Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men (2007)
Vitals
Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, ex-welder and Vietnam War vet on the run
El Paso, Texas, Summer 1980
Film: No Country for Old Men
Release Date: November 9, 2007
Director: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Costume Designer: Mary Zophres
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy 57th birthday to Josh Brolin! Born February 12, 1968 to casting director Jane Cameron and actor James Brolin, Josh starred in The Goonies as a teen before his career resurgence as an adult following his celebrated performance as Llewelyn Moss in the Coen brothers’ 2007 masterpiece No Country for Old Men, faithfully adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name.
The second act closes as Llewelyn strides up to the derelict Desert Sands motel in El Paso, the famous Texan city just across the Rio Grande from Mexico, where the wounded welder just cut short his hospital stay after summoning the confidence to challenge the relentless hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). In a scene straight out of Cormac McCarthy’s own life, a young woman with plenty of legs and plenty of beers invites him to join her to enjoy the latter—and presumably the former:
Hey, Mr. Sporting Goods!
With an easy smile, Llewelyn shares that he’s waiting for his wife… who is unfortunately beaten to the scene by a heavily armed gang of cartel hitmen seeking Llewelyn’s valise stuffed with approximately two million dollars of their cash.
In November 2024, Vincenzo Barney published a Vanity Fair article about McCarthy’s longtime muse, Augusta Britt, whom the 42-year-old author met by a motel pool in a scene very familiar to No Country for Old Men audiences:
“I met Cormac in 1976, when I was 16,” Britt, now 64, tells me. “He was 42. I was in and out of foster care at the time, and I used to go to the pool at this motel off the freeway in the south side of Tucson called the Desert Inn. It was near an area of town called the Miracle Mile. It wasn’t very safe in the foster homes. They weren’t allowed to have locks on bedroom or bathroom doors, so the men would just follow me into all the rooms. But at the Desert Inn, I could use the showers by the pool to shower. Hey, ‘Use the shower to shower,’ that’s a great line, put that in the profile!” she laughs…
“One day I was at the motel pool, and I saw Cormac, and I thought he looked familiar but couldn’t quite place him. So I went back to the home I was staying in and realized that the man at the swimming pool was the man in the author photo on the back of the book I was reading, The Orchard Keeper.” (McCarthy’s little-read debut, published in 1965 but already out of print along with the rest of his three-novel body of work.) “It was this beat-up old paperback. I think I paid a nickel for it in a bin outside a bookstore. So the next day I brought it to the motel, and he was still there.”
What’d He Wear?
Llewelyn Moss abandons his torn and bloody clothes in the Mexican hospital where he recuperated after his gunfight with Anton Chigurh outside the Eagle Pass Hotel. Clad only in his hospital gown and Larry Mahan cowboy boots, he re-crosses the border into Texas on foot, marching directly to the same store where he purchased said boots:
Salesman: How those Larrys holdin’ up?
Llewelyn: Good! I need everything else.
Salesman: Okay.
Llewelyn: Lotta people come in here without any clothes on?
Salesman: No, sir. It’s unusual.
Llewelyn had purchased the boots from the same salesman a few days earlier, specifically requesting “a pair of Larry Mahans, shoulder size 11” with some socks (“white’s all I wear”). A six-time winner of the World All-Around Rodeo Champion title through the late 1960s, Mahan was sidelined by injuries through the ’70s but capitalized on his fame with a brief career in entertainment, recording an ill-received country record and appearing in a few movies—including a 1995 TV movie opposite No Country for Old Men star Tommy Lee Jones. He also established the Larry Mahan Boot Collection, which would have produced the brown leather boots with their decorative calf-high shafts that Llewelyn is still wearing by the time he returns to the store to outfit the rest of himself.
Llewelyn buys a light beige natural straw cowboy hat with a tall, creased cattleman’s-style crown, a narrow dark-brown ribbon circling the base of the crown, and a brown leather sweatband around the inside. The red logo on the inside top of the crown suggests that it was almost certainly made by Resistol, a Texas-based hatmaker founded in 1927 with its name informing their products’ ability to “resist all” types of weather. Unlike the irregularly perforated ventilation around the top of his old hat, Llewelyn’s new hat has three small eyelets on each side of the crown.
Llewelyn exclusively wears western-style shirts with snap-buttons (or “poppers”), a style innovated early in the 20th century by Rockmount Ranch Wear to allow cowboys’ shirts to easily unfasten when they snag—avoiding damage to the shirt…or, in some cases, its wearer. Llewelyn’s screen-worn shirts in No Country for Old Men were all made by Anto Beverly Hills, all layered over his usual white cotton sleeveless Hanes undershirts.
This is arguably his busiest-patterned shirt yet, diverting from the simpler plaids and stripes of his previous shirts with a lizard-like duo-tone salmon-red pattern of interconnected pods (each containing three small medallion shapes) in a fancy vertical-striped arrangement against a cream-colored ground. Likely made from cotton or a cotton/polyester blend, the shirt is otherwise similarly styled like his others with its long point collar, single-pointed front and back yokes, triple-snap cuffs, and a pair of chest pockets that close with a single snap on each pointed flap.
Naturally, Llewelyn’s new jeans would be considerably less broken-in than his old Levi’s 505s. Crafted from a dark pre-washed indigo denim (similar to the current “Rinse” wash offered by Levi’s), these new jeans have the usual five-pocket configuration as well as the copper-orange thread which Levi’s had been increasingly using on their standard denim since the mid-1960s.
Beer doesn’t always lead to this. Note the red Resistol logo on the inner crown of Llewelyn’s new hat.
The Gun
Llewelyn continues to carry the Winchester Model 1897 pump-action shotgun that he purchased on the run, slung over his back in a case that prompts the poolside gal to bestow his “Mr. Sporting Goods” title.
“Are you a sport?”
The scene in which he requests a twelve-gauge shotgun from a shopkeeper, as well as 00 buck shells that the clerk describes will “give you a wallop”, reminded some viewers—including yours truly—of the similar scene in The Getaway where Steve McQueen makes the same request in a Texas sporting goods store.
Llewelyn’s screen-used firearm is actually a Chinese-made Norinco clone of John M. Browning’s classic design, which Llewelyn further customizes for combat purposes by sawing down the full-length barrel and removing the stock, duct-taping over it to craft an improvised pistol grip. Property master Keith Walters was informed by Cormac McCarthy’s reference to the external hammer on “a twelve gauge Winchester pump gun” informed his choice to arm Llewelyn with the Model 1897-style shotgun.
How to Get the Look
Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men (2007)
Though he’s purchased all new clothes from head to toe by the final act of No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss maintains his usual Western aesthetic of a straw cowboy hat, snap-front printed work shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots.
- Cream (with salmon-red duo-tone lizard-like vertical stripe pattern) Western-yoked shirt with point collar, snap-up front placket, chest patch pockets (with pointed single-snap flaps), and triple-snap cuffs
- White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
- Levi’s 505 Regular Fit non-stretch cotton denim jeans in dark indigo “Rinse” wash
- Brown leather Larry Mahan cowboy boots
- White ribbed cotton-blend tube socks
- Beige natural straw Resistol cattleman’s-style cowboy hat with triple-eyelet ventilated crown, curved brim, and narrow brown ribboned band
- Gold wedding band
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie and read Cormac McCarthy’s masterful novel, to which the final film is very faithful. As Ethan Coen himself recalled from the brothers’ adaptation process: “One of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat.”
You can also listen to more about the costume design in No Country for Old Men at Pete Brooker’s podcast From Tailors With Love.
The Quote
Just looking for what’s coming…
The post “Hey, Mr. Sporting Goods!” Llewelyn’s Fancy-Striped Shirt in No Country for Old Men appeared first on BAMF Style.