Back to the Future: Marty McFly’s Denim and DeLorean from 1985 to 1955

Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly in Back to the Future (1985)

Vitals

Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, time-traveling high schooler and guitarist

Hill Valley, California, Fall 1985—then 1955

Film: Back to the Future
Release Date: July 3, 1985
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

If my calculations are correct… anyone with a functioning DeLorean time machine who punches in July 3, 1985 and floors it to 88 mph would indeed see some serious shit—the release of Back to the Future, which premiered 40 years ago today.

One of the most celebrated movies of all time (and featuring the now-iconic DeLorean very appropriate for Car Week), Back to the Future became an instant cultural phenomenon upon release. It earned an Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing, grossed over $380 million worldwide to become the top-earning movie of 1985, and propelled the careers of director and co-writer Robert Zemeckis (then riding high off Romancing the Stone) and star Michael J. Fox (best known at the time for playing Reaganite teen Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties), who replaced Eric Stoltz in the now-iconic role of Marty McFly.

Unlike the tie-wearing, economics-quoting Alex, Marty let Fox showcase a more rebellious, energetic side as the electric guitar-wielding frontman for The Pinheads who has a cool girlfriend (Claudia Wells as Jennifer Parker, later played by Elisabeth Shue in the sequels) and routinely shows up late to school—not because he’s a slacker, but because he spends his mornings hanging around eccentric inventor and amateur chronophysicist Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd).

The real action begins when Doc summons Marty to a clandestine late-night meeting in a mall parking lot—insisting that he bring his video camera! (As a future parent, this raises considerable red flags in retrospect, but…)

Promptly at 1:15 AM in the early morning of October 26, 1985, Marty skates into the Twin Pines Mall parking lot, where Doc unveils his latest invention: a DeLorean modified with a flux capacitor and stolen plutonium to enable time travel. Before he can personally demonstrate it, Doc is gunned down by Libyan terrorists he tricked into supplying the radioactive fuel. Marty escapes in the DeLorean and, in doing so, activates the time-travel function—hitting 88 mph and launching himself back to November 5, 1955… the day Doc first conceived of the flux capacitor.

But things are about to get heavy.

Not only must Marty find a way to power the DeLorean and return to 1985 without a handy supply of plutonium, but he’s also forced to repair the timeline after inadvertently interfering with his parents’ high school courtship. The mission: get his future mom and dad to fall in love—or risk erasing himself (and his siblings) from existence. Oh, and he has to do it while dodging the affections of teenage Lorraine (Lea Thompson), who’s now got the hots for him instead of his dad.

What’d He Wear?

Fortunately for Marty, teenage fashion hadn’t evolved so drastically over 30 years that his double denim, checked shirt, and suspenders would raise too many eyebrows in 1955 Hill Valley. Unfortunately, he’s still wearing the bright red puffer vest that prompts more than one local to wonder if he’s just disembarked from a ship.

While his jean jacket reads fashion-forward even by 1985 standards, denim was emerging through the ’50s as a favorite of rebels and greasers who co-opted blue-collar workwear to push back against conformity. It still wasn’t the kind of thing a clean-cut high schooler would wear to class, which might explain why Lorraine sees Marty more dangerously attractive than you may expect from a 5’4″ kid in suspenders with an encyclopedia knowledge of The Honeymooners.

The “Life Preserver” Vest

The most dissonant part of Marty’s wardrobe once he travels to 1955 is his bright red-orange puffer vest, which he’d thrown on for warmth before meeting Doc at Twin Pines Mall. With its glossy nylon shell, rounded collar, and pillowy down-filled chambers, the vest looks just futuristic enough to raise questions around town, from Lou the diner owner (“Hey kid, what’d you do, jump ship? What’s with the life preserver?”) to Lorraine’s mother assuming Marty must be a sailor.

Ironically, the vest was designed for the opposite of sea travel. It was made by Class-5 Mountaineering Equipage, a Bay Area-based outdoor gear company founded in 1971 by Justus Bauschinger, who had previously led design at The North Face—according to Bruce B. Johnson’s Oregon Photos. Class-5 ended operations in 1983, two years before Back to the Future was filmed and set.

Marty’s vest features five brass snaps up the front and ten horizontal down-filled baffles. Large patch pockets with angled openings are sewn onto the lower front, adding both function and even more of that chunky ’80s high-tech look that dramatically stands out in Eisenhower-era Hill Valley.

Marty’s GUESS Denim Jacket

Both Marty’s distinctive two-tone denim jacket and jeans were made by Los Angeles-based fashion brand GUESS, though costume designer Deborah Lynn Scott’s team appears to have removed the company’s signature inverted-triangle logos before filming. Founded in 1981 by the Marciano brothers, GUESS was still a relatively new player in the fashion world at the time Back to the Future was made. Marty’s jacket is often cited as a specific model produced in 1984.

This jacket blends two denims: a rich indigo-blue twill across the shoulders and a slate-gray plain-weave body. The darker denim is used for the pointed chest yokes, the long shoulder patches, the outer side of the collar, and the rectangular pocket flaps, offering a sharp visual contrast to the muted gray body.

A horizontal seam runs across the torso just above the large bellows pockets, which fasten shut with rectangular flaps in that deeper indigo denim and a pair of brass-toned snaps that match the five brass snaps up the front.

Marty’s partially rolled cuffs reveal a beige lining printed with a yellow-and-periwinkle teardrop paisley pattern on the inside of the sleeves, while the rest of the jacket featured a black-on-white “Hollywood”-print lining with illustrated portraits of icons like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. (The inner pocket where Marty stashes his tardy slip is also finished in the paisley-printed material.)

The back of the jacket features bi-swing pleats behind the shoulders, a detail carried over from early sport jackets, flight jackets, and motorcycle jackets that allow the wearer a greater range of arm movement. The elasticized waistband lends the jacket a blouson shape, making it both functional and of-the-moment for mid-’80s fashion.

Just beneath the left chest yoke, Marty wears three pins that reflect his rock-star aspirations. Replicated as a set from sellers like Amazon and Max Cady’s, the three pins consist of a black-and-white electric guitar, a light-blue boomerang-style guitar pick, and a round white tin-packed button that says “ART IN REVOLUTION” with a red triangle and black arc.

Marty’s Shirts

While the makers of the rest of Marty’s wardrobe is well-documented and verified, questions persist regarding who made his shirt. An auction listing described the shirt as custom-made for Fox to wear on screen, while some discussion at The RPF suggest it was purchased off-the-rack, with Shah Safari remaining a strong contender for the maker.

The lightweight cloth is a pale-gray, patterned in a black twill graph check that deepens into solid squares at each point where the horizontal and vertical lines overlap. The sleeves appear to be half-length, self-cuffed by Marty to just above his elbows. Six white 4-hole buttons fasten up the plain front, though he leaves the top few undone. The shirt has two open-top chest pockets and a fashionably narrow point collar.

Marty layers this checked shirt over a plain maroon cotton short-sleeved T-neck, styled with a crew neck and contrasting white stitching over the shoulder seams. Thanks to intrepid research by TikTok creator @ItsNickFox, we know that Marty wore a size medium “Red-15” T-shirt in from the J.C. Penney house brand Royal Comfort.

Below the Waist: Marty’s GUESS Jeans and Nike Sneakers

Even without the brand’s back patch present, The RPF members were able to identify Fox’s screen-worn light-blue stonewash denim jeans as the GUESS 1050 model, cut narrow through the legs. These follow the standard five-pocket layout and have a zip McFly—er, zip fly.

Rather than using the belt loops, Marty holds his jeans up with ¾”-wide black cloth suspenders that have small silver clips to connect the twin front and back straps to the top of his waistband.

Thirty years before Marty power-laced up his Nike Air Mags in Part II, the teenage Marty skateboarded to school in his well-traveled Nike Bruin sneakers. Russ Bengston reported for Collider in 2015 (the real 2015) that these had actually been Fox’s own shoes, green-lit for the production once Robert Zemeckis acknowledged they were exactly what a contemporary teenager would wear. Aside from the bright “Gym Red” swooshes and heel panels, Marty’s Nikes have white full-grain leather uppers, fastened with flat woven white laces pulled through seven sets of eyelets and fused to white herringbone pattern cupsoles that had been a hallmark since Nike introduced the Bruin model in 1972.

Once the prominent Nike labels were removed from the tongue and heels—echoing his de-Guessed denim—Fox’s Bruins were ready for their close-up, Mr. Zemeckis. Of course, the brand’s signature “swoosh” remained intact on the sides, leaving little doubt for those in the know. When Nike reissued their “Marty McFly” tribute Bruins in 2015, they even recreated the screen-worn shoes by removing their branding from the tongues and heels.

Despite the considerable effort made to conceal the makers of Marty’s GUESS denim and Nike sneakers, the film features considerable dialogue identifying his underwear. “I’ve never seen purple underwear before, Calvin,” the teenage Lorraine mentions to her future son—currently stripped down in her bed wearing nothing more than his T-shirt, lilac briefs with white waistband, and light-gray ribbed tube socks with two burgundy bands around the tops. When Marty questions why she keeps calling him Calvin, she responds “that is your name, isn’t it? Calvin Klein? It’s written all over your underwear.”

Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future (1985)

Marty leaps out of bed to dress, revealing the aforementioned lilac cotton briefs that had intrigued Lorraine.

Marty’s Accessories

Unlike Doc Brown who dresses both wrists in both 1955 and ’85, Marty only wears one watch but he shares his scientist friend’s fondness for calculator watches, which reached their peak of popularity in the mid-1980s with models like the all-black Casio CA-50 that Marty wears on a black resin band.

Powered by a CR2016 lithium battery, these multi-functional Casio watches feature an LCD display above a 12-button keypad which can be used as a calculator, stopwatch, or alarm chronograph—as touted by the descriptive line just below the display.

Marty’s Zeiss 9337 sunglasses are prominently featured in much of Back to the Future‘s promotional artwork, though he only briefly wears these early in the film when testing out Doc Brown’s amplifier. Produced in West Germany during the early 1980s, these large sunglasses measure 140mm across the front of their matte black-finished stainless steel frames, which feature a reinforced brow bar and silver mirrored mineral lenses.

“Let’s get you into a radiation suit!”

Given the radioactive nature of plutonium (and not fallout from the atomic wars), Doc equips Marty with a full-coverage radiation suit before attempting his own time travel. Made from a yellow PVC shell, these pull-on coveralls have a white-taped zipper that extends up from the crotch to the neck, covered by a wide yellow rubberized belt that closes through a metal single-prong buckle, and red-orange triangles at the bottom of each leg.

Marty completes the coverage with golden rubber gauntlets detailed with black nuclear symbols and a large yellow PVC soft helmet with a black-shaded eye-shield and air filter.

You’re right, Sid. That’s a Space Man from Pluto if I ever saw one.

The Car

Marty: Wait a minute, Doc, are you telling me you built a time machine? Out of a DeLorean?
Doc: The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?

Also citing the stainless steel construction as beneficial to the flux capacitor’s functionality, Doc Brown indeed selected a 1982 DMC DeLorean as the basis for his plutonium-powered time machine that requires 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to operate.

While the DeLorean was hardly considered a roadworthy car (its short-lived battery once stranded Johnny Carson), this wouldn’t matter to Doc and Marty since where they’re going, they don’t need roads.

Known internally as the DMC-12, this two-seater sports coupe with its distinctive pair of gullwing doors and brushed stainless steel outer body panels was the only car ever brought to market by former GM exec John DeLorean’s self-named DeLorean Motor Company (DMC). The car was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro—an Italian best known for his supercars but whose work also extends to the worlds of camera, wristwatches, and even pasta shapes—and constructed in Northern Ireland at a Dunmurry factory, just a few miles southwest of Belfast.

Despite a half-decade in development, the DeLorean was doomed from its launch in January 1981, criticized for its poor build quality and sluggish performance for being intended as a sports car, especially considering its heavy price tag that grew from $25,000 in 1981 to $29,825 in ’82 and ultimately $34,000 for 1983. The stainless steel body panels were difficult to paint and kept the car offered in only one standard color, though some dealer options included black or gray accept stripes and some dealers even attempted to paint the exteriors themselves. (This doesn’t include the two of an intended 100 gold-plated DeLoreans that were to be sold for $85,000 each through an ill-advised American Express promotion.)

The only engine placed in the DMC-12 was a fuel-injected 2.85-liter version of the overhead cam V6 produced by Française de Mécanique for PRV (Peugeot-Renault-Volvo). Generating 130 horsepower, this reportedly propel the steel-bodied coupe to a top speed to an underwhelming 110 mph—assuming no eccentric inventors had rigged it to travel back in time upon reaching 88 mph. While DeLorean’s literature claimed it could launch from 0-60 mph in under nine seconds, Road & Track magazine’s contemporary testing measured this as closer to 10.5 seconds.

This engine was mated to a standard 5-speed manual transmission or a 3-speed Renault automatic that would cost an extra $650. Based on the gearbox and trio of pedals seen on screen, Doc Brown evidently used one of the manual transmission models for his experimental time machine.

Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future (1985)

Where they’re going, they won’t need roads. Doc Brown returns to 1985 to fuel up his now-flying DeLorean with Miller High Life, retrieve Marty and Jennifer, and queue up the inevitable Back to the Future Part II.

1982 DeLorean DMC-12

Body Style: 2-door sports coupe

Layout: rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RR)

Engine: 174 cu. in. (2.85 L) PRV ZMJ-159 V6 with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection

Power: 130 hp (97 kW; 132 PS) @ 5500 RPM

Torque: 153 lb·ft (207 N·m) @ 2750 RPM

Transmission: 5-speed manual

Wheelbase: 94.8 inches (2408 mm)

Length: 168 inches (4267 mm)

Width: 78.3 inches (1989 mm)

Height: 44.88 inches (1140 mm)

Approximately 9,000 DeLoreans were built between completion of the first factory production car on January 21, 1981 and Christmas Eve 1982, when the last batch rolled off the production line.

Without the decades-established legacy of Detroit’s “Big Three” or the tested reliability of increasingly popular Japanese exports, DeLorean struggled to gain a foothold as the United States fell deeper into a recession. In response, the DeLorean Motor Company was placed into receivership in February 1982 and ultimately filed for bankruptcy that October, just one week after John DeLorean’s arrest for cocaine trafficking—which, now that I mention it, may have also been a factor in the firm’s undoing. (In John’s defense, he was only trying to sell $24 million worth of cocaine so that he could save his company!)

After the triple whammy of a failed company, notorious bad cars, and drug charges, John DeLorean had a reprieve through the back half of 1984 when he was acquitted after successfully proving that he was a victim of police entrapment. At the same time, Robert Zemeckis was unintentionally planning to redefine the DeLorean’s public image as a beloved piece of pop culture rather than the ’80s successor to the Edsel and Pinto.

Doc initially registers the DeLorean with the California license plate OUTATIME, which doesn’t survive the car’s initial time travel and is left behind dancing on the pavement.

Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale chose the DeLorean for its futuristic appearance, specifically its gullwing doors, even turning down a $75,000 offer from Ford to feature their latest Mustang instead.

Lawrence Paull supervised developing the modified DeLorean time machine, designed in collaboration with artist Ron Cobb and illustrator Andrew Probert. Art department liaisons Michael Fink and Andrew Scheffe brought the designs to fruition, including the flux capacitor, time circuits, and a custom-built speedometer to represent 88 mph since laws passed during the Carter administration had limited American speedometers to top out at 85. The cars kept their stock V6 PRV engines in the first Back to the Future movie, though the film’s Oscar-winning sound effects team replaced this with the audio from a Porsche 928’s V8 engine.

Six DeLoreans total were used across the trilogy, with there purchased for the first film: the “hero car” (A), stunt car (B) and one dismantled for interior shots (C).

What to Imbibe

Much to Biff Tannen’s chagrin, the McFlys stock their fridge in 1985 with light beers like Bud Light and Miller Lite, though Lorraine goes straight for the Popov vodka on the rocks.

As a high schooler, Marty demonstrates a preference for sugar-free soda over anything harder—aside from the very necessary pull he takes from Lorraine’s flask of Hiram Walker sloe gin while deflecting her advances in 1955. This results in a touch of Abbott and Costello-style dialogue with diner owner Lou (Norman Alden) upon his arrival in the past.

Marty: Give me a Tab.
Lou: Tab? I can’t give you a tab unless you order something!
Marty: Right, give me a Pepsi Free.
Lou: You want a Pepsi, pal, you’re gonna pay for it!
Marty: Look, just give me something without any sugar in it, okay?

To which Lou responds by serving Marty a cup of black coffee.

How to Get the Look

How can anyone look as fly as Marty McFly? The all-American teen dresses head to toe in red, white, and blue, exclusively sporting U.S.-based brands like Guess, J.C. Penney, Nike, and the now-defunct Class-5.

Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly in Back to the Future (1985)

Indigo-blue and slate-gray two-toned denim jacket with pointed chest yokes, five brass-snap front, two bellows hip pockets (with two-snap flaps), single-snap cuffs, and elasticized waist
- GUESS
Red-orange nylon puffer vest with round collar, five brass-snap front, and slanted-entry hip pockets
- Class-5 Mountaineering Equipage
Pale-gray and black twill-checked shirt with point collar, plain button-up front, two open-top chest pockets, and self-cuffed half-sleeves
Brick-red cotton crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirt
- Royal Comfort for J.C. Penney
Mid-blue denim narrow-leg jeans with belt loops, five-pocket arrangement, and zip fly
- GUESS 1050
Black cloth ¾”-wide suspenders with silver clips
White full-grain leather sneakers with red side-and-heel accents and flat white woven laces
- Nike Bruin
Light-gray ribbed tube socks with two burgundy bands
Lilac cotton underwear briefs with white waistband
- Calvin Klein
Black matte-finished stainless steel-framed aviator-style sunglasses with reinforced brow bar and silver mirrored lenses
- Zeiss 9337
Black digital calculator watch on black resin band
- Casio CA-50

Interestingly, Marty’s costume was entirely re-conceptualized after Michael J. Fox replaced Eric Stoltz, who had a more contemporary look as Marty in a black checked zip-up jacket layered over a blue checked button-up shirt and a white graphic tee depicting a drawing of the U.S. patent for the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, all worn with green Converse sneakers.