Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986)
Vitals
Kyle MacLachlan as Jeffrey Beaumont, inquisitive college student
Lumberton, North Carolina, Spring 1985
Film: Blue Velvet
Release Date: September 19, 1986
Director: David Lynch
Costumer: Ronald Leamon
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today marks the 66th birthday of Kyle MacLachlan, star of the late David Lynch’s neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet. Lynch and “Kale” had first collaborated two years earlier for the director’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, which was met with poor reception. Undeterred, Lynch shifted direction with Blue Velvet, a more personal project that delved into his now-familiar themes of surrealism and the dark, oft-criminal underbelly of Americana.
MacLachlan stars as Jeffrey Beaumont, a college student who returns to his hometown of Lumberton, North Carolina to help his family following his father’s heart attack. Taking a secluded shortcut to his parents’ home after a hospital visit, Jeffrey discovers a severed ear in a vacant field… launching him into a dangerous conspiracy involving a sultry lounge singer and a sadistic gangster.
Though Jeffrey dutifully delivered the ear to family friend and Lumberton detective John Williams (George Dickerson), his curiosity is too piqued to let it go. He recruits Williams’ high school-aged daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) to assist his own private investigation, embroiling himself into a complex dynamic with the aforementioned singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), and the dangerous drug dealer Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper).
Sandy: I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.
Jeffrey: Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out.
What’d He Wear?
Jeffrey Beaumont’s youth and affability follow the “boy next door” archetype, though his sleek day-to-day wardrobe reflects a deeper reflection of who he is: a college student putting on airs of sophistication for a return to his small town. He wears almost exclusively black clothing and neutral tones, accented with gold accessories—a retro Hamilton watch and small hoop earring—that differentiate him from the homespun hoodies and windbreakers worn by Sandy’s classmates.
Through the first half of Blue Velvet, Jeffrey anchors most of his style around a black sport jacket. Solid black tailored clothing is already limited in its propriety, best reserved for funerals or occasionally when intentionally dressed up for evening events. Having our lead character wear a black sport jacket with as much regular frequency as Jeffrey further serves the Lynchian surreality of Blue Velvet.
Especially with his khaki shirt and black jeans (but even when he dresses it up with a shirt and tie), Jeffrey’s jacket looks out of place in Lumberton… though slightly more suitable among the bolo-tied Frank or the blue velvet-clad Dorothy.
Because of its sheen, I initially assumed the black fabric was silk, but the specific way that it wrinkles and reflects light suggests waxed cotton. (I must also thank my expert pals in the menswear community, Ken Stauffer of @oceansographer and Matt Spaiser of Bond Suits, for validating this hypothesis.) In a process improved by Webster’s in the 1920s, waxed cotton describes a cotton impregnated with paraffin or beeswax to produce a water-resistant and rugged yet breathable cloth. These qualities have made it especially popular for outerwear, as modeled by decades of Barbour field jackets and Belstaff motorcycle jackets. Thus, it’s less common—but not unheard of—on tailored jackets like Jeffrey wears.
Jeffrey’s black jacket follows a typical ’80s cut with significant shoulder padding that frames the top of the jacket, while the rest hangs loose and unstructured around Kyle MacLachlan’s torso. The narrow lapels have wide notches and roll to a two-button front that Jeffrey always wears open. The jacket has a wide-welted breast pocket and straight jetted hip pockets. The sleeves are finished with three-button cuffs, and there are long double vents.
Jeffrey frequently wears a khaki cotton shirt, both on its own and layered under the black jacket. The shirt has a narrow spread collar, single-button squared cuffs, and a front placket that he often (but not always) wears buttoned up to the neck, creating an “air tie”—a style also preferred by director David Lynch in real life.
The shirt has a uniquely styled patch pocket over the left breast, with two vertical pleated strips over the front and mitred lower corners. The pocket closes through two buttons, each positioned outside these pleated strips.
With a few exceptions for khakis or pale-gray tailored trousers, Jeffrey often wears plain black denim jeans, configured with the traditional five-pocket layout of two patch pockets in the back, two curved-entry pockets in the front, and a coin/watch pocket inset on the right side. The sole external marking is a black-on-black tag sewn along the top of the back-right pocket, which appears consistent with contemporary Calvin Klein branding.
Jeffrey holds these jeans up with a black leather belt that closes through a squared silver-toned single-prong buckle.
These jeans are made for chicken-walking, and that’s just what they’ll do…
Jeffrey dresses the jacket up for his respective dates with Sandy and Dorothy, wearing ties with a black shirt. Though Jeffrey often buttons his khaki shirt up to the neck when not wearing a tie, he almost always keeps his top button undone when he is wearing a tie (and, thus, should be buttoning the top.)
The black cotton shirt has a narrow cutaway collar with a dramatic spread. The shirt has a front placket, button cuffs, and two chest pockets—all with black buttons to close.
His first tie is black silk with a repeating all-over pattern of white ticks, positioned at perpendicular angles but never colliding. The white ticks provide the sole contrast against his black jacket, shirt, and jeans—fittingly monochromatic for a jazz club but also reinforcing the image of himself as a covert agent, sneaking into Dorothy’s apartment.
The second tie that Jeffrey wears with the black jacket and shirt is similarly patterned, though with longer white ticks against a mid-gray matte ground. Rather than the neat, alternating perpendicular pattern on the black tie, this slim tie resembles falling pick-up sticks (or dry spaghetti being poured, depending on how hungry you are) with its lines of staggered lengths in unorganized sets.
Instead of his black jeans, Jeffrey wears pale-gray reverse-pleated trousers that provide some coordination with his gray tie. The limited angles of these trousers show little additional detail aside from their fashionably full fit and the belt loops around the waistband, which accommodate Jeffrey’s usual black leather belt.
Jeffrey’s well-shined black patent leather apron-toe derby shoes are incongruously dressy with his jeans, though they’re at least slightly more harmonious when he wears a jacket and tie.
Jeffrey exclusively wears black socks and gray sleeveless undershirts. When Dorothy forces him to disrobe at knife-point, we also see his cotton boxer shorts, patterned in an alternating red-and-gold check against a burgundy ground.
A common theme of Lynch’s filmography is applying an idealistic ’50s-like lens to contemporary suburbia. Though Blue Velvet is clearly set in the then-present era of the mid-1980s, Jeffrey maintains a more retro-minded style that takes root in the fabulous ’50s—particularly illustrated by his distinctive shield-shaped Hamilton Ventura wristwatch.
When Hamilton introduced the world’s first electric watches in 1957, this innovative lineup included the Ventura in its Space Age-influenced asymmetrical case. Designed by Richard Arbib and famously worn by the likes of Elvis Presley, the Ventura boasts a triangular case that “points” to the 9 o’clock position while the hypotenuse side spans straight from 1 to 5 o’clock, with the dial following the shape of the case. Jeffrey’s gold-plated steel Ventura features a black dial, attached to a black leather strap.
For more casual occasions, whether it’s diner dates with Sandy or lackadaisical yard-work, Jeffrey wears his black and khaki shirts alone with his khaki cotton slacks. These double reverse-pleated trousers have wider belt loops, side pockets, and flapped back pockets.
One final accessory from Jeffrey’s collection: a pair of slick dark wayfarer sunglasses to hide your bruised eyes after a rough night at Pussy Heaven with Frank Booth’s crew.
What to Imbibe
“Man, I like Heineken!” Jeffrey declares before Dorothy’s performance, following up by asking Sandy if she’s also a fan.
Sandy: Well, I’ve never really had a Heineken before.
Jeffrey: You never had a Heineken before?
Sandy: My dad drinks Bud.
Jeffrey: “King of Beers…”
If this were any director but David Lynch, you might be excused for thinking Jeffrey’s love for Heineken is merely one of the grosser examples of product placement. Instead, both Jeffrey’s choice—and his posturing about it—aligns with his wardrobe to speak volumes about his character, a youthful yuppie who takes advantage of any opportunity to look more cultured and worldly among the denizens of his small town by preferring an imported lager to the domestic brews favored by blue-collar types like Sandy’s detective dad.
Jeffrey’s pride—and any lingering thoughts that Lynch may be catering to the gods of product placement—gets squashed when the topic again comes up, this time by a manic Frank Booth “escorting” Jeffrey into Pussy Heaven.
Frank: What kind of beer do you like?
Jeffrey: Heineken.
Frank: Heineken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
First brewed in the Netherlands in 1873, Heineken was introduced to the United States after Prohibition, where it steadily grew its reputation through the mid-20th century as a sophisticated alternative to domestic beers like Budweiser and PBR before it settled into its more mainstream standing today in a market saturated by craft beers.
“If we take these three beer brands as personality cues, we can extend an interesting line of inquiry through Sigmund Freud’s triumvirate domain of selfhood,” introduces Michael Zunenshine in his interesting analysis of Blue Velvet‘s beers in Sight and Sound. “Pabst, Heineken, and Budweiser stand in respectively for the id, the ego, and the superego and add another dimension to the dynamics between the characters who drink them.”
How to Get the Look
Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986)
Jeffrey Beaumont brings his sleek, wannabe-worldly persona back from campus to the Carolinas, where he cycles through his wardrobe of black and neutral clothing anchored by a black waxed cotton jacket and jeans.
- Black unlined waxed cotton single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with narrow notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and long double side vents
- Khaki or black cotton long-sleeved shirt with spread collar, front placket, one or two button-through chest pockets, and single-button squared cuffs
- Black denim jeans with curved front pockets, right-inset coin/watch pocket, and patch-style back pockets
- Black leather belt with squared silver-toned single-prong buckle
- Black patent leather apron-toe derby shoes
- Black cotton lisle socks
- Gray sleeveless undershirt
- Burgundy-and-gold checked cotton boxer shorts
- Hamilton Ventura electric wristwatch with triangular gold-plated steel case, black triangular dial, and black leather strap
- Gold mini hoop earring
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie. There’s a whole lotta wood waitin’ out there, so let’s get goin’.
The Quote
Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in this world?
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