout’s excellent biography Duke includes a 1941 recollection from production supervisor Henry Blankfort:
Duke was in the bathtub. Beside him was a stack of manuscript paper, a huge container of chocolate ice cream, a glass of scotch and milk, and Jonesy… his valet, and his job was to keep adding warm water and let out cooling water to maintain a constant temperature in the tub for the Maestro.
If you’re willing to experiment but not without a guiding hand, The Glenlivet adapted a centuries-old recipe for milk punch that consists of 50mL of Scotch, 230 mL of milk, and a teaspoon of powdered sugar shaken and strained into a glass, then topped with nutmeg.
How to Get the Look
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro (2023)
Between his seasonal shades of maroon and brown and jaunty pieces from his maroon merino turtleneck to monk shoes, Lenny nails a presentable yet comfortable Thanksgiving outfit anchored by the distinctive double-breasted jacket in its celebrated “holiday houndstooth” check.
- Brown multi-color houndstooth double-breasted jacket with peak lapels, 4×2-button front, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, jetted ticket pocket, spaced 2-button cuffs, and double vents
- Brick-red merino wool turtleneck
- Dark-brown woolen flannel flat-front trousers with on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets (with button-through left), and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Brown leather cap-toe single monk-strap shoes
- Black wraparound sunglasses
- Yellow-gold wedding band
- Gold cushion-case automatic wristwatch with round champagne dial (with gold non-numeric hour indices and 3:00 date window) on gold double-ridged expanding band
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie, streaming on Netflix.
You can also learn more about Mark Bridges’ costume design in Maestro through the following sources:
- The Art of Costume — “Symphony of Style: The Evolution of the ‘Maestro’ Costumes with Costume Designer Mark Bridges” by Spencer Williams
- The Credits — “‘Maestro’ Costume Designer Mark Bridges on Charting the Bernstein’s Ever-Changing Style” by Hugh Hart
- From Tailors With Love — “Mark Bridges talks Maestro” by Peter Brooker
- A Little Bit of Rest — “The Menswear of Leonard Bernstein & Maestro (2023)” by Ethan M. Wong
- Offscreen Central — “‘Maestro’ – Interview with Costume Designer Mark Bridges” by Jillian Chilingerian
- Vogue — “An Exclusive Glimpse Inside the Glamorous World of Maestro, Courtesy of Costume Designer Mark Bridges” by Jessica Bumpus
The Quote
Who abandoned Snoopy in the vestibule?
The post Maestro: Lenny’s “Holiday Houndstooth” Jacket and Turtleneck on Thanksgiving appeared first on BAMF Style.