Jerry Stiller as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld (Episode 9.10: “The Strike”)

Vitals

Jerry Stiller as Frank Costanza, neurotic (but inventive) retiree

Queens, New York, Tuesday, December 23, 1997

Series: Seinfeld
Episode: “The Strike” (Episode 9.10)
Air Date: December 18, 1997
Director: Andy Ackerman
Created by: Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld
Costume Designer: Charmaine Nash Simmons

Background

Fed up with the materialism around the holidays? Do you wish the holidays were less about forgiveness and cheer and more about directly telling people what they’ve done to upset you over the past year? Happy Festivus!

Seinfeld writer and story editor Dan O’Keefe took inspiration for one of Frank Costanza’s shining moments from his own father, Reader’s Digest editor Daniel O’Keefe, who had founded the secular holiday of Festivus in the late ’60s. Unlike Frank, who had spitefully created the holiday after a discouraging Christmas, the elder O’Keefe founded Festivus with the more benign motive of commemorating his first date with Deborah, the woman he would marry. The O’Keefes reportedly celebrated Festivus sporadically, or “whenever the hell my dad felt like it, September to May,” as Dan O’Keefe recalled in a Washington Post Q&A. “One year there was none. One year, there were two.”

Once the Seinfeld writing team learned about the holiday from O’Keefe’s brother, they dragged the full background from a reluctant O’Keefe before it was repositioned as the perfect vehicle for Jerry Stiller’s brilliantly bombastic portrayal of Frank Costanza:

And at lunch one day, Danny O’Keefe started talking about this tradition that his father made him do instead of Christmas—this whole Festivus thing he and his brothers had to endure—and Alec and I just looked at each other. Because we knew how great that was going to be for Frank. We said to Danny, “You know we’re doing this on the show, right?” And he goes, “No one’s going to want to see that.” And I go, “Danny, you can write the script with us, or you can watch it on television, but we’re doing it.” It was such a great opportunity to have Jerry shine. An airing of grievances? Who could ask for anything better for Jerry Stiller?

— Jeff Schaffer, former Seinfeld writer, to Max Cea for GQ

Given what we know about the Costanza family, the origins of Festivus would require some alternation to suit Frank’s neuroses, as we learn when a perfervid Frank outlines his conceptualization to an eager Kramer:

Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reach for the last one they had… but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way! … out of that, a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!

Seinfeld had always taken a more casual approach to its Christmas-themed episodes, the holiday serving as more of an incidental backdrop to controversies surrounding marked-down cashmere sweaters, provocative holiday cards, and a commie-curious Santa. Thus, it’s fitting that Seinfeld‘s most memorable holiday episode—and perhaps one of its most lasting episodes of all time—should center around a holiday invented as an alternative to Christmas.

In tribute to Jerry Stiller, who died this May at the age of 92, let’s take a moment during this surreal holiday season to bask in Frank Costanza’s grievances.

What’d He Wear?

December in Queens is no time for Frank Costanza’s famous cabana shirts so the cantankerous retiree dons a maroon knitted cardigan that, despite his best efforts, arguably taps into the seasonal festivities beyond his own invented holiday. The sweater is paneled into vertical strips as well as a strip extending from each side of the neck, across the shoulder, and down each raglan sleeve to the ribbed cuffs. Five flat pearl sew-through buttons close up the front from the straight hem to mid-chest, where the sweater opens up into a V-neck. The cardigan has two welt-opening pockets on the hips.

“Welcome, newcomers. The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it! You, Kruger. My son tells me your company stinks!… Kruger, you couldn’t smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe- I lost my train of thought.”

With his wardrobe of leisure suits, wide ties, and cabana shirts, Frank Costanza likely hasn’t gone shopping for new clothes in about 20 years, still proudly sporting his broad-collared, chaotically patterned disco-era shirts in the 1990s.

On Festivus, Frank wears an ice-gray shirt—almost certainly made of polyester or other manmade fabric favorites of the ’70s—with wide slate-colored bar stripes generously spaced to make room for columns of a repeating pattern that appears to consist of a double-headed arrow (⇕) with a coil around the center. (If there is a name or significance for this particular shape, please let me know!) The shirt has a long-pointed collar that would have been fashionable around the time it was originally sold as well as a front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs.

Frank strips down to his shirt sleeves for the fabled Festivus feats of strength.

Frank tucks the shirt into his khaki flat front trousers, forgoing the belt loops in favor of a set of suspenders (braces) made from a muted khaki cloth that nearly matches the pants he clips them onto.

Frank wears his usual steel watch, plated in yellow gold and secured to a black leather strap, as well as the gold wedding band symbolizing his marriage to Estelle (Estelle Harris). His shoes remain unseen throughout the entire episode, but it would be reasonable to assume he’s foregone form in favor of function (and comfort) with the somewhat clunky brown napped leather moc-toe derbies that he wears with similar outfits in other episodes.

The shoes seen in “The Raincoats” (Episode 5.18) are a likely contender, detailed with tan laces and tan soles and worn with white socks. These types of shoes, which tend to be targeted toward the Frank Costanza demographic, are often marketed with terminology like “walking shoes” and “comfort oxfords” (despite boat shoe-style derby lacing).

From beltless raincoats to vintage cabana shirts, old men’s fashions drive the plot of “The Raincoats” (Episode 5.18). Frank Costanza’s cardigan, open-neck shirt, and khakis would prove to be one of his favorite ways to dress while at home, a pattern repeated again for Festivus four seasons later.

How to Celebrate

Jerry: When George was growing up, his father hated all the commercial and religious aspects of Christmas, so he made up his own holiday.
Elaine: Oh, and another piece of the puzzle falls into place!
Jerry: And, instead of a tree, didn’t your father put up an aluminum pole…? Then weren’t there feats of strength that always ended up with you crying?

In the more than 20 years since Seinfeld brought Festivus to the world’s attention, an abundance of articles, books, and websites have been dedicated to the peculiar holiday originated by the O’Keefe family. I’ve found Festivus! The Website to be a particularly comprehensive digital resource, exploring every aspect of the holiday’s on-screen observance from the dinner prepared by Estelle (meatloaf on a bed of… lettuce) to the plain aluminum pole that Frank fished from his crawlspace. No decoration, of course, as Frank “finds tinsel distracting.”

Frank touts aluminum’s “very high strength to weight ratio” when showing off his Festivus pole to Mr. Kruger.

“We never knew when it was going to happen until we got off the school bus and there were weird decorations around our house and weird French ’60s music playing,” Dan O’Keefe explained to Mother Jones in 2013.

The music sadly seems not to be an element of the Costanza family celebration, which begins with the famous “airing of grievances” as Frank outlines to Kramer:

At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!

The concept of a holiday centered around outlining your disappointment in family and friends may seem too true to Frank Costanza’s character to have not been invented for the show, but it was indeed part of the O’Keefe tradition as members of the family would dictate their complaints into a tape recorder.

O’Keefe’s recollections also include occasionally wrestling with his brothers though he was never forced to pin his father, for “if [he] had, [he] would’ve been raised by the state of New York,” as he explained to CNN in 2013. Frank, on the other hand, wraps up the Costanza observance with a demand that his son defeat him during the annual feats of strength before Festivus can conclude:

And now, as Festivus rolls on, we come to the feats of strength. … Until you pin me, George, Festivus is not over!

How to Get the Look

Jerry Stiller as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld (Episode 9.10: “The Strike”)

Should you feel so compelled to channel Frank Costanza for your Festivus celebration…

• Maroon knitted panel-strip raglan-sleeve cardigan sweater with five flat pearl plastic buttons, ribbed cuffs, and hip pockets
• Ice-gray polyester shirt with alternating slate bar stripes and coiled double-headed arrow motif, with point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Khaki flat front trousers with belt loops and side pockets
• Khaki cloth suspenders with gold-toned hardware and clips
• Brown napped leather moc-toe derby shoes
• White socks
• Gold wedding ring
• Gold-finished steel wristwatch on black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series, currently streaming on Hulu. You’ll have some good times.

You can also read writer Dan O’Keefe’s history of the holiday in his 2005 book, The Real Festivus.

The Quote

Welcome, newcomers! The tradition of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances… I got a lot of problems with you people! Now, you’re gonna hear about it!

The post Seinfeld: Frank Costanza’s Festivus Cardigan appeared first on BAMF Style.

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace in White Christmas (1954)

Vitals

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace, Broadway crooner and World War II veteran

Pine Tree, Vermont, December 1954

Film: White Christmas
Release Date: October 14, 1954
Director: Michael Curtiz
Costume Designer: Edith Head

Background

Merry Christmas to all BAMF Style readers who celebrate! After a turbulent year, I know I’ve found comfort in the warm familiarity of the 1954 holiday classic White Christmas starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as a pair of war buddies-turned-producers who stage yet another “yuletide clambake” to support their popular general (Dean Jagger)… as if you hadn’t already seen it!

Bing and Danny’s plans to spend the holidays in New York are derailed when they meet the talented Haynes songbird sisters, played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Now, I don’t know whether the best plots are hatched while you’re dancing or whether they just happen in Vermont, but Danny and Vera-Ellen conspire to pair their work-obsessed partners Bing and Rosie together. Plenty of holiday mischief, misunderstands, and “small compound fractures” follow until the climactic Christmas Eve performance.

If you’re one of the few unfamiliar with White Christmas, or if you’ve watched it so much that you can anticipate every Bing-ism from playing “a little trombone here” to getting stuck with “weirdsmobiles”, check out this fun roundup from the blog Life of Ando celebrating the movie’s quirkier aspects.

What’d He Wear?

Among the scheming in White Christmas, Bob and Phil set out to present their Christmas Eve show at the Columbia Inn to rejuvenate its owner, their former commander Tom Waverly.

Bob: …the minute Phil and I saw it, we decided it was ideal. Didn’t we, Phil?
Phil: That’s right, Bob. Ideal. That’s exactly the word we used, too. Ideal. We looked at this big ski lodge and we said, “Isn’t it ideal? Absolutely ideal.” Didn’t we?
Bob: Ideal.
General Waverly: We’ve established the fact the lodge is ideal.

Scarf aficionados Michael Curtiz and Bing Crosby are joined by Danny Thomas on set, with Danny Kaye standing over director Curtiz.

Both performers are dressed nattily when trying to talk “the old man” into hosting the spectacle at his “ideal” inn. While the younger—and arguably less mature—Phil wears a sportier suede blouson and yellow turtleneck, Bob takes a more sophisticated approach to off-duty dress, layering a smart gray flannel blazer over a burgundy knitted shirt and silk scarf.

The brief vignette only photographs our heroes from the waist up, though a behind-the-scenes photo from filming the scene reveals a pair of medium-shaded socks that suggests either the bright red or blue hose that Bing wore elsewhere in White Christmas.

Bing’s dark gray woolen flannel blazer was tailored flatteringly in the full-cut fashions of the early ’50s, building up the drape chest with wide, padded shoulders and a suppressed waist. The notch lapels gently roll over the top of three gilt shank buttons, an ornamentation characteristic of blazers in addition to the sporty patch pockets. The single-breasted blazer also has short double vents and three gilt buttons on each cuff that match those on the front.

With this casual outfit, Bob wears a burgundy knit long-sleeved shirt with a large polo-like collar and two white plastic buttons worn closed on the plain (or French) placket. He ties a periwinkle silk scarf around his neck like a day cravat, tucking it into the top of his buttoned-up shirt.

Sporty, sophisticated, and sturdy: Phil, Bob, and General Waverly reflect their own personalities in their approach to casual dress. A blazer, knit shirt, and scarf is as dressed-down as Bob Wallace gets… at least, when not performing in the proverbial girdle and snood.

Several misunderstandings later, Betty has abandoned the show—and any fledgling romantic feelings for Bob—as she boards a train for New York. As it turns out, Bob himself has been at the station to make some arrangements for when his fellow veterans would descend on the town for the Christmas Eve show and catches up with Betty just in time to exchange quick and confused farewells.

Perhaps as he’s conducting some business, Bob chooses to dress a little more formally than he does around the inn, wearing the same white shirt, striped tie, and burgundy cardigan that he had worn with his glen plaid suit when the foursome first arrived in Pine Tree. The white cotton shirt has a spread collar and a plain “French placket” front. Bob tends to prefer shirts with double (French) cuffs, though these could get bulky when worn under the long sleeves of his sweater.

The burgundy cardigan, with its four smoke-gray plastic sew-through buttons, has been knitted in a lighter-weight material that reveals the silhouette of his tie underneath. The brown tie is patterned with tan “downhill” stripes that are split by very narrow stripes in brown, periwinkle, tan, and orange.

One of those sticky situations that could have been avoided by direct communication! Let’s hope Emma truly did resign as president of the New England chapter of Busybodies Anonymous after all the trouble she caused.

Bob’s trousers are a shade of dark gray adjacent to taupe, a warmer shade than his blazer to provide the necessary contrast though some may argue that the effect still too closely resembles a mismatched suit. Likely pleated per the era’s fashions and Bing Crosby’s own preferred style seen elsewhere in White Christmas, the trousers are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) that break high enough to show the yellow cotton lisle socks that provide a touch of color between the conservative-colored trousers and the black leather derby shoes.

Bob’s yellow socks get the time to shine on screen when he scurries down the station after a hastily departing Betty.

With both outfits, Bob wears his usual chocolate brown felt fedora with a brown grosgrain ribbon and self-finished edges that he wears both upturned and turned down in the front. On the inside of his left wrist, Bing Crosby wears his usual gold wristwatch with a curved brown tooled leather strap, evidently the same watch he would wear in other films of the era including High Society.

Crosby would wear a different gray napped wool odd jacket in White Christmas, a more formally styled tailored jacket with a ticket pocket, for his late-night “Vermont smorgasbord” with Betty that culminates in a kiss after the two sing “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)”.

How to Get the Look

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace in White Christmas (1954)

Merry Christmas, BAMF Style readers! Today’s yuletide post explores how Bing Crosby dresses up (and down) a gray flannel blazer in the 1954 holiday classic White Christmas, always incorporating some festive burgundy knitwear into his outfit, whether it’s a two-button long-sleeved polo shirt and scarf or a lightweight cardigan over a white shirt and tie.

• Dark gray woolen flannel single-breasted 3-button blazer with notch lapels, patch pockets, 3-button cuffs, and double vents
• Burgundy lightweight knit long-sleeve 5-button cardigan sweater
• White shirt with large spread collar, plain front, and double/French cuffs
• Brown tie with tan “downhill” stripes and complex narrow stripes
• Taupe-gray wool double reverse-pleated trousers with self-belt, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather derby shoes
• Yellow cotton lisle socks
• Gold wristwatch on tooled brown leather curved strap
• Brown felt short-brimmed fedora with brown grosgrain band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and have a very happy holiday!

The post White Christmas: Bing’s Gray Flannel Blazer appeared first on BAMF Style.

Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott in The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Vitals

Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott, fiery, independent-minded minister

aboard the S.S. Poseidon en route Athens, New Year’s Eve 1972

Film: The Poseidon Adventure
Release Date: December 12, 1972
Director: Ronald Neame
Costume Designer: Paul Zastupnevich

Background

Happy New Year’s Eve… and #TurtleneckThursday? After this disaster of a year, I can’t think of a better movie to bid good riddance to 2020 than one of the most famous disaster movies of the ’70s.

Produced by “Master of Disaster” Irwin Allen, The Poseidon Adventure followed the Airport template of a star-studded cast fighting to survive a perilous disaster while tackling their own personal issues. While Airport had originated the disaster film boom of the ’70s, The Poseidon Adventure proved its enduring box office power, recouping more than 25 times its initial budget and paving the way for a decade’s worth of similar stories set amidst tropical storms, within fire-prone skyscrapers, and even aboard a famous airship.

Unlike the ill-fated Titanic which sank during its maiden voyage in 1912, the fictional S.S. Poseidon—partially filmed aboard the decommissioned Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary—is making one last run before it will be scrapped in Athens. The cautious Captain Harrison (Leslie Nielsen) finds his authority challenged by the ship’s aggressive owner Linarcos (Fred Sadoff), establishing the dangers of hubris that would remain a consistent theme throughout the disaster sub-genre.

Down in the ship’s elegant dining room, the Poseidon‘s glamorous passengers are celebrating New Year’s Eve amidst their own personal dramas or crises of faith. Seated at the captain’s table are New York detective Mike Rogo (Ernest Borgnine), his ex-prostitute wife Linda (Stella Stevens), and Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman), a controversial cleric yet popular passenger who had captivated a congregation earlier that day with his religious philosophy said to be based on director Ronald Neame’s own hybrid of Christian, Buddhist, and New Age spiritualist beliefs.

While the champagne pops and auld acquaintances be forgot, the crew learns of a massive undersea earthquake that results in a rare wave that strikes the ship broadside, capsizing the S.S. Poseidon and quite literally turning the lives of its passengers upside down.

2020, as summed up by The Poseidon Adventure.

We’re floating upside-down… we’ve gotta climb up.

While most of their fellow passengers follow the boorish purser’s overly cautious advice, Rev. Scott pulls a small group together to commandeer a decorative Christmas tree to climb up and out of the dining room and through the galley to potential freedom. The good reverend is only able to muster nine others that will join him to work their way up—or down, rather—into the ship’s intestines until they can attempt to cut their way out through the inch-thick steel hull to possible rescue. Belle Rosen (Shelley Winters), who insists that “a fat woman like me can’t climb” asks, “There’s something different up there than there is down here?”

“Yes,” Rev. Scott responds. “Life. Life is up there, and life always matters very much, doesn’t it?”

I love Hackman’s take-charge attitude, an alpha energy that won’t be suppressed by his super-’70s combover and seems to win him the affection of every woman on the ship… though it’s only Mrs. Rosen with whom he comes close to, uh, “getting familiar” as he gives her considerably more than a helping hand on her way up the crooked Christmas tree. After that, it’s a surreal, inverted hellscape through dimly lit corridors and air shafts, years before John McClane made it cool.

“Come on out to Poughkeepsie, we’ll pick our feet, have a few laughs…”

The Poseidon Adventure marked a rare occasion where the Academy seemed to have responded to a film’s box office rather than its critical reputation (or Oscar bait properties) as the movie described by Roger Ebert as “the kind of movie you know is going to be awful, and yet somehow you gotta see it” received a total of nine Academy Award nominations, winning two for Best Song and Best Visual Effects. Despite Ebert’s perhaps hyperbolic statement, The Poseidon Adventure isn’t necessarily awful, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it when I first watched it a few years ago before. Prior to that, I was only familiar with it from one of the prolific Mort Drucker’s parodies in my stack of vintage Mad magazines.

This recap by Ruthless Reviews sums up a lot of what makes The Poseidon Adventure so rewatchable… as well as being the movie that reinforces to me that Jack Albertson and Arthur O’Connell were two different actors.

What’d He Wear?

Reverend Scott appears for dinner at the captain’s table in a plain black wool suit over an off-white turtleneck, a look that evokes seafaring if less formal than his dinner-suited shipmates.

Two clerics in black suits, though Scott takes a more civilian approach with his turtleneck that also signifies his breaking from traditional philosophies of organized religion.

Apropos his modest vocation, Reverend Scott seems like the type who would not invest heavily or frequently in clothes. The slim, narrowly notched lapels of his single-breasted suit jacket suggest that it predates the early ’70s, likely made during the mid-to-later years of the prior decade. The 3/2-roll jacket has two buttons on the cuffs, a single vent, straight flapped hip pockets, and a breast pocket that our humble hero naturally wears sans ornamentation.

Rather than a dress shirt and bow tie like his fellow passengers or even a clerical collar like chaplain John (Arthur O’Connell), Reverend Scott appears at dinner in a simple cream-colored turtleneck that gets progressively dirtier and more damaged over the course of the eponymous adventure, until the right shoulder is completely torn away. The sweater has a ribbed roll-neck and cuffs and a jersey-knit body.

Note the textile difference between the ribbed neck and jersey-knit body of Reverend Scott’s turtleneck.

Reverend Scott’s suit has matching black wool flat front trousers with straight pockets along the side seams, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. He holds them up with a black leather belt that closes through a shiny gold-toned square single-prong buckle.

Unsurprisingly, Reverend Scott chooses ordinary footwear for his outfit, a pair of black leather derby shoes worn with black socks. By this point in the early 1970s, loafers were finding increased acceptance with suits and even evening-wear—particularly among Americans—though wearing lace-ups would ultimately serve Frank well as they’d be more likely to remain on his feet throughout his ordeal.

Reverend Scott steps through the rubble after the initial capsizing.

Earlier that day, chaplain John had asked Reverend Scott to serve as guest preacher during Sunday services (and, indeed, December 31 fell on a Sunday in 1972.) Frank had dressed similarly for the sermon, in a navy serge sports coat over a gray turtleneck with charcoal trousers, the daytime alternative to his nighttime turtleneck and suit.

Reverend Scott established his clerical “uniform” of notch-lapel jackets and turtlenecks earlier that day.

Paul Zastupnevich lost the Academy Award for Best Costume Design to Anthony Powell for Travels With My Aunt, but Zastupnevich would get several more opportunities to dress the decade’s biggest stars for disasters as the costume designer for The Towering Inferno and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. Zastupnevich was born December 24, 1921, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, just a stone’s throw from where I live in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

How to Get the Look

Gene Hackman as Reverend Frank Scott in The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Reverend Frank Scott was one of the coolest priests this side of Fleabag thanks to Gene Hackman’s confidence, charm, and costume that swapped out a clerical collar for a hip turtleneck under an otherwise priestly black suit.

• Black wool ’60s-era suit:
  • Single-breasted 3/2-roll jacket with narrow notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Cream-colored turtleneck with ribbed roll-neck and set-in sleeves
• Black leather belt with gold-toned square single-prong buckle
• Black leather cap-toe derby shoes
• Black socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. I also dig Ernest Borgnine’s festive and creative black tie ensemble, but we’ll save that exploration for a future New Year’s Eve!

The Quote

What more do you want of us? We’ve come all this way, no thanks to you. We did it on our own, no help from you. We didn’t ask you to fight for us, but damn it, don’t fight against us!

The post The Poseidon Adventure: Gene Hackman’s New Year’s Eve Turtleneck appeared first on BAMF Style.

William Powell and Myrna Loy in After the Thin Man (1936)… with Skippy as Asta

Vitals

William Powell as Nick Charles, retired private detective

San Francisco, New Year’s Eve 1936

Film: After the Thin Man
Release Date: December 25, 1936
Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Wardrobe Credit: Dolly Tree

Background

Happy New Year! Dashiell Hammett and “One-Take Woody” Van Dyke continued the runaway success of The Thin Man by reuniting William Powell and Myrna Loy as crime-solving power couple Nick and Nora Charles, coming home to San Francisco after solving the famous “Thin Man” case during their holiday in New York. The three-day train ride returns Nick and Nora to the City by the Bay just in time for New Year’s Eve, where they find their home commandeered by revelers that have already kicked off their celebrations.

Given that Nick’s success in the Wynant murder remains the talk of the town, it’s clear that the action was meant to pick up exactly where The Thin Man left off following Christmas 1933, though the Charles family steps off the Sunset Limited into a world where the clothes, cars, and music all reflect the contemporary setting of 1936.

Nick and Nora are greeted home by the boisterous “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)”, the 1936 hit originally written and recorded by Louis Prima that would be immortalized by the Benny Goodman orchestra’s epochal 12-minute performance live at Carnegie Hall in January 1938… and, for some, by a Chips Ahoy! commercial. Despite the composition’s increasing association with Goodman, Prima would re-record it during the “Wildest!” phase of his career, cutting a version for his 1958 album Strictly Prima that would be prominently featured on the Casino soundtrack.

In After the Thin Man, “Sing, Sing, Sing” is sung by Eadie Adams, a vocalist from Kay Kyser’s outfit who briefly turned from nightclubs to movies—primarily playing singers—during the mid-1930s. Given the unfortunate dearth of Ms. Adams’ listening material available on the internet, I suggest listening to the recordings that a young Louis Prima made on the Brunswick label with the New Orleans Gang throughout the ’30s to get yourself in that Thin Man state of mind… with a martini (or six) at hand, of course.

What’d He Wear?

Nick Charles wears two double-breasted suits in After the Thin Man, this lighter-colored traveling suit on New Year’s Eve and then a darker flannel suit when setting out to solve an assortment of murders on New Year’s Day. Little to no documentation exists informing us of the color of the former, aside from the visual evidence from the movie itself which suggests a lighter-colored worsted, likely hued in one of the popular colors of the era such as blue, gray, brown, or even green.

Nick’s suit jacket was tailored in the style of the era, with sharp peak lapels, padded shoulders, and the traditional 6×2-button configuration spaced to flatter Powell’s lean 5’11” frame. The ventless jacket has straight jetted hip pockets and a welted breast pocket from which a rakishly arranged white pocket square protrudes. Each sleeve is finished with three-button cuffs.

Nick and Nora are dismayed to find their abode full of partiers celebrating their return… luckily, none of the revelers seem to recognize the couple they are welcoming home.

Though suit jackets have changed little from the 1930s to today, our first look at Nick Charles on the train to San Francisco shows just how much trousers have evolved since that proverbial “golden era” of men’s fashion. In addition to the already long rise, the trouser waist hem gently rises to a center “braces back” with two buttons where Nick fastens the hooks of his light-colored suspenders (braces). This detail was certainly not universal to men’s trousers of the era, as some achieved the same purpose with a small split on the back, others fastened their braces to buttons along the inside of the waistband, and others yet were increasingly embracing belts as alternatives.

Nick doesn’t rely solely on his suspenders to keep his trousers in place as they’ve also been tailored with a set of buckle-fastening tabs on each side of the waistband to adjust the fit. From the waist down, Nick’s pleated trousers generally resemble modern pants with their straight pockets along the side seams, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

“Just practicing, dear. Will you have a little slice of throat?” Nick gets interrupted while shaving before the train pulls into San Francisco.

Nick wears a light-colored shirt with a hairline stripe so faint that the cotton shirting looks to be solid in medium shots. The fastidious details of the pinned collar and double (French) cuffs speak to the well-dressed Nick’s nature, as neither collar nor cuffs could be worn without the appropriate accoutrement. He wears a medium-colored tie with a unique repeating all-over pattern of small pale circles bisected by a darker barbell-shaped object.

Nick and Nora anonymously dance through the party supposedly being held in their honor.

Nick wears a pair of cap-toe oxfords in a lighter-than-black leather that suggests brown.

Asta leads Nick off the train upon arriving in San Francisco.

Nick carries—but never wears—a houndstooth check wool topcoat that appears to have an ulster-style collar and raglan sleeves. His fedora is made of a light-colored felt, lighter than his suiting, and is detailed with a pinched crown, self-edged brim, and a dark grosgrain band.

Nick: Oh, you got ideas, huh?
Nora: Very definite ideas.
Nick: I was afraid so.
Nora: I’m going to lock the door, plug the bell, cut the telephone and crawl into bed for a month!
Nick: Oh, Nora, you’re my favorite woman.

What to Imbibe

Nora: Are you packing, dear?
Nick: Yes, darling, I’m just putting away this liquor.

More than two years had passed since audiences first met Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man, though the sequel wastes no time in reminding fans of the couples’ shared love for spirits. As Nick and Nora prepare to alight from the train in San Francisco, he takes care not to waste any remnants of the batch of martinis he had evidently premixed in their shaker, not bothering to shake to waltz time and instead allowing the motion of the Sunset Limited to perform the yeoman’s share of the shaking.

Good to the last drop.

Back in their home—and, more importantly, their home bar—Nick is dismayed to find his Napoleon brandy being ravaged by the unwanted guests at their homecoming party… though he soon follows their example as he pours a couple of snifters for him and Nora upon learning of their dreaded New Year’s Eve plans with Nora’s prim and prickly Aunt Katherine. Unfortunately, I’m not well-versed enough in the realm of interwar-era cognac to identify Nick’s prized stock.

As the guest list at Aunt Katherine’s dinner party grows, so does the amount of Napoleon brandy Nick needs before he can attend.

How to Get the Look

William Powell and Myrna Loy in After the Thin Man (1936)

William Powell brought his usual debonair style to the first sequel to The Thin Man, re-introducing us to Nick Charles while wearing a light worsted double-breasted suit for train travel.

• Medium-light worsted double-breasted suit:
  • Double-breasted jacket with sharp peak lapels, 6×2-button configuration, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Double reverse-pleated long-rise trousers with buckle-tab side adjusters, 2-button “braces back”, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Light hairline-striped cotton shirt with pinned collar, plain “French placket”, and double/French cuffs
• Medium-colored tie with small two-color repeating all-over print
• Light-colored suspenders
• Brown leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Medium-colored socks
• Light-colored felt fedora with dark grosgrain band
• Gold tank watch on dark leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire film series and Dashiell Hammett’s original treatments outlining After the Thin Man and Another Thin Man in the single volume released as Return of the Thin Man… significant for being the last fiction that Hammett composed during his life.

The Quote

Darling, you don’t need mystery. You’ve got something much better. Something more alluring… me.

The post After the Thin Man: Nick Charles’ Light Double-Breasted Suit for the New Year appeared first on BAMF Style.

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974)

Vitals

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, calculating Mafia boss

Havana, December 1958, and Lake Tahoe, Spring 1959

Film: The Godfather Part II
Release Date: December 12, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

When “gangster style” comes to mind, you may think first of the silk suits from Goodfellas or tracksuits of The Sopranos, but Michael Corleone established an aristocratic sense of style as he grew into his leadership role in accordance with his reserved nature.

The Godfather Part II debuts Michael’s penchant for the day cravat, a decorative and sporty scarf-like neckwear. Some use the term “ascot” when referring to a day cravat, though it’s worth pointing out that the ascot tie is a different, more formal type of neckwear worn inside a shirt collar like a traditional tie while the day cravat is worn against the skin, under the shirt itself. (Michael may be a rarity among fictional mafiosi to sport this elegant type of neckwear, but Joe Pantoliano as the vain sociopath Ralph Cifaretto on The Sopranos illustrates that he wasn’t alone.)

My previous post explored the silk day cravat that Leslie Odom Jr. wore as Sam Cooke in the recent One Night in Miami. Now, on #MafiaMonday, let’s take a look at how Al Pacino wore his cravats to dress up Michael Corleone’s dressed-down looks in The Godfather Part II.

What’d He Wear?

Unlike some movie mobsters—think Robert De Niro’s pastel wardrobe in Casino—Michael Corleone has a practical and utilitarian approach to his clothes that matches his mind for business. Across the events of The Godfather Part II, Michael cycles through a limited closet of quality pieces that make a powerful impression on friends and foe and everybody in between. Indeed, he only appears on screen wearing four different suits, though he wears them with such versatility that it can feel like more: a flashy gray dupioni silk suit for public events like his son’s communion and a meeting in Havana, a sinister black suit when he needs to evoke power (worn with or without waistcoat), a businesslike pinstripe suit for austere occasions like testifying during a Senate hearing, and a summer suit with a subdued check for low-key business dealings in warmer cities like Miami and Havana; it’s with this latter suit that he first see Michael in a day cravat, dressing the suit down with a white knitted polo shirt for Hyman Roth’s birthday party.

A serious man aware of the importance of his appearance, Michael never appears in public wearing anything less dressier than a tailored jacket and collared shirt, anchoring his few “casual” outfits with a tasteful navy blue sports coat that appears to be made from a comfortable wool serge. Not technically a blazer like some odd jackets in this color, this single-breasted jacket avoids the trendy extremes of ’50s fashion with its timeless cut. The notch lapels roll to a two dark blue plastic buttons that resemble the three buttons on each cuff. The welted breast pocket is conventional, but the patch pockets on the hips are sporty enough to discern this jacket from traditional business attire. The single-vented jacket has padded shoulders—with gently roped sleeveheads—that were fashionable in the ’50s but also build up the 5’7″ Al Pacino’s silhouette to look more subtly powerful.

Michael contrasts Fredo’s flashy pink-on-pink with a subdued navy jacket and white shirt, his only affectation being the day cravat that was considerably less out of place in the resort-like atmosphere of 1950s Havana.

We first see Michael’s “off-duty” sports coat in Havana during the days leading up to the fateful New Year’s Eve celebration. An afternoon in his hotel room with only his bodyguard and newly arrived brother Fredo (John Cazale) present calls for something a little less dressy than his usual suit and tie, so he recycles the white short-sleeved shirt from Roth’s birthday party and ties on a dark indigo and gold paisley silk day cravat.

It may be December, but the tropical Caribbean climate still averages around 80°F in Havana so Michael is wise to wear this lighter white shirt, constructed from a breezy knitted cotton. The shirt has a three-button top, worn with only the top button undone to accommodate the day cravat, and a breast pocket. Michael wears light gray wool double forward-pleated trousers and a black leather belt that coordinates with his black leather shoes and socks.

Michael’s casual look in Havana, consisting of a navy odd jacket with white shirt and gray slacks, would be the most neutral ensemble in his trio of dressed-down appearances across The Godfather Part II.

Back in Lake Tahoe, he dresses more warmly for the snowy winter. Again, Michael is meeting with Fredo but his demeanor is as chilly as the snow-covered docks outside as he formally severs ties with the brother who betrayed him.

Michael’s light gray button-up shirt diverges from his polo-style shirts, worn under a dark gray wool sweater with a ribbed-knit V-neck that draws more attention to the shirt’s open point collar and the dark paisley silk day cravat. This manner of dress gives Michael the appearance of a cavalry officer—think Colonel Kilgore from Coppola’s later masterpiece—as he firmly lays out his orders for Fredo to follow.

Resembling a martinet in his high-necked collar and scarf, Michael’s steel tones communicate his cold callousness as he disowns his brother: “Fredo, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend. I don’t want to know you or what you do. I don’t want to see you at the hotels, I don’t want you near my house. When you see our mother, I want to know a day in advance, so I won’t be there. You understand?”

No longer in Havana and certainly not in any mood for lightness, Michael maintains his sartorial sobriety with a pair of charcoal slacks. His black leather shoes appear to be cap-toe oxfords, again worn with uninteresting—but not unexpected—black socks.

Michael sits in his familiar “power position” while Fredo slumps, as good as dead after his not-so-brotherly betrayal.

Finally, Michael manifests his warmest look for the quiet climax as he appropriately dons a blood red shirt while arranging the deaths of his adversaries.

I don’t feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom… just my enemies.

The scarlet-hued long-sleeved shirt looks to have been knitted from a material like Ban-Lon, the trade name for Joseph Bancroft & Sons’ synthetic yarn that revolutionized men’s sportswear in the ’50s and ’60s. The long-collared shirt has three red plastic two-hole buttons, the top worn undone to reveal that indigo-and-“old gold” paisley printed silk day cravat. Again, he wears charcoal trousers with a black leather belt and shoes.

In case Michael’s deep red shirt didn’t already signal that blood was about to be spilled, he spends the scene eating an orange, Coppola’s famous forebear of death in The Godfather series.

Having engineered the deaths of his brother and two of his father’s oldest friends who have since had reason to turn against him, Michael can no longer behind his guise of continuing his evil deeds on behalf of his family, cemented by once again closing the door on his wife for a second—and arguably more decisive—time. With these final acts, Michael also discards the day cravats that had lent him the appearance of respectability. Who’s he trying to fool anymore?

Still in his open-necked red knit shirt and charcoal trousers, Michael layers on a broad-shouldered camelhair double-breasted overcoat and tonal cashmere scarf with fringed ends. These are items typically worn to fight against the cold, but the insouciant way that Michael wears them—coat open, scarf untied—suggests that he’s given up that fight, yielding completely to the coldness in his heart as he allows himself to commit to previously unthinkable acts.

Michael glares at his now ex-wife with disdain, shutting her out of his life as he more definitively severs ties with other acquaintances he’s known his entire life.

Michael would resume wearing day cravats, admittedly more loosely tied and supplemented by the occasional neckerchief, with his dressed-down suits and sport jackets in The Godfather Part III. By then, he’s refocused on reforming his image for the public after rebranding himself as a philanthropist.

The Watch

Throughout The Godfather Part II, Michael wears a yellow gold watch that has been speculatively identified as an Omega Constellation—appropriately of 1950s vintage—with a white dial and shining gold bracelet. Consistent with his personality, he eschews excessive jewelry and accessories, wearing only the plain gold wedding ring that communicates to the rest of the world that he’s a “family man”.

Michael flashes his Omega while lighting a Camel in his Havana hotel room.

What to Imbibe

Michael isn’t a teetotaler, but he limits his drinking to the occasional celebratory concoction or late-night cognac. When he takes Fredo out for an afternoon in Havana, he refreshes himself with a plain club soda while Fredo maintains a steady diet of, uh, “how do you say banana daiquiri?”

“Banana daiquiri,” Michael answers, allowing himself an amused smirk at his brother’s expense.

Admittedly, it would be a surprise to see Michael Corleone drinking a banana daiquiri. Fredo… not such a surprise.

This happy hour staple indeed originated in Cuba, credited to Americans around the time of the Spanish-American War though, as with most cocktails, the true inventor of the daiquiri remains lost to history with mining engineer Jennings Cox and congressman William A. Chanler competing for credit among modern sources. Whoever invented it, the standard daiquiri recipe emerged as a generous amount of white rum shaken with lime juice and sugar before being strained into a chilled cocktail glass.

As rum-based drinks became increasingly fashionable in the United States following World War II and the boom of Tiki culture, Americans discovered their palette for cocktails like the Planter’s Punch, Zombie, and the almighty daiquiri. Mainland mixologists exercised their creativity on the original recipes, though it was reportedly British sea captain George Soule who pioneered the banana daiquiri while exploring St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, where he blended local bananas with rum, lime juice, and sugar for a tasty new concoction. (Captain Soule’s story is substantiated by Cruzan, stipulating that it was their rum, of course!)

How to Get the Look

Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974)

A shrewd leader like Michael Corleone is aware of the importance of a neat and tasteful appearance, even in casual situations. He adapts his dressed-down “uniform” of a navy odd jacket, open-neck shirt, and gray trousers to adapt to the temperature (regarding climate and situation) of his surroundings, completing each outfit with a day cravat that adds a subtle touch of affected elegance.

• Navy wool serge single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• White or red knitted polo-type shirt with 3-button top
• Dark indigo and gold paisley silk day cravat
• Gray double forward-pleated trousers with belt loops and turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black socks
• Omega Constellation gold wristwatch with round white dial on gold bracelet
• Gold wedding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series, including the masterpiece sequel The Godfather Part II.

The Quote

If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything… it says you can kill anyone.

The post The Godfather, Part II: Michael Corleone’s Navy Jacket and Cravats appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ryan O’Neal as Oliver Barrett IV in Love Story (1970)

Vitals

Ryan O’Neal as Oliver Barrett IV, preppy Harvard student

New England, Winter 1966, and New York City, Winter 1970

Film: Love Story
Release Date: December 16, 1970
Director: Arthur Hiller
Costume Design: Alice Manougian Martin & Pearl Somner

Background

Happy Valentine’s Day! In the spirit of the season of romance, it felt appropriate to explore the preppy style in one of the most famous cinematic love stories of all time… the perhaps uncleverly titled Love Story.

I went into my inaugural Love Story viewing this year familiar only with Larry Siegel and Mort Drucker’s Mad magazine parody and the movie’s reviled thesis that “love means never having to say you’re sorry,” so I was a little surprised to find myself non-ironically enjoying it more than I expected. Sure, my friend @berkeley_breathes had primed me to expect some standout Ivy-inspired style worn by Ryan O’Neal as our romantic hero Oliver, but I guess the half-century since Love Story has yielded considerably cornier products with the odd effect that this aged… relatively well? Or maybe I’m just speaking from behind the blinders of my enduring crush on early ’70s Ali MacGraw.

What’d He Wear?

The much-discussed (and copied) style of Love Story‘s leads would lead one to assuming it boasted a prolific costume designer, though the credited designers—Alice Manougian Martin and Pearl Somner—have very limited credits between them; in addition to this, Martin is credited on three 1963 episodes of East Side, West Side, and Somner for a little-known Pat Boone faith-based flick called The Cross and the Switchblade, released just six months before Love Story. Unless there’s part of the story I’m missing, Martin and Somner’s teamwork must be one of the most successful one-hit wonders in the history of cinematic costume design!

Much of the fashionable eye on Love Story has rightly been focused on Ali MacGraw as the scrappy and sharp-tongued Radcliffe student Jenny who swiftly steals Oliver’s heart, but it’s his warm shearling coat that undoubtedly wins the heart of many a menswear enthusiast.

An Ivy romance.

I mentioned my friend @berkeley_breathes in the introduction, and I’d like to thank him for his help and for encouraging me to take a look at Love Story for BAMF Style content. Earlier this month, he shared his characteristically thoughtful insights with Charles McFarlane for Put This On about Ivy inclusivity and style. I’m also grateful to him for identifying O’Neal’s screen-worn sheepskin coat as most likely a product by Sawyer of Napa, a theory that I’d argue is backed up by The Weejun‘s look at a 1969 Sawyer of Napa coat that shares many of the characteristics (aside from a few collar differences) as O’Neal’s jacket.

While there’s plenty recorded about the history of shearling outerwear, I was delighted that @berkeley_breathes was able to contextualize for me not only how shearling became associated with Ivy style but what it says about Oliver’s character that O’Neal wears it so prominently:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, prep schools started drastically expanding the Ivy canon to include workwear and military surplus, but also (critically) Western gear like cowboy boots, hats, and shearling coats. The really cool thing is that you see them on teachers as often as you see them on kids; it really reinforces the idea that this style developed from practicality and style combined. In a cold New England winter, you need a heavy coat, but—like Tintin in 1975—you want to stay with the times, too, so you reach for the shearling. What you end up with on these prep school and Ivy campuses is a really beautiful sheepskin in a really classic design: no huge collar, very boxy cut, perfect for layering over Shetlands or jackets.

I think the coat really emphasizes Oliver’s character; he’s annoyed by the burden of his name and legacy, and his clothes reflect how he’s starting to push against the confines of those traditions. He looks awkward in his blazer and flannels at the family mansion but at ease and carefree playing in the snow in his shearling coat. It’s a way that Oliver identifies himself with a younger, hipper generation, one that’s open to new ideas rather than being hidebound and reactionary. Of course, Oliver has his own struggles with that and with relationships in general, but that’s one take I have on the coat. It’s practical, it’s stylish, it’s making a point. And it doesn’t age at all; that coat looks as great today as it did in 1970.

Sheepskin is unusual among leathers as it’s tanned and processed with the shearling lamb’s soft woolen fleece intact, providing the effect of an insulating but breathable lining that often presents on the collar and cuffs. The 1960s marked a renaissance for sheepskin, its warm and hard-wearing reputation having popularized it among pilots and cowboys until it fell into the hands of the fashionable set, sported by the likes of Alain Delon and Robert Redford before Ryan O’Neal put his shearling coat through the rigors of a New England winter in Love Story.

Oliver’s sheepskin shearling car coat shows the usual cognac tan on its suede-like outer shell with the natural-shaded woolly shearling fleece presenting on the collar, about three quarters of an inch from the edge. A loop on the left side of the collar indicates a button at the top to close over the neck with three more brown woven leather buttons closing the coat beginning just below a horizontal yoke across the chest. The coat has set-in sleeves, a single vent, and deep hand pockets that gently curve toward the center of the coat to follow the natural movements of the wearer’s arms when inserting one’s hands through the slanted, jetted openings.

In his perfect Sawyer of Napa sheepskin coat, Oliver stands out among more blandly dressed students for a fall day on campus.

Oliver layers his shearling coat over a limited but well-loved cycle of Shetland wool sweaters, all given to considerable pilling after each wear. Once you’ve read about this versatile sweater from the Scottish Isles at Put This On, you can start looking for one of your own, starting with the Oliver-approved colors yellow (via Pendleton or Plain Goods) and green (via O’Connells). For a more comprehensive look at Shetland and lambswool sweater purveyors, I offer this guide by From Squalor to Baller.

The first is a mustard raglan-sleeve sweater that he wears over a worn-in light blue oxford-cloth button-down shirt, an Ivy staple that Oliver wears with characteristic insouciance, the collar leafs unbuttoned and atop the widely ribbed crew neck of his sweater. (Perhaps significantly, he wears this both when he meets Jenny and again when the two have their First Fight years later, after their marriage.)

He’s wearing this sweater for the first scene when wrangling with Jenny over his right to patronize the Radcliffe library, unable to comprehend her reluctance to help him and her enthusiasm for referring to him solely as “Preppy”… despite the fact that he’s standing before her in a shearling coat, blue OCBD, Shetland, and khaki corduroys.

Oliver: What makes you so sure I went to prep school?
Jenny: You look stupid and rich.
Oliver: Actually, I’m smart and poor.
Jenny: Uh-uh, I’m smart and poor.
Oliver: What makes you so smart?
Jenny: I wouldn’t go for coffee with you.
Oliver: I wouldn’t ask you.
Jenny: Well, that’s what makes you stupid.

CUT TO:

That Friday night, Oliver and Jenny share their first real date when she attends his hockey game against Dartmouth. “Jenny, I might not call you for a few months… then again, I might call you as soon as I get back to my room,” he quips at the end of the night, and indeed he moves swiftly to his phone when he returns home.

Slipping off his coat as he enters the apartment, we see a black manufacturer’s label sewn onto the reverse side of the coat’s left pocket.The tag is consistent with the look and placement of outerwear by Sawyer of Napa, the California brand suggested by @berkeley_breathes.

Oliver removes his coat once he returns home among his friends and roommates (including Hank, played by a young Tommy Lee Jones.)

Oliver peels off his shearling coat to reveal another variation of his campus uniform: OCBD, Shetland, and corduroys. His light blue shirt may be the same (or similar) as the one spotted earlier in the week, its unbuttoned collar leafs worn outside the sweater as usual, though he’s swapped out the golden sweater for a similar one in spruce green.

Oliver illustrates the durability and versatility of his Ivy gear by maintaining his wardrobe beyond his college years, such as the following autumn when he and Jenny move into their first Boston apartment. He’s wearing his light blue button-down layered under the green Shetland, this time with his light brown corduroys and oxblood oxfords.

Oliver and Jenny aren’t far removed from their college days when he’s carrying her across the threshold into their first home, he in his OCBD, Shetland, and cords and she sporting her usual Tartan plaids.

The true difference between sheepskin and suede emerges as we follow our lovers through a blustery New England winter, through which Oliver’s coat endures rain, snow, and never having to say you’re sorry. (I had to.)

While Jerry Seinfeld may have ruined his suede jacket by wearing it in the rain, no such harm comes to Ryan O’Neal’s sheepskin vestment, emerging victorious the following spring with perhaps just a touch of seasoned patina that merely adds to its value.

Jenny and Oliver don’t get a little rain get in the way of their romance… or their inclination to wear their favorite weather-ready coats.

As Oliver’s idyllic romance with Jenny progresses through the winter months, their weather-friendly coats serve them well for dates spent frolicking in the powder making snow angels and snowmen. Here, his outfit varies only slightly from his usual campus looks; he wears a white oxford cotton, the button-down collar unfastened as usual but considerably more disarranged.

Oliver’s slate blue Shetland sweater and blue jeans are likely the same as seen during a brief vignette of he and Jenny reading on his couch, the sweater rigged with a V-neck—as opposed to the crew-necks of its forebears—to show plenty more of the top of his white shirt and the undershirt beneath it.

Oliver’s sheepskin passes the snow angel test with flying colors.

Whether it’s fallen leaves or snow crunching under his feet, Oliver wisely stomps around campus in a pair of heavy dark brown leather lace-up boots. Though the boots are often too buried in snow to make out the details clearly, I believe I discerned the profile of derby-style open lacing.

Oliver almost always wears taupe knitted gloves, supplemented in moments of school pride by a wool scarf, block-striped in Harvard colors crimson and white with long fringe on the ends. Similar scarves are still available from The Harvard Shop more than a half-century later, though you could also go the more generic route via Amazon.

Almost mocking himself as he swaddles his throat in the school colors after losing a hockey game, Oliver despondently watches his aloof father drive away in his Jaguar.

We don’t see much of Oliver’s signature shearling coat during the early months of his and Jenny’s marriage; instead, he pulls on a shorter and darker sheep-lined flight jacket for his desperate dash around campus after their fitst fight.

Oliver presses the coat back into service later as he and Jenny relocate to New York for his new job at a law firm. He’s several years removed from campus and has updated some of his style to keep hip with the times, layering the coat over a simple slate-blue turtleneck as well as his trusty light brown corduroys just broken-in enough to be comfortable when spending hours cramped into the cockpit of his MG TC roadster between Beantown and the Big Apple.

Seconds after pulling up in front of the Manhattan high-rise they’ll now call home, Jenny again asks to be carried over the threshold.

Unfortunately, the young couple’s promising future is marred when they learn Jenny is terminally ill with cancer. Perhaps subconsciously hoping to recapture the magic of their first dates, Oliver reverts to his old campus “uniform” when making the most of his remaining time with Jenny.

For a wintry afternoon spent ice skating in Central Park, he’s in one of his old light blue oxford shirts, the button-down collar again worn undone and folded over the crew neck of his sweater, in this case a bulky ivory cable-knit fisherman sweater that he wears with dark brown corduroys.

“I want her to have the very best,” a distraught Oliver insists outside of Jenny’s hotel room.

How to Get the Look

Ryan O’Neal as Oliver Barrett IV in Love Story (1970)

From the shearling coat to the Shetland sweaters, several sheep sacrificed their skins for Oliver Barrett IV to arrange the outer layers of his campus uniform, insulating his Ivy staples like the light blue OCBD and earthy corduroys.

• Camel brown sheepskin shearling four-button coat with beige pile lining, loop collar, straight horizontal yokes, set-in sleeves, and curved jetted-entry hand pockets
• Light blue oxford cotton button-down shirt
• Woolen crew-neck raglan-sleeve sweater
• Brown corduroy flat front trousers
• Dark brown leather work boots
• White cotton crew-neck undershirt
• Taupe knitted wool gloves
• Crimson-and-white block-striped wool scarf with fringed ends

Got a few hundred bucks saved up? Search “Sawyer of Napa” on eBay and find that rugged style that’ll work for you!

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie… and, if you’re looking to get beyond tipsy this Valentine’s Day, watch Love Story and take a shot every time Ali MacGraw calls Ryan O’Neal “preppy”.

The Quote

Hey, if you’re so convinced I’m a loser, why did you bulldoze me into buying you coffee?

The post Love Story: Ryan O’Neal’s Sheepskin Shearling Coat appeared first on BAMF Style.

Lee Marvin as Jack Osborne in Gorky Park (1983)

Vitals

Lee Marvin as Jack Osborne, American fur importer

Stockholm, April 1983

Film: Gorky Park
Release Date: December 15, 1983
Director: Michael Apted
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

As winter rages on, you’d think I would be looking for escape via light movies set in tropical locations… but instead, I recently rewatched Gorky Park, adapted from Martin Cruz Smith’s 1981 novel that begins with three disfigured corpses found in the snow outside a Moscow ice rink. (And I wonder why I get depressed!)

Our ostensible hero is Militsiya officer Arkady Renko (William Hurt), whose investigation of the grisly murders leads him to the sophisticated yet sinister sable importer Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin). As a successful American businessman, Osborne’s stylish suits and sable hats present a marked contrast to the drab clothing of those in his orbit… though Renko, it should be said, has commendable taste in clothing, particularly when he’s off the clock.

Marvin, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran born 97 years ago on February 19, 1924, specialized in playing “tough guys” through the ’60s and ’70s. He brings a particular menace to Osborne, who’s described in the book as “equine and handsome” but with “the quality of animal assurance.” Physically, it’s as though Cruz Smith had Marvin in mind when building the image of the tall, lean, leather-skinned Osborne with his “straight white hair… more silver than white.”

What’d He Wear?

He was wearing hunting clothes, laced boots, a green jaeger hat, and pigskin gloves. The rifle was a bolt-action sporting model with a sight and a handsome burled stock. A heavy knife was sheathed on his belt. Arkady noticed that no more snow was falling; not a flake drifted down, not even from the overheavy branches. There was a ceramic clarity to the scene.

— Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park

The movie creatively interprets Jack Osborne’s “hunting clothes” for the climax, set not in Russia but nearly 1,000 miles west of Moscow, across the Baltic Sea at a remote farm outside Stockholm. The ground and buildings are still covered with snow, but it’s beginning to thaw as the winter gives way to spring.

For this still-chilly weather, Osborne turns to sheepskin, the reliable leather that’s been warming humans since the Stone Age. “Wait, wait, you just talked about sheepskin,” you say, having read my Valentine’s Day post about Ryan O’Neal’s shearling coat in Love Story. Sheepskin outerwear can take many forms, though the most common can be split into two major categories: the large medium-hued car coats championed by Delon, Redford, and O’Neal (to name a few), and the darker, hip-length bomber jackets inspired by the Irvin and B-3 flight jackets that warmed high-flying Allied aviators during World War II.

While I wouldn’t put it past Jack Osborne to develop a sable-lined bomber jacket, he instead dresses for action in a more traditional sheepskin coat.

Indeed, Marvin’s jacket as Jack Osborne follows the example of the B-3, which had been introduced in 1934 specifically for U.S. Army Air Force pilots in high-altitude bombers like the iconic B-17 Flying Fortress. Thus, the “bomber jacket” was born, typified by its sheepskin shell dyed to a military-spec dark brown and the thick piled sheep’s wool on the reverse side that lined the body of the coat up through the collar, which had two added straps to fasten the turned-up collar around the neck for warmth and protection. Osborne’s two collar straps are a slightly darker brown leather, matching the shade of the two sliding-buckle adjuster tabs toward the back of each side of the jacket, the horizontal back yoke, and the banded leather around the wrists and the hem.

On the original B-3 jackets, the piled fur lining spilled out of the cuffs and hem, though Osborne’s Finnish-made civilian’s coat has a slightly lengthened skirt that sacrifices the traditional furry hem. According to auction listings at Invaluable and Morphy Auctions, the screen-worn jacket has a label reading “S. Style Aitoa Nahkaa” and was likely purchased in Finland, where the film was produced. The coat is further detailed with a brief fly over the zip-up front and hand pockets with slanted welt openings.

While that may be a relatively neutral way for Osborne to hold a bolt-action rifle that needs to be cycled before each repeating shot, I still wouldn’t want to be Joanna Pacuła at that moment.

Under his half-zipped coat, Osborne wears an ivory wool sweater, knitted with a seed-stitched body with a shaker-rib stitched crew-neck and cuffs. Beneath the neck of his sweater, we see a blue paisley silk neckerchief that likely provides some degree of warmth but also adds a gently affected touch for our affluent and undoubtedly arrogant antagonist.

Apropos his now-unveiled villainy, Osborne wears a pair of black leather gloves, the squared case of his yellow gold watch gleaming from his left wrist between the glove and the sleeve-ends of his sweater and jacket.

That’s more like it!

Osborne wears brown wool flat front trousers that go hardly seen between the jacket skirt covering the waist line and the bottoms tucked into his well-worn russet leather bucket-top boots. This tall riding boot style dates back to the late 17th century, the uppers built with stiff leather shafts that swell out above the knees into cup-like buckets. These buckets can be worn unfolded up to the thighs or folded down over the shafts.

Marvin wears his boots in the latter fashion, showing the roughout reverse side of the leather and fastening them in the back with criss-crossed rawhide laces that culminate in tooled leather tassels that dangle around his heels. The moc-toes curl up toward the front, and there are buckled straps over each boot’s instep.

“The sables are dead… I do not intend to join them.”

The Gun

Though he carried a gold-plated Walther PPK/S in a previous scene—and reportedly used an older Mannlicher pistol to commit the murders—Jack Osborne has upgraded his firepower to a bolt-action rifle when facing down Renko and the KGB agents during the conclusion.

The IMFDB experts have identified Osborne’s rosewood-stocked rifle as a Colt-Sako Model L-579, a firearm I admittedly knew next to nothing about until reading what the IMFDB folks had to say. For several years in the early 1960s, Colt produced a series of rifles with bolt-actions by the Finnish firearms manufacturer Sako. From 1963 to 1965, these were built on the L-461 short action, the L-61 long action, and the L-579 medium action as seen in Gorky Park. Calibers varied across these models, but the L-579 was only available in .243 Winchester and .308 Winchester thus it’s likely one of these two rounds that Osborne fires from his scoped Colt-Sako rifle.

The obliquely angled fore-end was characteristic of the later run of Colt-Sako rifles.

How to Get the Look

Lee Marvin as Jack Osborne in Gorky Park (1983)

Jack Osborne was the character that Lee Marvin was born to play: charming but dangerous, rugged yet refined… the same qualities that could describe the sheepskin flight jacket he wears with an off-white sweater, paisley neckerchief, and bucket boots.

• Dark brown sheepskin hip-length bomber jacket with broad fur-lined collar (with two throat-latch straps), zip-up front fly, slanted welt hand pockets, and buckle-tab side adjusters
• Ivory seed-stitched wool crew-neck sweater
• Blue paisley silk neckerchief
• Brown wool flat front trousers
• Russet brown leather “bucket top” riding boots with curled moc-toes, buckled instep straps, and rawhide-backlaced shafts
• Black leather gloves
• Yellow gold watch with champagne dial on dark leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Martin Cruz Smith’s novel.

The Quote

He killed my dogs. I gutted him… because he killed my dogs.

The post Gorky Park: Lee Marvin’s Sheepskin Flight Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jerry Seinfeld on Seinfeld (Episode 2.03: “The Jacket”)

Vitals

Jerry Seinfeld, observational comedian

New York City, Winter 1990

Series: Seinfeld
Episode: “The Jacket” (Episode 2.03)
Air Date: February 6, 1991
Director: Tom Cherones
Creator: Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld
Costume Designer: Llandys Williams

Background

Happy birthday, Jerry Seinfeld! Admittedly, the comedian typically doesn’t come to mind as a style icon; in fact, he may have been consistently the worst-dressed of the four leads on his eponymous ’90s sitcom, swimming in oversized sport jackets often paired with the incongruous combination of printed neckties, “dad jeans”, and white sneakers.

Having been a fan of the series since it was still airing new episodes (despite most of the jokes likely going over my head at that age), it wasn’t until rewatching the series beginning-to-end with my fiancée during one of my our many quarantine-inspired “comfort TV” marathons that I noticed just how frequently clothing drove the plot of the “show about nothing”, a series always propelled by the minutiae of everyday life.

In fact, the third episode of the groundbreaking series’ second season even begins with Jerry pontificating about clothing during his trademark opening monologue:

I hate clothes, okay? I hate buying them. I hate picking them out of my closet. I can’t stand every day trying to come up with little outfits for myself. I think eventually fashion won’t even exist. It won’t. I think eventually we’ll all be wearing the same thing. ‘Cause anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there’s people from the future of another planet, they’re all wearing the same thing. Somehow they decided “This is going to be our outfit. One-piece silver jumpsuit, V-stripe, and boots. That’s it.” We should come up for an outfit for earth. An earth outfit. We should vote on it. Candidates propose different outfits, no speeches. They walk out, twirl, walk off. We just sit in the audience and go, “That was nice. I could wear that.”

As its title implies, “The Jacket” is one of the first of several Seinfeld episodes to explore the challenges of everyday outerwear, which would range from fur coats and beltless trench coats to Gore-tex and technicolor dreamcoats over the series’ nine-season run. The episode was one of many to be based on co-creator Larry David’s own experiences, in this case the incident when he was to meet his then-girlfriend Monica Yates’ father, the irascible novelist Richard Yates, who had penned Revolutionary Road. David wore his new suede jacket to meet Yates at the Algonquin Hotel, only to be dismayed when it began snowing outside. Rather than risk the embarrassment of Yates seeing the jacket’s garish lining, David exposed the jacket’s suede shell to the falling snow… leading to its ruin.

What’d He Wear?

“The Jacket” begins with Jerry and his ex-turned-confidante Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) shopping at Beau Brummell Sport, the now-closed clothier on Columbus Avenue, just a few blocks south of Jerry’s Upper West Side apartment. As Jerry works his way through the racks, a luxurious brown suede waist-length jacket catches his eye.

Jerry: This is beautiful.. but these jackets never fit me right.
Elaine: Try it on. Wow, this is soft suede.
Jerry: This may be the most perfect jacket I have ever put on. How much is it?
Elaine: (checking the tag) Oh my God.
Jerry: Bad? (off her nod) Very bad?
Elaine: You have no idea.
Jerry: I have some idea.
Elaine: No idea.
Jerry: I’ve got a ballpark.
Elaine: There is no park, and the team has relocated.
Jerry: (checking the tag) That is high.
Elaine: Oh man, that is a beautiful jacket, though.
Jerry: What’s with the pink lining and the candy stripes?
Elaine: Well, it’s just a lining. You can always have it changed.
Jerry: Should I get it? I hate these moments. I’m hearing the dual voices now, you know. “What about the money?” “What’s money?”
Salesman: It looks wonderful on you.

Jerry won’t let the exorbitant price tag—or obnoxious lining—stop him from buying a new suede jacket.

The eponymous jacket does have a timeless quality that elevates it above much of the rest of Jerry’s clothing, a somewhat retro styling suggestive of early flight jackets from a half-century prior. Rather than a zipper, it closes with six dark buttons on the front—including two closely spaced at the waistband—up to the neck under a shirt-style collar. The fit around the waist adjusts with short tabs that slide through a single brass-finished buckle on each side of the back, rigged about an inch above the hem. The shoulder of each set-in sleeve falls about an inch off of each shoulder, with the cuff of each sleeve left plain with no buttons, snaps, zips, or other fastenings. The two flapped pockets positioned at hand level slant backward for easier access.

Only a few days after buying it, Jerry proudly debuts the jacket when his buddy George Costanza (Jason Alexander) arrives to join him for the daunting dinner ahead of them with Elaine’s father, the gruff author Alton Benes (Lawrence Tierney).

Jerry: This jacket has completely changed my life. When I leave the house in this, it’s with a whole different confidence. Like tonight, I might’ve been a little nervous. But, inside this jacket, I am composed, grounded, secure that I can meet any social challenge.
George: Can I say one thing to you? And I say this with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality.
Jerry: Of course.
George: It’s fabulous.

Of course, George being George, it’s only a matter of seconds before he begins obsessing about the price, despite the fact that “I’m not even going to ask you… I want to know, but I’m not going to ask, You’ll tell me when you feel comfortable.” Jerry wordlessly lets George continue obsessing, raising the price in his mind like an auctioneer from four hundred dollars to more than a thousand:

I wanna know what you paid for this jacket! Oh my God! A thousand dollars?! You paid a thousand dollars for this jacket?! Alright, fine. I’m walking out of here right now thinking you paid a thousand dollars for this jacket, unless you tell me different. Oh, ho! Alright! I’ll tell you what, if you don’t say anything in the next five seconds, I’ll know it was over a thousand.

George gets a glance at the pink-striped lining, but it’s not garish enough to distract him from dwelling on how much his friend paid for the new jacket.

“The Jacket” scared me off of suede for a long time, especially as I live in Pittsburgh, where the skies are prone to bringing rain at a moment’s notice. (Luckily, “veggie suede” now exists to counter these anxieties, but I’m still Seinfeld-conditioned to be wary of suede outerwear.)

The controversy begins when Elaine marvels at the snow falling as she, Jerry, George, and Alton are getting ready to leave the Westbury Hotel for the restaurant. “Snow, that can’t be good for suede, can it?” Jerry panics to George. As the macho Alton refuses to take a cab to a restaurant only five blocks away, George brainstorms that Jerry can protect his new jacket’s supple leather by turning it inside-out… unfortunately revealing the hot pink and white balanced stripes of the satin-finished lining.

Alton: Wait a minute. What the hell do you call this?
Jerry: Oh, I turned my jacket inside out.
Alton: Well, you look like a damn fool!
Jerry: Well, it’s a new suede jacket. It might get ruined.
Alton: Well, you’re not going to walk down the street with me and my daughter dressed like that! That’s for damn sure!

Jerry refers to the pattern as “candy stripes”, though the extreme width would actually suggest that the lining is comprised of what’s known as “awning stripes”. It’s likely that Jerry was influenced by the saccharine, candy-like color or possibly the feminine association of pink candy-striped uniforms worn decades earlier by hospital nurses.

Admonished by the macho Alton Benes, Jerry has to face the consequences of not being as weather-prepared as the raincoat-wearing George.

Before it would all be undone by the mix of the surprise snow and the embarrassing lining, Jerry fusses over his dinner outfit a little more than usual, out of respectful deference to—and not a small mount of intimidation by—Alton Benes. I typically don’t like wearing anything but a tailored jacket—think suit jacket, sports coat, or blazer—with a shirt and tie, but the dressier nature of Jerry’s fine suede button-up jacket qualifies the look a little more, in my opinion.

Despite wearing a tie, Jerry doesn’t fasten the button under the point collar of his white cotton shirt, which is also detailed with front placket, button cuffs, and a button-through breast pocket. The red, tan, navy, and green “painted”-pattern silk tie reflects the busier neckwear of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Like the tie, Jerry’s khaki cotton trousers date outfit to the early ’90s with their double reverse pleats and baggy fit. The side pockets slant gently toward the front from each side seam, and there are two jetted back pockets with a button to close the left. He holds them up with a smooth brown leather belt that has a gold-finished single-prong buckle.

The generously fitting trousers have a full break over Jerry’s shoes, which appear to be cap-toe derbies with dark brown suede uppers that also wouldn’t have fared well in the snow.

Jerry wisely left his sneakers in the closet with this outfit, though his suede shoes battling the snow doesn’t seem to concern him as much as the new jacket.

Jerry Seinfeld’s horological collection may be the most celebrated aspect of his style, as first seen on Seinfeld and continued decades later on his web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Breitling watches are arguably Jerry’s favorite, appearing on his wrist frequently in real life and in almost every episode of Seinfeld from the second season through the finale. If my recollection (and notes) serve correctly, he wore a Cartier Santos for all but the pilot episode of the first season; in the second season premiere, he introduced a Breitling Chronomat on the Rouleaux “bullet” bracelet that would be his regular watch for much of the series—save for a quickly abandoned gift watch from his parents in the fourth season—before switching to a leather-banded Breitling Navitimer and ultimately a Breitling Blackbird in the final seasons.

“The Jacket” was only the third episode to feature Jerry’s soon-to-be-familiar Breitling Chronomat, a hefty but stylish chronograph that was a relatively new model at the time, introduced in 1984 to commemorate the Swiss matchmaker’s 100th anniversary. Jerry’s Chronomat is secured on Breitling’s distinctive stainless steel Rouleaux bracelet, colloquially known as the “bullet” bracelet for its narrow, cylindrical-shaped links. The large round dial is detailed in the “reverse panda” colorway of three white sub-registers against a black dial, configured at the 6, 9, and 12 o’clock positions suggesting the Valjoux 7750 chronograph movement, according to to Bob’s Watches. The Chronomat’s bezel incorporates a circular slide rule similar to the one introduced on the original Navitimer three decades earlier.

Neither George nor Jerry can charm or disarm the unflappable Alton Benes.

As usual, it’s Kramer who benefits the most by the end of the episode, ending up not only with Jerry’s first leather jacket—a brown A2-style flight jacket—as well as the ruined suede jacket which, to his credit, he revitalizes and wears once again in “The Heart Attack” (Episode 2.08) when escorting George in the ambulance after an unfortunate misadventure with a holistic healer.

Kramer wasn’t lying when he told Jerry he preferred the suede jacket in its water-damaged state, putting his money where his mouth is when he wears it five episodes later in “The Heart Attack.

“Boy, it’s too bad you gave me this one too,” Kramer comments to Jerry, now that he’s in possession of Jerry’s two prized jackets. When I next saw Jerry wearing a brown leather flight jacket while shopping for Elaine’s birthday present in “The Deal” (Episode 2.09), I assumed that Kramer had seen fit to return Jerry’s original jacket to him, but comparing the jackets side by side reveals differences—specifically in the color, shoulder straps, and pocket flaps—that suggest Jerry picked up a replacement flight jacket.

A tale of two flight jackets: Kramer talks Jerry into giving him his older flight jacket (which we, the audience, never saw Jerry wear anyway). Six episodes later, Jerry seems to have supplemented his collection with another of these timeless dark brown leather jackets, worn only once on screen.

Though Seinfeld tends to excel at costume continuity, depicting realistic character wardrobes with many costume pieces appearing across all seasons of the series, neither the plot-driving suede jacket nor either of Jerry’s pair of brown leather flight jackets appear again after the second season, as Jerry would switch almost exclusively to a black leather flight jacket in regular rotation with his colorful series of bomber-style blouson jackets, including several in camel-hued suede.

How to Get the Look

Jerry Seinfeld on Seinfeld (Episode 2.03: “The Jacket”)

Find a jacket that makes you feel like Superman… but make sure you read the weather report before wearing it on a snowy day!

• Dark brown suede button-up jacket with shirt-style collar, flapped slanted hand pockets, plain cuffs, and buckle-tab sied adjusters
• White cotton shirt with point collar, front placket, button-through breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Red, tan, green, and blue “painted” silk tie
• Khaki cotton double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown leather belt with gold-finished single-prong buckle
• Dark brown suede cap-toe derby shoes
• Breitling Chronomat stainless steel chronograph watch with round black dial (and three white sub-registers) on steel Rouleaux cylindrical “bullet”-link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series, now streaming on Hulu though I understand it’s scheduled to move to Netflix (for American users) later in 2021.

The Quote

I had a leather jacket that got ruined. Now, why does moisture ruin leather? I don’t get this. Aren’t cows outside most of the time? I don’t understand it. When it’s raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, “Let us in, we’re all wearing leather.. Open the door! We’re gonna ruin the whole outfit here..” “Is it suede?” “I am suede, the whole thing is suede, I can’t have this cleaned. It’s all I got!”

The post The Seinfeld Suede Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

In recognition of POW/MIA Day, observed on the third Friday of September, let’s delve into one of the first major movies to shine a light on the POW experience.

William Holden as Staff Sergeant J.J. Sefton in Stalag 17 (1953)

Vitals

William Holden as J.J. Sefton, USAAF Staff Sergeant and prisoner of war

“Somewhere on the Danube”, December 1944

Film: Stalag 17
Release Date: May 29, 1953
Director: Billy Wilder
Wardrobe Credit: J. Allen Slone

Background

I don’t know about you, but it always makes me sore when I see those war pictures… all about flying leathernecks and submarine patrols and frogmen and guerrillas in the Philippines. What gets me is there never was a movie about POWs… about prisoners of war.

… and so Clarence Harvey Cook (Gil Stratton) begins his narration, setting the scene for the week leading up to Christmas 1944 when he and his fellow downed colleagues discovered a potential informant—er, a “dirty stinkin’ stoolie”—in their barracks.

After two airmen are shot trying to escape, suspicion eventually falls on J.J. Sefton, the cigarette-dealing but cigar-chomping staff sergeant whose cynicism has already rendered him unpopular with most of the Americans aside from Cookie, who serves as Sefton’s unofficial batman and describes him as “one of the most unforgettable ch-characters you’ve ever met.”

“He was a big-time operator… always hustling, always scrounging,” Cookie describes the enterprising Sefton, whose ventures range from rat races to distilling potato schnapps sold for two cigarettes a shot.

William Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Sefton, though Holden himself felt the award was mere compensation as the Academy had failed to recognize his performance in Sunset Blvd. three years earlier, commenting that the 1953 Oscar should have instead gone to either Burt Lancaster or Montgomery Clift from the year’s other major World War II drama, From Here to Eternity.

A decade before the experience was most outrageously lampooned weekly on Hogan’s Heroes, Billy Wilder brought his signature balance of dark comedy, high-stakes drama, and increasingly gripping tension to Stalag 17. Wilder and Edwin Blum adapted their screenplay from a stage play by Edmund Trzcinski, who had indeed been a WWII POW and cameos on screen as a cuckolded prisoner.

“Now you put 630 sergeants together… oh, mother, you’ve got yourself a situation,” Cookie narrates, explaining the dynamic at the eponymous Stalag 17D, a prison camp for enlisted Allied airmen—and, in the case of the Soviets, airwomen—ruled by the pompous commandant Colonel von Scherbach (Otto Preminger), who has implanted a spy among the men of barrack #4. Due to his independent nature and gift for wheeling-and-dealing, Sefton becomes forced to defend himself as the accusations pile up like the cartons of cigarettes under his bed:

There are two guys in this barracks that know I didn’t do it: me and the guy that did do it.

What’d He Wear?

Particularly insulating during the winter chill overtaking the stalag, Sgt. Sefton often wears sheepskin B-3 flight jacket, as do some of his fellow prisoners such as “head of security” Frank Price (Peter Graves), doomed escapee Manfredi (Michael Moore), and the late-arriving Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), who wears it over his matching sheepskin zip-sided breeches.

Sefton’s warm sheepskin B-3 keeps him considerably warmer than Cookie (Gil Stratton) in his lighter-weight field jacket.

Inspired by the Irvin flying jacket authorized by the British Royal Air Force, the heavy Type B-3 was standardized by the U.S. Army Air Corps in the early 1930s for high-altitude fliers requiring extra warmth in poorly insulated bomber aircraft, thus it arguably became the first American flight jacket one could call the “bomber jacket”.

Over its decade of production until it was discontinued in 1943, the B-3 varied slightly based on the contractor, but all followed a generally consistent design of a waist-length coat made of sheepskin shearling, the supple leather on the outside (occasionally reinforced with horsehide) with the piled fleece providing the warm lining throughout, extending beyond the edges of the sleeves and waist hem. These full-fitting coats were meant to be worn over layers of warm uniform gear, thus they lacked the trimmer fit and knitted cuffs and hem of lighter-wearing flight jackets like the A-2; instead a horsehide leather belted buckle-tab over a short vent on each side of the waist can be used to adjust the fit, as needed.

Sefton won’t lay off Lieutenant Dunbar, who had been clad in his own sheepskin B-3 coat just moments earlier.

Though the colors of their vegetable-tanned shells varied by manufacturer and era, the general trend among B-3 jackets evolved from russet in the early years to a darker seal brown by its wartime production. The jacket’s large collar presents the natural fleece pile, with two belted straps extending from the right side to latch the collar up around the throat if necessary; alternately, a set of snaps on the body of the coat can also secure the collar to the chest when worn open.

The jacket zips up the front with a round pull-tab, the fleece extending a few inches out from the right side of the zipper to ensure that the torso would be fully insulated should the wearer zip his coat up fully.

In lieu of traditional shoulder straps (epaulettes), a small square tab of napped horsehide is sewn over each shoulder, ostensibly for officers to pin their rank insignia. Pockets were another point of variation among B-3 jackets, and Sefton’s coat has a slanted-entry tool pocket above the right hip.

Both Price (Peter Graves) and Sefton wear B-3 coats, as opposed to Duke (Neville Brand) in his slapdash greatcoat and Hoffy (Richard Erdman) layered under his field jacket.

Unlike some of his barrack-mates, who wear little more than their undershirts or long johns under tattered field jackets—looking at you, Duke (Neville Brand), Harry (Harvey Lembeck), and Animal (Robert Strauss)—Sefton keeps his day-to-day appearance relatively neat in his wool shirt and trousers, perhaps a carryover from his one-time ambition to be a commissioned officer.

Winter uniforms issued to NCOs during World War II included brown woolen flannel shirts in olive drab no. 32 (OD-32) or olive drab no. 33 (OD-33), designated “Shirt, Flannel, O.D. Coat Style.” Sefton’s flannel shirting shows increasing pilling throughout, particularly after he’s beaten by his bunkmates. As he recuperates the next morning on Christmas Eve, we get a glimpse of a white tag reading “SERV…” affixed to the inside of the neckband.

With a structured fit echoing traditional work shirts, these evolved from the cosmetically similar M37 shirts but, beginning in 1941, boasted a convertible point collar that could be flattened when worn open-neck, sans necktie. These shirts have seven tonally coordinated plastic buttons up the front placket, barrel cuffs, and two chest pockets that each close with a single-button, mitred-corner flap, though Sefton frequently has one or both of these flaps unbuttoned and tucked into the pockets themselves. (In what I believe to be a series of subtle continuity errors, Sefton’s shirts alternate between the M37 and the convertible-collar evolution as well as between having single- and double-button cuffs.)

Even when injured from his beating, Sefton commands relative authority in his buttoned-up, tucked-in shirt when compared to some of his more unkempt bunkmates.

Promotional photo of Don Taylor and William Holden in Stalag 17, depicting Sefton’s B-3 jacket, A-10 gloves, and A-6 boots.

Sefton wears the standard flat front trousers that comprised the USAAF’s winter uniform, made of OD-33 wool serge. These button-fly trousers have jetted back pockets, on-seam side pockets, and a set-in coin pocket accessed by a slit straight under the belt line between the first two belt loops on the right side. The trousers are held up by a military-style khaki webbed cotton belt with a gold-finished box-framed buckle and matching metal tip.

Sefton tucks his trousers’ plain-hemmed bottoms bottoms into his hefty Type A-6 winter flying boots. Like his coat, the boots are constructed from supple shearling leather uppers veg-dyed to a dark seal-brown with the piled wool fleece lining the insides, originally intended to insulate the wearer’s feet at high bomber altitudes, though they were also likely appreciated for winter nights in a drafty POW barracks along the Danube… as were the olive worsted wool crew socks he is seen wearing under them.

The lowers are a weather-resistant black or brown rubber, extending over the toes. A brass zipper extends from the center of each shaft down the top of each boot to the top of the rubber toes. (A later improved version, the Type A-6A, were reinforced with two buckled straps over the instep and around the shaft, though Sefton’s earlier Type A-6 boots clearly lack these straps.)

The silent erstwhile law student Joey (Robinson Stone) oversees the action. Note the difference between Sefton’s convertible-collar shirt here and the more structured point collar of the M37 shirt seen in other shots.

Sefton frequently pulls on his dark seal-brown leather three-point gloves, which appear to be the wool-lined A-10 flying gloves that were standardized by the U.S. military in July 1938.

Sefton’s cap reinforces the USAAF’s faith in sheepskin as he wears the Type B-2 flying hat, made from a seal-brown sheepskin shearling that echoes his coat and boots. This style had been introduced for American air crews in 1939, two years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II.

With its long and stiff leather peak, folding ear flaps, and piled fur lining, the flying hat resembles some civilian hunting caps. The four-piece crown consists of two wide strips of sheepskin, supported by an additional strip around each side that are sewn together in the back.

Sefton makes his introduction clad in a crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt, likely made in a light drab-hued cotton. Outside his undershirt—and even occasionally outside his flannel button-up shirt—Sefton wears what Cookie refers to as “our dog tags and our pans”, a ball-chain necklace from which each man wears both his round Army-issued identification disc as well as a rectangular zinc plate provided by the Germans that includes the camp name and prisoner number; Lt. Dunbar is asked to recall his when the SS arrives to collect him from Barrack #4.

Sefton’s fellow airmen aren’t so wild about his pessimistic attitude on the evening of Manfredi and Johnson’s attempted breakout.

Sefton’s foot locker “department store” is seen to contain dozens of wristwatches of all varieties, but the sergeant’s day-to-day watch appears to be a steel field watch he had likely been issued by USAAF. He straps the tan leather bracelet to wear the watch on the inside of his wrist, a military-informed practice that many state prevents an enemy from catching the glare of a metal watch case.

When we do catch sight of the watch itself, the round dial appears to be light-colored, ruling out the classic mil-spec A-11 field watch though it may still be one of the pre-1942 pieces that had a white dial. (You can read more about the A-11 in Oren Hartov’s 2018 article for Worn & Wound.)

Sefton checks to see how much time he and Dunbar have before attempting their own great escape.

In a flashback to the summer of 1943, when Sefton is selling schnapps and the Animal is crying about Betty Grable’s recent marriage to Harry James, we briefly see Sefton wearing a jacket inspired by the A-2, a less-insulated leather flight jacket that would be arguably better suited for the summer than his sheepskin B-3.

Both Sefton and Sgt. Bagradian (Jay Lawrence) wear these jackets, styled with the A-2’s usual snap-down collar, shoulder straps (epaulettes), knit cuffs, and knit hems, though the handwarmer pockets of their jackets diverge from the flapped lower pockets more commonly found on officially issued A-2 jackets.

“What’d you expect for two cigarettes, eight-year-old bottled in bond? All the house guarantees is you don’t go blind.”

For William Holden’s brief cameo in the World War II-themed adventure comedy Escape to Athena (1979), the actor’s cigar and presence in German custody suggested that he was once again slipping into Sgt. Sefton’s woolen shirt, this time presented in full color that still can’t match the vibrancy of Elliott Gould’s mustard sweater.

If taken seriously (which it should not be), Escape to Athena suggests that Sefton ended up recaptured as Charlie Dane (Elliott Gould) groans: “You’re still here?”

How to Get the Look

William Holden as Staff Sergeant J.J. Sefton in Stalag 17 (1953)

With fall around the corner and winter just behind it, a sheepskin coat like J.J. Sefton’s B-3 flight jacket could be your salvation in cooler weather, particularly when paired with warm layers like a woolen utility shirt, fleece-lined boots, and a leather cap with fleece-lined flaps.

• Seal-brown sheepskin shearling B-3 flight jacket with fleece lining, wide collar with two belted throat latch straps and chest snaps, right-side tool pocket, and belted buckle-tab waist adjusters
• Olive-brown (OD-32) wool flannel service shirt with convertible point collar, two chest pockets (with mitred-corner single-button flaps), front placket, and 1-button cuffs
• Olive-brown (OD-33) wool serge flat front service trousers with belt loops, on-seam side pockets, jetted right-side coin pocket, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Seal-brown sheepskin shearling Type A-6 winter flying boots with fleece lining, zip-front fastening, and rubber outsoles/toes
• Olive worsted wool socks
• Light olive drab cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• Dog tags
• Steel military-style field watch with round white dial on tan leather strap
• Seal-brown leather three-point A-10 flying gloves with ribbed-knit wrists and wool lining
• Seal-brown sheepskin B-2 flying cap with fleece-lined ear flaps

You obviously know how to Google sheepskin flight jackets or B-3 replicas, but I thought it would be helpful to provide a brief guide of currently available B-3 jackets that best reflect the spirit and style of the one William Holden wore in Stalag 17, which means: buckle-tab side adjusters, tool pocket, and—if possible—the rank-ready shoulder squares:

• Aero Leathers USAAF Type B-3 Contract No. 42-22899-P ($£800.00, Aero Leathers)
• Aviation Leathercraft USAAF B3 Flying Jacket (£695.00, Aviation Leathercraft)
• Cockpit USA 1941 Pearl Harbor B-3 Bomber Jacket Z213374 ($1,430.00, Cockpit USA)
• Eastman .50 CAL B-3 (£1,299.99, Eastman Leather Clothing)

All prices and availability as of September 2021.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let’s pretend we never met before.

The post William Holden in Stalag 17 appeared first on BAMF Style.

Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy (1990)

Vitals

Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy, square-jawed detective

“Homeville”, December 1938

Film: Dick Tracy
Release Date: June 15, 1990
Director: Warren Beatty
Costume Designer: Milena Canonero

Background

Ninety years ago today on Sunday, October 4, 1931, Chester Gould’s comic strip Dick Tracy premiered in the Detroit Mirror, introducing the world—or at least Detroit—to the determined detective in his trademark yellow coat.

Despite the strip’s longevity and popularity, attempts to adapt it for the screen never came into fruition for nearly six decades until the blockbusting success of Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 proved to studios there a profitable market for comic book adaptations. Bringing Dick Tracy to Hollywood became a passion project for Warren Beatty, who starred as the title character as well as producing, directing, and attracting a cavalcade of stars to portray the colorful—and colorfully dressed—figures of the mysterious Chicago-like city where Tracy faced off against gangsters and gun molls.

The resulting film remains one of the most confidently ambitious yet curious comic adaptations to date, also considerably violent given its PG rating, a reflection of the surprisingly violent strip itself.

An early illustration of the original Dick Tracy, dressed in his typical yellow fedora and overcoat as well as the red-and-black striped tie that would be recreated for the 1991 movie. (Source: Etsy)

Even if some have criticized the measures to which he’s gone to retain the rights to all Dick Tracy-related content—including a curiously conceived in-character special with Leonard Maltin in 2008—Beatty clearly has a passion for the character and presenting his world in a manner authentic to the original comics, including the film’s adherence to a bright but limited color scheme that ultimately creates a uniquely surreal experience for the viewer. As Emily VanDerWerff wrote in her excellent Vox retrospective for the film’s 25th anniversary:

[Beatty] collaborated with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (winner of three Oscars for other films and a nomination for this film) and his top-notch design team to create a world that existed primarily in the brightly hued splashes of the Sunday paper’s comics page.

This is a world swathed in red and green, in purple and yellow — a look that newspaper publishers adopted in order to print color as cheaply as possible. But Beatty went way, way over-budget trying to capture the lush look of Chester Gould’s old comic strips.

Every single scene is bathed in luminescent tints, and the film frequently pauses to take in the colorful grandeur of its fictional universe. If there’s one reason to revisit Dick Tracy today, it’s that the movie’s visuals are wholly different from those of any comics-based movie of today.

What’d He Wear?

Given Beatty’s obvious passion for the finished film to resemble the limited colors of the original comics, costume designer Milena Canonero brilliantly approached the assignment to ensure that each character—from Dick Tracy himself to the background extras—fulfilled their role in fitting into the vivid tapestry, receiving an Academy Award nomination for her unparalleled work. Unlike Batman, where the Joker’s loud, purple-hued attire distinguished him as the quintessential comic-book villain against the backdrop of gritty Gotham City, everyone in Tracyville completes the intended palette of a vivid world that had once only existed in cheaply printed newspaper comics.

Under his memorably bold coat and hat, Tracy wears a surprisingly conservative suit, shirt, and tie, again all pulled straight from the decades of Gould’s comic strip. After his clothes are ostensibly ruined by Big Boy’s “bath”, Tracy asks his fellow detectives to launder them before changing into… an identical suit, shirt, and tie.

The pitch-black wool suit has a double-breasted jacket with broad shoulders and wide, full-bellied peak lapels that were characteristic of the era’s tailoring. The lapels elegantly sweep across Tracy’s torso to the top of the 6×2-button configuration, and he typically wears both of the functioning buttons fastened. The ventless jacket also has three-button cuffs, a welted breast pocket, and jetted hip pockets.

While black business suits are rarely advised in real life outside of funerals, evening events, and well-dressed assassinations, there’s little of Dick Tracy that attempts to reflect realistic sartorial practices, instead leaning heavily and joyfully into the limited palette of the “golden age” of newspaper comics. The illustrated Dick Tracy was always portrayed wearing black suits which—with his conservative white shirt and red striped tie—project the image of a serious man who takes his serious work very seriously, particularly when opposed to the brightly dressed gangsters he has vowed to remove from his city.

Tracy wears white cotton shirts styled with a sharp point collar reflecting the fashions of the period. The shirt has a plain (“French placket”) front and barrel cuffs that fasten with a single button on the cuff and an additional gauntlet button over each wrist. His rich scarlet tie is patterned with “downhill”-direction black stripes that alternate between narrow stripes and slightly wider bar stripes. The length is also consistent with neckwear of the late ’30s, with a shorter blade that corresponds to a higher trouser rise and also the philosophy that—between closed jackets and waistcoats—the bottom of most gents’ ties wouldn’t be seen anyway.

While it’s likely that his jacket and waistcoat are all pieces from a matching three-piece suit, Tracy appears to only appear one or the other at a time as I was never able to glimpse the waistcoat under the jacket.

The single-breasted waistcoat—or “vest” to us Yanks—has a five-button front that Tracy almost always wears unbuttoned, aside from when he’s cooling his heels in a jail cell. (Interestingly, he had been wearing his double-breasted jacket when he was arrested; perhaps his fellow officers were kind enough to bring his waistcoat.) The waistcoat also has four welted pockets and a strap across the lower back to adjust the fit.

Tracy’s down to his shirt sleeves and waistcoat when he’s caught with Breathless Mahoney (Madonna).

Tracy’s pleated trousers have belt loops, which he wears with a black—or very dark brown—woven leather belt that closes through a gold-toned squared single-prong buckle. The trousers have side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Though suspenders (braces) are recommended for three-piece suits—and we do occasionally see Tracy wearing black suspenders—a belt can provide better retention for a shoulder holster, which is Tracy’s preferred rig for concealing his sidearm. He holsters his .32-caliber Colt pistol in a green holster under his left arm, suspended over his shoulders via an adjustable black leather strap system.

Tracy holsters his .32-caliber Colt. Note that he doesn’t appear to be wearing his waistcoat under his double-breasted suit jacket, one of the few glimpses we get of the open jacket.

The color of Dick Tracy’s hat seemed to vary in the original comics, with some early illustrations featuring green and orange hats, though it appears that our heroic detective had settled on a yellow fedora to coordinate with his coat by the 1950s.

Beatty’s Tracy tops his look with a yellow self-edged, snap-brim fedora, the crown proudly pinched like the prow of a triumphant ship above the black grosgrain band. The recognizable hat has been auctioned by Bonhams—and also featured at The Golden Closet and iCollector—with the listing describing its size as 7 5/8 and the inside stamped: “Golden Coach / by Dobbs / Genuine Fur Felt.”

According to DelMonico Hatter and Fashionable Hats, Dobbs Hats had originated in New York City in 1908, producing reputable men’s headgear throughout the 20th century.

Tracy’s girlfriend, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly) dresses in the same bold red and black as his tie… suggesting that, even under all the layers of yellow, his heart must truly belong to her.

Arguably the pièce de résistance of Dick Tracy’s massive overcoat, a yellow woolen twill double-breasted coat provided by Hollywood’s venerable Western Costume Company, according to the tag described in the Bonhams auction listing that also provided its measurements of a 42″ chest and 18″ from shoulder to shoulder.

So why yellow? The most obvious answer would be that it was part of the successful attempt to reflect the look of the comics… and Gould had likely drawn his Tracy in a yellow coat to reflect the more common khaki or tan coat that would have required a more expensive ink to accurately portray within his strip.

Tracy’s screen-worn yellow coat has wide peak lapels with swelled edges and a buttonhole through each. The shoulders are wide and padded and the excessively long coat extends below Beatty’s knees, adding to the image of Tracy’s coat as his heroic cape. Like the double-breasted suit jacket under it, the coat has a 6×2-button configuration, reinforced by a full belt rigged with D-rings like a classic military trench coat. Also cribbed from trench coat stylings are the fully belted cuffs to adjust the tightness of each set-in sleeve over the wrists. The coat also has flapped patch pockets over the hips and a single vent.

Tracy wears black leather cap-toe oxford shoes with black socks, the most reasonable combination that good taste dictate be worn with a black suit.

Only Dick Tracy could so nimbly scale the wall in that long, heavy coat.

Perhaps one of the most famous pieces of Dick Tracy’s habit would be his two-way wrist radio, the innovative gadget that predated the Apple Watch by nearly 70 years! With input from wireless innovator Al Gross, Gould introduced Tracy’s wrist radio in the comic strip that ran on Sunday, January 13, 1946, an in-universe invention by industrialist Diet Smith’s son Brilliant that was eventually upgraded to a wrist TV in 1964. Martin Cooper, the engineer who pioneered the handheld mobile phone while working for Motorola in the 1970s, later cited Dick Tracy as the inspiration for his world-changing technology.

Even though Dick Tracy is set leading up to New Year’s Eve 1938, the movie retcons Tracy’s adoption of the watch by featuring the invention nearly seven years before Gould himself had added it. (Of course, it would be almost unthinkable to bring Dick Tracy to the big screen without it!)

The screen-worn wrist radio, which was among the other items from the film auctioned by Bonhams, has a rectangular 1¾”-long stainless steel case with a crown coordinating to the flattened tonneau-shaped pearlized analog dial with its black Arabic numeral hour markers and an additional pusher that coordinates to the gilt metal mesh-covered portion that’s evidently both speaker and microphone for the two-way radio capabilities. Tracy straps it to his left wrist on a black crocodile leather strap that closes through a gold-toned single-prong buckle.

Sure, it may not have any apps, but it solves crime… can your Apple Watch do that?

The Guns

Dick Tracy may be outfitted with the latest in mid-century wireless technology, but his chosen sidearm would have been more than a generation old at the time of the movie’s setting. Despite its age though, the ergonomic design of the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless as well as the semi-automatic pistol’s more modern connotations vs. the traditional police revolver make the weapon an appropriately sleek choice for the detective to slip into his shoulder holster.

EDC, Dick Tracy-style.

The almost-perfectly named weapon was introduced by Colt in 1903, popular for its covered hammer and compact size that allow it to be more easily carried in one’s pocket without fear of it snagging on clothing. The “Hammerless” part of the designation refers more to the fact that the rear of the slide completely shrouds the hammer; unlike contemporary semi-automatics like the 1911, there was no way to de-cock an engaged hammer unless the pistol was fired. Thus, Colt designed the Model 1903 with a relative abundance of safety mechanisms, from a manually engaged thumb safety to a “lemon squeezer” grip safety lifted from earlier Smith & Wesson revolvers. Later pistols also incorporated an additional safety mechanism that wouldn’t fire if the magazine wasn’t firmly in place.

Colt offered its Pocket Hammerless pistol in two of the most common smaller calibers of the day, .32 ACP and .380 ACP; pistols chambered for the latter were technically designated the “Model 1908” and had a seven-round magazine capacity as opposed to the eight-round magazines of the .32-caliber models.

Almost immediately popular with civilians who sought pocket-ready personal protection in a world that was advancing from the holstered six-shooters of the old west, the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless eventually proved to be popular on all sides of the law. Lawmen like the aging Bill Tilghman were known to appreciate their easily concealed reliability while criminal desperadoes like John Dillinger and Clyde Barrow—whom Warren Beatty had famously portrayed a quarter-century earlier—employed them as handy pocket pistols for their vast arsenals. (Beatty would also use one while playing another famous gangster in the extended version of Bugsy the following year.)

Waking up in an unfamiliar room next to a corpse with your freshly fired gat in your hand… has there ever been a more noirish situation?

Of course, eight shots from a .32-caliber pistol would hardly be enough when taking on a dangerous villain like “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino), so Dick Tracy also utilizes the classic Thompson submachine gun for heavier-duty work.

The “Tommy gun” had been developed in response to infantry needs recognized during World War I, though its extended development under the supervision of Brigadier General John T. Thompson meant that first combat his portable, blowback-operated .45-caliber submachine gun would prominently encounter was the famous Beer Wars across big cities in Prohibition-era America. However, the Thompson had also proven its military value during Irish Civil War battles of the early 1920s, and it was formally authorized for service by American police and military forces in the decades to follow.

The first major produced version of the Thompson was the M1921A, which boasted the recognizable configuration of the vertical foregrip, drum magazine, and full stock. Five years later, the addition of a Cutts compensator muzzle brake resulted in the M1921AC that has become almost universally recognizable as the “Chicago Typewriter” favored by gangsters of the roaring ’20s.

Dick Tracy arms himself with a Thompson in the classic configuration with the Cutts compensator, vertical foregrip, and 50-round drum magazine as he battles Big Boy Caprice’s gangsters on New Year’s Eve.

As usage of the Thompson increased among military and police forces, its development skewed toward field-ready requirements, such as a simplified horizontal foregrip and box magazines that more reliably fed its .45 ACP rounds. By World War II, the profile and reputation of the Thompson had evolved from gangland massacres to battlefield infantry.

How to Get the Look

Dick Tracy may be the only person in his world to wear a relatively “normal”-colored suit, but he makes up for it with a bright yellow fedora and overcoat that present like a superhero’s cape over his black double-breasted suit. While the total image would be best reserved for cosplay or Halloween parties, the base outfit with his timeless tailoring and strong colors can continue to provide inspiration more than 90 years after Chester Gould first introduced us to the determined detective.

Warren Beatty and Glenne Headly in Dick Tracy (1990)

• Black wool suit:
  • Double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with full-bellied peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with four welted pockets and adjustable back strap
  • Pleated high-rise trousers with belt loops, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton shirt with point collar, plain “French placket” front, and button cuffs
• Scarlet-red silk tie with “downhill”-direction black stripes of alternating widths
• Dark woven leather belt with gold-toned square single-prong buckle
• Green leather shoulder holster with black leather straps
• Black leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black socks
• Yellow fur felt self-edged fedora with black grosgrain band
• Yellow woolen twill double-breasted 6×2-button overcoat with swelled-edge peak lapels, flapped patch hip pockets, belted cuffs, full belt (with D-rings), and single vent
• Stainless steel “wrist radio” with small analog dial and gilt-mesh two-way radio

The yellow coat and hat would almost immediately launch any attempts to recreate Dick Tracy’s costume into the realm of cosplay, but you can more subtly incorporate Tracy’s style with Magnoli Clothiers’ faithful replica of what they market as the “Tracy Tie”.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ryan O’Neal as Oliver Barrett IV in Love Story (1970)

Vitals

Ryan O’Neal as Oliver Barrett IV, newlywed Harvard graduate

Boston, Fall to Winter 1968

Film: Love Story
Release Date: December 16, 1970
Director: Arthur Hiller
Costume Design: Alice Manougian Martin & Pearl Somner

Background

If all goes to plan, I’ll be getting married exactly one year from today so it felt appropriate to revisit some of the fall-friendly fashions from one of the most famous—or infamous, if you’re so inclined—romance movies of all time, Love Story.

Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw star as the Ivy League lovers Oliver and Jenny who, once she overcomes her distaste for his upper-class roots (drink every time she calls him “preppy”), defy his blue-blood father’s wishes and get married, beginning their humble lives together in a Boston apartment following his graduation.

Oliver remains defiantly bitter following his father’s rejection of Jenny, cutting off all contact. After receiving an invitation to his estranged father’s 60th birthday party, Oliver refuses to even respond with their regrets, resulting in his and Jenny’s first major argument. She runs from the apartment, sending Oliver on an increasingly desperate search from local shops to music classes, until he returns home that night to find her waiting on their stoop.

Regretting his behavior, Oliver offers his apologies, to which Jenny responds by hitting him with one of the most criticized lines in movie history:

Love means never having to say you’re sorry.

The laughable line was almost universally dismissed by critics and audiences, even as the latter sobbed at the film’s famous ending, with MacGraw later clarifying that she doesn’t subscribe to the ridiculous credo and O’Neal mocking it two years later in Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball comedy tribute What’s Up Doc?, when Barbra Streisand repeats it to him and he responds with “that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

What’d He Wear?

On Valentine’s Day this year, I focused on the shearling car coat that Oliver had worn around campus. As we now enter the transitional season, I wanted to focus on his other sheepskin outerwear, styled like a flight jacket.

Taking cues from the Brits’ Irvin flying jacket and the B-3 worn by American pilots, Oliver’s sheepskin jacket has a dark seal brown leather shell, broken in to a degree of considerable softness that shows in the patina. The inside “lining” is the piled fleece side of the sheepskin, colored a natural shade of beige that presents on the collar and cuffs, though it appears he had to roll back the end of each set-in sleeve to show the latter.

The jacket has a gilt-toned brass zipper up the front with a brown leather pull tab “tail”, with an extended semi-tab behind the zipper that tapers away at mid-chest. There are silver buckle-tab adjusters on each side of the waist hem. Oliver’s jacket lacks the double throat latch straps on mil-spec jackets, and the B-3’s slanted hand pockets are replaced by button-through flapped patch pockets on each hips, similar to those on the A-2.

Update! Thanks to a comment from BAMF Style reader Jim Welty, we know that these details are consistent with the M-445A and ANJ-4 flight jackets that were authorized by the U.S. Navy and USAAF, respectively, to replace the B-3 for American aviators during World War II.

Oliver begins the search for Jenny at all of her favorite dry cleaners.

After his graduation, Oliver continues wearing Ivy staples like oxford-cloth button-down (OCBD) shirts under raglan-sleeve sweaters.

For this sequence, he doubles down on the shades of yellow, layering a mustard Shetland wool sweater over a light yellow OCBD that he initially leaves with the collar leaves unbuttoned and flat over the top of the sweater, though he appears to have them properly fastened and tucked under the sweater’s widely ribbed crew-neck by the time he runs out looking for Jenny. The shirt also has barrel cuffs that he keeps buttoned, extended out from under the long and widely ribbed cuffs of his prone-to-pilling Shetland.

Oliver, hard at work before disaster strikes in the form of an invitation to his father’s 60th birthday party.

Oliver’s dark indigo-washed denim jeans are a fashionable alternative to the classic cuts offered by The Big Three (Lee, Levi’s, Wrangler), inspired by classic Navy dungarees with their patch-style front and back pockets and flared bottoms that fall with a quarter break over the backs of his burgundy leather loafers, which appear to be worn with darker burgundy socks.

These two better not even consider apologizing to each other.

Months after their first major fight resolves with both agreeing to the futility of apologies, Oliver has taken side work to earn some extra winter bucks by selling Christmas trees while Jenny works with a local church youth choir, admonishing one of the kids “Paul, don’t bullshit me, you were showing off.”

Oliver presses his sheepskin flight jacket into service for his chilly outdoor work as well as dark brown knitted wool gloves and a knit beanie cap, horizontally block-striped in Harvard’s signature crimson-and-white palette and finished with a white pom atop the crown.

Happy holidays, Oliver.

Oliver appears to be wearing the same dark blue dunagree-style jeans as earlier, but he’s appropriately swapped out his loafers for a pair of suede boots. With their snuff brown suede derby-laced uppers and dark crepe soles, the boots resemble the Hutton’s Original Playboy boots that Steve McQueen famously wore on- and off-screen throughout the ’60s.

Though likely chosen for its warmth for hours spent doling out pines during a New England winter, Oliver’s heavy red plaid flannel shirt reflects the spirit of the holiday season. The long-sleeved shirt is patterned in a black, white, and yellow tartan plaid with large white plastic four-hole buttons up the front and through the rounded flaps on the two chest pockets. He wears the point collar unbuttoned at the neck, showing the top of his white cotton crew-neck undershirt.

How to Get the Look

Ryan O’Neal as Oliver Barrett IV in Love Story (1970)

Oliver Barrett IV dresses down in hard-wearing Ivy staples, including his tried-and-true Shetland-over-OCBD combo and loafers, anchored here by military-influenced fashions like his sheepskin flight jacket and naval dungarees.

• Seal brown sheepskin M-445A/ANJ-4 flight jacket with shearling fleece collar and lining, brass zip-front, flapped patch hip pockets, and silver buckle-tab side adjusters
• Yellow oxford cotton button-down shirt
• Mustard yellow Shetland wool crew-neck raglan-sleeve sweater
• Dark indigo blue denim patch-pocket jeans
• Burgundy leather loafers
• Dark burgundy socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Someday, we’re going to look back on these days…

The post Love Story: Ryan O’Neal’s Sheepskin Flight Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey in Death Wish (1974)

Vitals

Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey, vigilante family man

New York City, Winter 1974

Film: Death Wish
Release Date: July 24, 1974
Director: Michael Winner
Costume Designer: Joseph G. Aulisi

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Charles Bronson, one of the most legendary cinematic ass-kickers perhaps best known for his starring role as family man-turned-street vigilante Paul Kersey in the 1974 revenge thriller Death Wish.

Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky into a Lithuanian-American family on November 3, 1921 in western Pennsylvania coal country, where he worked in the mines until enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. During his service, Buchinsky flew 25 missions in the Pacific theater and earned a Purple Heart for wounds sustained. Buchinsky’s history working in coal mines and serving in the war made him a bona fide tough guy when he arrived in Hollywood, and thus the newly rechristened Charles Bronson became a familiar face in westerns (The Magnificent Seven and Once Upon a Time in the West) and war movies (Never So Few, The Great Escape, and The Dirty Dozen).

By the early ’70s, Bronson had emerged as a popular leading man in action thrillers when his frequent collaborator, director Michael Winner, approached him with a script about a man who kills muggers following a brutal attack on his wife and daughter. “I’d like to do that,” Bronson replied to Winner. “The film?” “No… shoot muggers.”

What’d He Wear?

Until it’s ruined when he’s stabbed by one of his potential targets, Paul regularly wears a knee-length herringbone coat for stalking the streets and subways of the Big Apple as he baits the city’s various lowlifes into attacking him and finding a fatal surprise.

If I wanted to over-analyze it, I could say Paul Kersey’s reversible coat is symbolic of how the seemingly unassuming architect can rapidly turn the tables on the predators that become his prey… but it’s more likely that the costume designer chose Paul’s coat for its everyday practicality.

Paul always wears the coat with the beige-and-brown herringbone woolen side out, though it is actually a reversible coat with the alternating side faced in a light khaki gabardine that could be pressed into service as a raincoat. These double-duty coats were common through the mid-20th century, particularly in urban areas like New York City where many denizens had limited storage areas in their apartments for multiple coats (though the affluent Paul, with his spacious apartment, doesn’t seem to have that issue.)

Raglan sleeves allow the coat to more comfortably fit over a tailored jacket like the tweed that Paul regularly wears under it, as well as offering a greater range of movement to draw his .32 when facing a team of muggers. The sleeves end with plain cuffs, which prevents any straps or tabs from snagging when worn inside-out.

Paul’s coat has a long single vent, side pockets with slanted welt entries, and a three-button covered fly front. A closer look at the large dark brown buttons shows a buttonhole behind them, indicative of a reversible coat as these buttonholes would accommodate the three buttons on the other side when the coat is worn inside-out.

The collar on the broad, pointed ulster-style lapels matches the herringbone shell, while the rest of the lapels show the solid-shaded gabardine reverse side. Each lapel has a buttonhole, with the left buttonhole fastened with a smaller button that would presumably close the top of the coat when worn reversed.

Upon returning from Tucson to find that his sharpshooting pal Ames has gifted him a nickel-plated Colt revolver, Paul hits the streets in what may be a mugger-baiting walk or just an evening stroll celebrating his new sense of pistol-packing freedom, but Paul’s lone perambulations capture the attention of a violent young man with a gun of his own, who soon ends up dead after messing with the wrong New Yorker. The act itself repels Paul, who collapses to the floor and vomits immediately upon his return home.

It’s not long before Paul comes to terms with—and, in fact, embraces—his new vigilante vocation, adopting what becomes his de facto mugger-killin’ uniform of his reversible herringbone coat layered over a tweed sport jacket, brown trousers, brown shoes, and a dark brown woolen scarf with fringed ends.

Paul reels after his first kill.

The only time Paul wears the coat without murder on his mind is during a daytime trip to the sanitarium with his son-in-law Jack (Steven Keats), visiting his daughter Carol (Kathleen Tolan) after she survived the traumatizing attack that killed her mother and inspired Paul’s rampage.

Paul foregoes the scarf this time, wearing a jaunty violet shirt and a tonally coordinated periwinkle-and-purple diamond-woven silk tie. His russet-brown trousers and leather cap-toe derbies are variations of the darker trousers and shoes he wears during his evening kills, and he layers the coat over the same light taupe tweed sport jacket.

Paul and his son-in-law Jack during a sorrowful visit to his daughter.

This sports coat is always the same tweed jacket, woven in a small-scaled herringbone that presents as a light taupe-brown. We rarely see the jacket worn on its own, as it’s not the same gray tweed sports coat he had worn in Arizona, but we can discern that it has notch lapels, patch pockets, and three front buttons.

For the notable subway scene that would eerily foreshadow the infamous Bernie Goetz incident a decade later, Paul dresses up his usual look with a dark brown polyester tie detailed with white polka dots arranged in double “downhill”-directional sets, perhaps resembling an airport runway at night or—more on brand with Death Wish‘s themes—neatly arranged rows of bullet holes.

The double-killing of the two subway muggers—including one that I would have sworn was Frank Zappa—escalates Paul’s vigilantism to international news, also escalating his ambition as he attracts three muggers at once in an isolated subway platform. It turns out to be one too many, and Paul gets wounded in the attack that leaves his vigilante “uniform” torn and bloodied.

When her returns home to peel off the bloody layers, we see more of the tan poplin shirt he’d worn for most of these sequences, detailed with a then-fashionable long point collar, front placket, button cuffs, and a breast pocket covered with a pointed button-through flap.

When Paul wears this coat, he always wears trousers and shoes in shades of brown. The flat front trousers, with self-suspended waistbands and plain-hemmed bottoms, range between a russet shade during the day and a darker chocolate tone by night.

His derby shoes also range from the lighter English tan leather uppers he wore during the daytime sanitarium visit to a darker burgundy-adjacent brown at night.

Predating the era when action heroes’ wristwatches are almost a supporting star, Paul Kersey’s wristwatch falls under the radar—or his shirt cuffs—as much as his own reserved attire.  (That said, Bronson and director Michael Winner’s previous collaboration, The Mechanic, does give us a nice close-up of the non-date Rolex Submariner worn by Bronson’s character.)

Paul wears a plain stainless steel watch with a round silver dial, secured around his left wrist on a flat steel rice-grain bracelet with a single-prong buckle.

Paul keeps a watchful eye on the subway muggers.

The Gun

Paul returns to New York to find his “going-away present” from Ames, a nickel-plated Colt Police Positive revolver with pearl grips. Despite its four-inch barrel consistent with most police service revolvers, the smaller-framed .32-caliber double-action revolver looks surprisingly undersized in Charles Bronson’s hand, given that the Death Wish series would later find him wielding larger weapons ranging from the massive .475 Wildey Magnum to the rocket launcher that would both appear in Death Wish III.

Viewers may have expected a larger weapon like Dirty Harry’s famous .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver in a movie so centered around vigilante justice, but Paul Kersey has neither Harry Callahan’s badge nor professional experience, so it’s likely more realistic that his sidearm would be the lighter-caliber and more easily concealed Police Positive.

Paul pulls his Colt Police Positive.

Colt introduced the Police Positive in 1907, its name reflective of the “positive lock” internal hammer block safety that remained consistent with the manufacturer’s continued innovations as double-action revolvers with swing-out cylinders continued to supersede the more old-fashioned revolvers. The first run of Police Positives were chambered for smaller calibers like .32 Long Colt, followed by the Police Positive Special variant in 1908 with a stronger frame that could handle more powerful loads like the .38 Special.

How to Get the Look

Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey in Death Wish (1974)

Brown clothing was popular in every era, though it’s commonly associated with ’70s clothing and design. Paul Kersey incorporates varying shades into his winter-appropriate layers that give him the quintessential “gray man” advantage as muggers may take the unassuming businessman as an easy mark… and not their worst nightmare.

• Beige-and-brown herringbone woolen tweed reversible raglan coat with ulster-style collar, three-button single-breasted front, slanted hand pockets, and khaki gabardine reversible side
• Light taupe-brown herringbone woolen tweed single-breasted 3-button sport jacket with notch lapels and patch pockets
• Tan poplin shirt with long point collar, front placket, flapped breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Brown woven polyester tie with diagonal double rows of white polka-dots
• Dark brown flat front self-suspended trousers with plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown leather derby shoes
• Dark brown woolen scarf with fringed ends
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round silver dial on steel “rice grain” bracelet

Well-made reversible coats are still offered by high-end outfitters today, including:

• Brooks Brothers Reversible Gabardine-Herringbone Twill Trench Coat (Brooks Brothers, $499)
• Chrysalis Runcorn Reversible Raincoat – Tan/Gold Herringbone with Window (O’Connell’s, $1,295)
• J. Press Tan Grey Herringbone Reversible Coat (J. Press, $1,495)
• Maison Margiela Reversible Herringbone Wool Rain Jacket (Grailed, $1,400)

All prices and availability updated as of October 29, 2021.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Death Wish: Charles Bronson’s Reversible Herringbone Coat appeared first on BAMF Style.

Dennis Haysbert as Raymond Deagan in Far From Heaven (2002)

Vitals

Dennis Haysbert as Raymond Deagan, affable gardener and widowed father

Suburban Connecticut, Fall 1957 into Winter 1958

Film: Far From Heaven
Release Date: November 8, 2002
Director: Todd Haynes
Costume Designer: Sandy Powell

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Todd Haynes’ 1950s-set Far From Heaven paid homage to Douglas Sirk’s visually stunning mid-century melodramas like All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, and Written on the Wind, addressing themes of love, class, and race, often against stunningly idyllic autumnal backdrops that belie the intense personal dramas beyond those white picket fences and manicured lawns.

After years of semi-satisfied suburban life, well-to-do housewife Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) finds herself in a maelstrom of conflict after discovering her husband’s homosexuality as well as her own feelings for Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), the son of her family’s late gardener whose race has her “friends” and neighbors clutching their proverbial pearls in reaction to the developing relationship between the two.

What’d He Wear?

The 1950s saw an increase in men dressed “down” in sportswear and workwear, even when not actively engaged in either. As a gardener, Raymond has reason to be frequently clad in his rugged work clothes, though his plaid zip-up jacket, flannel shirt, and coordinated trousers would be a relatively dressy casual outfit for many today.

Cathy’s friends’ whisperings have led to her insisting that they end their association despite the fact that he’s “been so very kind” to her; they may be passing under a marquee for the World War II drama The Bold and the Brave playing at the local theater, but she doesn’t have the fortitude to be either bold or brave against the town’s bigoted reaction. Earlier in the fall, Raymond had dressed in colorful primary colors that echoed the bright leaves around them but now—with their attempted relationship falling apart and the leaves having fallen from the trees—much of the color has been sapped from his clothing as he pulls together an outfit consisting mostly of earthy shades from olive to ochre.

Though not as vivid as his earlier outerwear like that mustard plaid coat, Raymond’s hunting jacket through these scenes is still an attractive example of where form effectively met function in mid-century workwear, driven by the quality garments produced by outdoor outfitters companies like Pendleton Woolen Mills, Hall American, Woolrich, and even Abercrombie & Fitch.

Raymond’s woolen twill work coat is patterned in a large-scaled bronze and olive plaid, detailed with tonally coordinated double-overchecks in olive and triple-overchecks in brown and black. The brass zipper begins a few inches above the hem, creating a squared skirt that allows greater range of movement when Raymond has the coat zipped. The zipper extends up to the shirt-style collar.

The ventless jacket has set-in pockets over the hips, each covered with a flap. The set-in sleeves are finished with a pointed semi-tab over the cuff that fastens through a single brown plastic two-hole sew-through button.

Note the well-made woolen twill constructing the shell of Raymond’s jacket as he grasps Cathy’s piled coat.

Raymond wears an olive-green woolen flannel long-sleeved shirt that coordinates with the rest of the outfit. (He had worn a similarly colored work shirt with the aforementioned mustard plaid coat, though that shirt was flecked and differently styled with a roomier fit and open chest pockets.)

This shirt’s point collar echoes the convertible collars of the U.S. Army’s woolen service shirts from this era, which could be effectively worn open-neck or buttoned up to fit a necktie, as it isn’t a flat camp collar like some of Raymond’s other work shirts. He wears the top button undone, showing the crew-neck of the light heathered gray cotton T-shirt he wears as an undershirt.

The structure of the shirt also suggests a service shirt, as do the two patch pockets over the chest with mitred-corner flaps that fasten through a single button. The shirt has button cuffs and a front placket.

A few weeks into the new year, Cathy comes to visit Raymond after she learns that his daughter Sarah (Jordan Puryear) had a rock thrown at her head by son’s friends. He pulls on this coat to go talk with her outside, wearing a pair of brown wool flat front trousers that better contrast with his shirt than the olive trousers he had worn for the outfit’s first appearance in the fall of 1957.

These trousers have slanted side pockets and belt loops, where he wears a wide dark brown leather belt that closes through a dulled brass square single-prong buckle.

Seen sparingly in the earlier sequence, Raymond had worn a pair of dark olive trousers that, while a shade darker than his shirt, still seem like they would have created too much of a “uniform” effect if worn without the jacket. His footwear appear to be his usual sturdy brown leather moc-toe derby-laced work boots.

Though not seen under the full sleeves of his jacket or buttoned shirt cuffs, Raymond likely wears his usual gold-cased wristwatch with its round white dial on a tan leather strap.

How to Get the Look

Dennis Haysbert as Raymond Deagan in Far From Heaven (2002)

Reflecting the increasing popularity of outdoor-oriented clothing in non-work settings, Raymond Deagan dresses for these chilly interactions in layered flannel that would be a stylish casual look even more than 60 years after Far From Heaven is set.

• Bronze-and-olive plaid (with tonally coordinated double- and triple-overcheck) woolen twill hunting jacket with shirt-style collar, brass zip-up front, flapped hip pockets, and pointed semi-tab cuffs
• Olive-green woolen flannel work shirt with point collar, front placket, two chest pockets (with mitred button-down flaps), and button cuffs
• Light heathered gray cotton crew-neck short-sleeve T-shirt/undershirt
• Brown wool flat front trousers with belt loops and side pockets
• Thick brown leather belt with squared brass single-prong buckle
• Tan leather moc-toe derby-laced work boots
• Gold wristwatch with round white dial on tan leather strap (with gold single-prong buckle)

Some modern retailers and retro-minded brands cycle through coats like this in their lineups, but I think the best examples could be found by searching for ’50s-era wool hunting jackets from genuine vintage sellers or even eBay.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Have a proud life. Have a splendid life. Will you do that?

The post Dennis Haysbert’s Brown Plaid Jacket in Far From Heaven appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jason Statham as the Ford Torino-driving Nick Wild in Wild Card (2015)

Vitals

Jason Statham as Nick Wild, tough security consultant and bodyguard-for-hire

Las Vegas, Christmas 2013

Film: Wild Card
Release Date: January 14, 2015
Director: Simon West
Costume Designer: Lizz Wolf

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Car Week continues into December with a little-discussed action movie that—like The Bourne Identity and Three Days of the Condor—is set during against a Christmas backdrop complete with carols on the soundtrack, though the holiday timing has little impact on the plot. (I don’t include Die Hard in this category because, as many have argued, Christmas is the reason for the whole plot!)

Reviving a role originated by Burt Reynolds in William Goldman’s 1986 movie Heat, Jason Statham plays Nick Wild, a “security consultant” for Las Vegas lawyer Pinchus “Pinky” Zion (Jason Alexander), who makes his daily commute from a seedy motel in a snazzy ’69 Ford Torino.

Arriving at work one December morning, Nick meets his latest prospective client, the boastful 23-year-old Cyrus Kinnick (Michael Angarano), who posits himself as a master gambler and wants to retain Nick’s bodyguard services. The rest of the morning introduces the regulars in Nick’s life, from the greasy-spoon waitress Roxy (Anne Heche) to his friend Holly (Dominik García-Lorido), who reports that she’s been beaten and raped by a gang led by gangster Danny DeMarco (Milo Ventimiglia).

After all the grappling and gambling you’d expect of a Jason Statham movie set in Las Vegas, we catch up again with Nick at the Silver Spoon diner several days later, where Cyrus pays him for his life lessons with a plane ticket to Corsica and a $500,000 check… if only they were enough to spirit Nick away from the diner where he’s been cornered by DeMarco and his thugs with murder on their mind. Will a butter knife and a spoon be enough for Nick to fight his way out one last time?

What’d He Wear?

When “on duty” as a bodyguard, Nick dresses the part of a badass bruiser in a black leather sport jacket, but his off-duty daily attire is anchored by softer brown casual jackets, first a tobacco-hued suede bomber for the opening vignette (though he’s still technically on the job) and then a darker brown corduroy car coat that seems to be his personal go-to for his mornings of banter, breakfast, and beat-downs.

Clad in his brown corduroy car coat, Nick Wild ends his dispute with Danny DeMarco once and for all.

The hip-length coat is constructed from a brown standard-wale corduroy, a comfortably rugged cloth that fits Nick Wild’s demeanor: soft and sympathetic to his friends but as tough and resilient as it gets.

Nick’s jacket has an ulster-style collar, the bottom folded over like a lapel that rolls to three large buttons of dark brown woven leather, widely spaced down the front. The jacket also has flapped side pockets, double vents, and set-in sleeves that are finished with dark brown leather trim around the edges of each cuff.

At the Silver Spoon diner, Nick wakes himself up by squeezing a grapefruit into a glass to make his own juice.

The first time we see Nick Wild wearing this corduroy jacket, he wears it over two comfortably layered shirts. The outer shirt is a gray waffle-knit long-sleeved henley with set-in sleeves and fastened with a four-button placket. Known alternatively as “honeycomb” or “thermal”, the uniquely textured waffle fabric is known for its absorbent and insulating qualities.

Assuming that Nick’s crew-neck undershirt is the same white cotton short-sleeved T-shirt we had seen him wearing when he woke up in his motel, the back is printed with a dark blue graphic illustrated with two pinup-style women over the left shoulder blade and some Fraktur lettering across the top that may indicate the brand.

When Nick rolls over onto his back, we see that the front is unadorned, making it more effective as an undershirt than other graphic tees.

The design of Nick’s T-shirt reminded me of the Affliction and Ed Hardy craze from years earlier.

For the final act, during which he takes on DeMarco’s henchmen in the alley behind the Silver Spoon (with little more than a spoon himself!), Nick wears a burgundy corduroy button-up shirt.

Though this long-sleeved shirt is corded like his jacket, the wale width is much slimmer, with more cords per inch consistent with the style known alternatively as “needlecord” or “pinwale” in reference to the narrow ridges in the cotton cloth, more compatible for shirting than the wider-waled jacket. The front placket, barrel cuffs, and two flapped chest pockets are fastened with black recessed plastic sew-through buttons, with two buttons on each squared pocket flap to close each corner.

Nick finds alternative uses for diner cutlery during a back-alley scuffle.

Nick wears dark blue denim jeans, slim through the legs and styled in the traditional five-pocket layout. Through the jeans’ belt loops, he wears a very dark brown leather belt that closes through a large silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Rather than the distinctive alligator-skin engineer boots that he wears while working as a bodyguard, Nick’s everyday boots are a more subdued pair with burnished mahogany uppers and black leather soles. These plain-toe boots appear to have zippers along the inside to fasten them, though much of the boots are covered by the hems of his jeans.

Nick’s sunglasses are the classic square-framed aviators that American Optical had developed in the late 1950s to meet the U.S. Air Force Type HGU-4/P standard for flight goggles. Appropriately designated the Flight Goggle 58 (you can guess why), these lightweight sunglasses are characterized by their semi-rectangular frames and straight “bayonet”-style temples designed to smoothly slip behind a flight helmet and oxygen mask.

The gold-finished sunglasses worn in Wild Card may be the classic AO Eyewear “Original Pilot” FG-58, or they may be a set produced by Randolph Engineering, who was contracted by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1982 to produce the HGU-4/P for the military. Both the AO Eyewear and Randolph USA aviators are still available for purchase today, more than a half-century after the design was introduced.

Whether you’re piloting a fighter jet or muscle car, you can’t go wrong from behind a pair of HGU-4/P aviators.

Under his shirts, Nick wears a thin silver necklace with a large silver pendant of a cross overlaying an upward-facing arrow, flanked on each side by an angel’s wing.

The Car

Nick Wild drives a champagne gold 1969 Ford Torino GT SportsRoof fastback, one of the less celebrated muscle cars in a year crowded with challengers* like the Chevy Camaro, Dodge Charger, Pontiac GTO, and Ford’s own Mustang, to name just a few.

Nick steps out to his ’69 Ford Torino GT, the champagne gold paint shining from the motel parking lot.

While retooling its flagship Fairlaine for the 1968 model year, Ford introduced the upscale Torino sub-model. Inspired by Turin—”the Italian Detroit”—Ford had initially considered Torino as the name for the Mustang.

Given the standard six-cylinder engine and body styles ranging from hardtops to station wagons, not all Torinos were necessarily performance-oriented, but the “Torino GT” nameplate offered sportier two-door body styles like a convertible and the new “SportsRoof” hardtop, all powered solely by V8 engines.

The standard Torino GT engine was Ford’s small-block 302 cubic-inch Windsor V8, with options that increased in size up to the 428 cubic-inch 4V Cobra Jet V8, rated at 335 horsepower. For 1969, the 428 Cobra Jet remained but was superseded in power by the drag-inspired 428 Super Cobra Jet. Three-speed manual transmissions were standard on all Torino GTs, with the “Cruise-O-Matic” automatic transmission optional across all engines and the four-speed manual available as an option for once engines reached 351 cubic inches or larger. The Torino GT was 1969’s most popular variant, accounting for more than 60% of all Torinos produced that year.

Given that all Torino GTs with an engine size of 351 cubic inches or higher were designated as such by a nameplate ahead of the front fenders, I suspect that Nick Wild’s Torino GT is a 302-powered base model, which we see is mated to a manual transmission, almost certainly the standard three-speed Borg Warner.

1969 Ford Torino GT SportsRoof

Body Style: 2-door fastback

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 302 cu. in. (4.9 L) Ford Windsor V8 with Motorcraft 2-barrel carburetor

Power: 220 hp (164 kW; 223 PS) @ 4600 RPM

Torque: 300 lb·ft (407 N·m) @ 2600 RPM

Transmission: 3-speed manual

Wheelbase: 116 inches (2946 mm)

Length: 201 inches (5105 mm)

Width: 74.6 inches (1895 mm)

Height: 53.6 inches (1361 mm)

The Torino’s popularity influenced Ford’s decision to a make a moniker switch for 1970, as the Fairlaine was now a subseries of the Torino model. Taking its cues from competition like the Corvette and Charger, the Torino was redesigned by Bill Shenk to follow the “coke bottle styling” of the era.

After yet another design evolution in 1972, a late-model red Ford Gran Torino with a large white vector stripe was chosen as the eponymous leads’ iconic car in the ’70s detective series Starsky & Hutch, but even television fame wasn’t enough to save the Torino from extinction as 1976 marked the last model year.

How to Get the Look

Jason Statham as Nick Wild in Wild Card (2015)

When not dressing to reinforce his role as a mob-connected tough guy, Nick chooses rugged, comfortable casual staples, layering for soft warmth that still presents enough of an edge for a guy you’d expect to be cruising Sin City in a classic muscle car.

• Brown standard-wale corduroy car coat with ulster-style lapels, three dark brown woven leather buttons, flapped hip pockets, double vents, and set-in sleeves with leather-trimmed cuffs
• Gray waffle-knit thermal long-sleeve 4-button henley
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve T-shirt (with dark blue graphic across back)
• Dark blue denim slim-leg jeans
• Dark brown wide leather belt with large silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Burnished mahogany zip-side plain-toe ankle boots
• Gray cotton boxer briefs
• Gold-finished HGU-4/P semi-rectangular aviator sunglasses with straight “bayonet” temples
• Silver-toned “angel wings” pendant on thin silver necklace

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Well, I been knocked down, blown up, lied to, shit on, and shut out… so nothin’ surprises me much anymore, except the things that people do to each other.

The post Wild Card: Jason Statham’s Corduroy Car Coat and Ford Torino appeared first on BAMF Style.

Roger Moore as a Lotus-driving James Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Vitals

Roger Moore as James Bond, British government agent

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Spring 1981

Film: For Your Eyes Only
Release Date: June 24, 1981
Director: John Glen
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller

Background

Today’s post extends #CarWeek to close out this year’s 40th anniversary celebration of my favorite of Roger Moore’s Bond movies, For Your Eyes Only, with a wintry look apropos the 00-7th of December as Mr. Bond drives into the ski resort town of Cortina d’Ampezzo behind the wheel of his latest Q-issued Lotus, dressed for warmth in shearling and cashmere.

Following a tip from the Italian secret service, Bond has arrived to interface with MI6’s “man in northern Italy”—Luigi Ferrara (John Moreno)—as he surveils Locque, the mysterious man he had observed paying off Hector Gonzales.

What’d He Wear?

Though we technically see him avant any skiing, James Bond’s wardrobe for his arrival in Cortina d’Ampezzo is an ideal après-ski look, incorporating classy yet casual sensibilities.

Bond’s outer layer is a waist-length blouson jacket in shearling sheepskin, a venerable fabric that has been renowned for millennia for its insulating warmth. As described simply by sartorial expert Sir Hardy Amies in his 1964 volume ABCs of Men’s Fashion, “sheepskin is the skin of the sheep with the wool left on, and dressed as a whole for garment making. A sheepskin coat, therefore, will present a suede outside and an attached wool lining inside.” You can read more about sheepskin outerwear—and find film-inspired examples for any budget—in a recent post from my friend at Iconic Alternatives.

Esquire‘s The Handbook of Style theorizes that “shearling predates fashion,” with its use as clothing reportedly innovated by Neanderthals… which would date it to more than 40,000 years ago. More recently, sheepskin found a renewed usage among high-flying pilots in the early days of aviation after the advent of the sheepskin Irvin flying jacket for the RAF in the 1920s, followed by the B-3 bomber jacket for U.S. aviators. Closer to the ground, sheepskin has been long established as a snowy season favorite as it stays warm when wet yet dries quickly, and—a particular asset for skiers and sportsmen—resists picking up body odors.

Bond doesn’t realize that’s Ferrara slipping past him as he enters his hotel.

Bond’s sheepskin jacket presents a light brown suede-like outer shell, with the inside lined in a darker brown softly piled lambswool fur. The gilt-finished zipper would presumably zip up to close over the throat in a funnel-neck fashion, though Moore wears the top of the jacket unzipped to the chest, which presents the top of the fur lining resting flat over his shoulders like a broad collar. The sleeves are set-in and finished at the cuff with brown ribbed knitting, echoed by the ribbed-knit hem. There are also hand pockets on each side with a vertical welted opening.

A unique distinguishing characteristic of Moore’s screen-worn jacket is a sewn-on piece that extends over the shoulders to mid-chest and mid-back, where a seam extends down vertically the back to the hem. It’s possible that the jacket may not be fully fur-lined like a classic sheepskin coat, and that this sewn-in piece indicates the extent of the jacket’s fur lining. This would also explain why the cuffs and hem are knitted rather than showing pile as seen on traditional sheepskin coats.

Bond inspects his hotel room as well as the gift basket that was awaiting him.

Whether the jacket belonged to Roger Moore before the production or became a favorite after it was provided by costume designer Elizabeth Waller, the actor kept it in his rotation and was photographed wearing it during the re-opening of Pinewood Studios, four years later during the production of his final Bond adventure, A View to a Kill.

Dressed in the sheepskin blouson from For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore joins his A View to a Kill co-stars Fiona Fullerton and Christopher Walken to celebrate the reopening of Pinewood Studios. (Photo source: BBC)

Under his jacket, 007 wears a turtleneck sweater likely made from soft cashmere, detailed with a ribbed roll-neck, cuffs, and hem. The sweater’s bronze color may be the only piece of this outfit where I’d have recommended a different direction for Mr. Bond—not because I find it dated, though some might—but rather to break up the monochromatism with his light brown jacket and trousers, perhaps by opting for a burgundy, navy, or forest-green jumper instead.

Always ready for action, Bond wears his Walther PPK semi-automatic pistol in its usual light brown leather shoulder holster, secured in place by a cream-colored nylon strap extending across his back and around his right shoulder. While shoulder holsters may not be practical for many who aren’t secret agents, the bulk of Bond’s sheepskin jacket would permit him to effectively wear one without “printing” (i.e., showing the outline of his concealed weapon through his clothing.)

Keeping the colors of his clothing consistent, Bond wears woolen twill trousers in a light, drab shade of brown similar to fallow. In his exploration of the outfit for Bond Suits, Matt Spaiser suggests that the trousers were likely made by Douglas Hayward, Moore’s usual tailor beginning at this time in the early 1980s. The hem of his untucked turtleneck covers the waistband even when he no longer wears his jacket, but these flat front trousers may be held up with a belt like the rest of his Hayward-tailored trousers in For Your Eyes Only.

The plain-hemmed trouser bottoms cover the tops of his dark brown leather cap-toe boots, which rise over his ankles and appear to be secured in place with an inside zipper. Likely made by Salvatore Ferragamo, given Moore’s personal devotion to wearing the brand on screen by the early ’80s, these boots are only fleetingly seen on screen but more prominently in a series of promotional photos featuring Moore with his new copper Lotus, having swapped out the sheepskin jacket for a far more conspicuous white nylon blouson jacket with the “007” logo printed in black over the right breast, matching the black collar, cuffs, waist hem, zipper, pocket zips, and sleeve striping. The name “Roger Moore” is printed above the logo, with “Q Labs” outlined in black on the opposing side of the jacket.

Every secret agent needs a jacket with their secret assigned number emblazoned on it!

When he slips off his chestnut brown leather three-point gloves, Bond’s stainless steel SEIKO H357-5040 Duo Display can be spied shining from his left wrist. This quartz-powered alarm chronograph is configured with a four-pinned square face consisting primarily of a black rectangular analog dial, partitioned at the top for a single-row digital LED display intended to function alternately as a calendar, digital clock, alarm, and stopwatch… as well as a messaging device, thanks to Q’s engineering. You can read more about Bond’s SEIKO H357-5040 at James Bond Lifestyle, which identified the exact screen-used model as #WHV005.

The Car

By The Spy Who Loved Me, Roger Moore had firmly established his own characterization of 007, and with this character evolution came new brand partnerships. Just as the Rolexes favored by Sean Connery and George Lazenby would eventually be replaced by SEIKOs, the sleek Aston-Martins carried over from Ian Fleming’s source novels were swapped out for sporty Lotus coupes even more gadget-laden than Sir Sean’s DB5.

For Your Eyes Only boasts two different Lotuses. The first, a white Esprit Turbo echoing the submersible “Wet Nellie” from The Spy Who Loved Me, was destroyed when Gonzales’ henchmen activated Bond’s explosive “anti-theft device”. Though this goes beyond the normal “wear and tear” expected in the field, Q then outfitted Bond with a replacement Lotus, a reddish bronze 1981 Lotus Esprit Turbo.

According to Bond lore, both of the For Your Eyes Only Esprits were originally white, but the production team noticed that the lack of contrast between the Cortina Lotus and its snowy surroundings, so this car—registered OPW 678W—was resprayed with “Copper Fire Metallic” paint.

“I see you managed to get the Lotus back together again,” Bond quips to an unamused Q (Desmond Llewelyn).

Following its debut at the previous year’s Paris Motor Show, production of the Lotus Esprit began in the summer of 1976. The sporty mid-engined supercar had resulted from the collective work of Lotus Cars founder Colin Chapman, motorsport engineer Tony Rudd, and designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, who conceptualized the wedge-shaped “folded paper” appearance.

“The story goes that Donovan McLauchlan, public relations manager at Lotus, had been tipped off that [The Spy Who Loved Me] was gearing up for pre-production at Pinewood,” Roger Moore recalls of the Esprit’s entry into the world of Bond in his memoir, Bond on Bond. “It was early 1976, and he drove an Esprit to the studios and parked it right in the path of anyone trying to get in or out of the main admin building entrance. It wasn’t long before Cubby [Broccoli] saw the car and made a phone call—not to get it towed, but to ask all about it. Their gamble paid off.”

After two years in production, the Esprit was falling short on Lotus’ “performance through light weight” philosophy, despite a dramatic increase in sales due to its association with 007. A redesigned and slightly elongated “Series 2” was introduced for the 1978 model year, increasing the curb weight just over a hundred kilograms to weigh in over 1,000 kilograms for the first time. For 1980, Lotus officially addressed the performance issue with its first factory turbocharged Esprit, powered by a dry sump 2.2-liter engine offering 210 horsepower, launching the car from 0-60 mph in 6.1 seconds.

The Turbo Esprit offered with the Series 3 upgrade in mid-1981 was powered by a wet sump engine with the same displacement and power but increased performance, tightening the 0-60 to under six seconds and pushing the top speed well over 150 mph.

Bond’s new Lotus gets only a few seconds of action as he arrives in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

1981 Lotus Essex Turbo Esprit (Series 3)

Body Style: 2-door sports coupe

Layout: rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RMR)

Engine: 2.2 L (2174 cc) Lotus Type 910 turbocharged I4 with dual side-draft Dell’Orto carburetors

Power: 210 hp (157 kW; 213 PS) @ 6250 rpm

Torque: 200 lb·ft (271 N·m) @ 4500 rpm

Transmission: 5-speed manual

Wheelbase: 96 inches (2438 mm)

Length: 168.5 inches (4280 mm)

Width: 73.3 inches (1861 mm)

Height: 43.7 inches (1111 mm)

According to Joe Breeze for Classic Driver magazine, “it was apparently quite popular with Roger Moore off camera; he merrily shuttled it around the resort between takes.”

In Bond on Bond, Moore himself recalls that one of his favorite scenes featuring the car—and his co-star John Moreno tampering with its gadgets—was “unfortunately cut due to time constraints.” His recollections of driving Esprits were otherwise less than pleasant, recalling that “their engines overheated and batteries ran down quickly,” not to forget that “their low driving position made elegant exits from the car an issue.”

You can read more about the various Lotus Esprits in the Bond franchise at James Bond Lifestyle.

How to Get the Look

Roger Moore as James Bond in For Your Eyes Only (1981)

James Bond’s clothing is arguably better suited to the snowy environs of Cortina d’Ampezzo than his sports car, as he arrives perfectly dressed for the après-ski scene in his waist-length sheepskin jacket, warmly fur-lined and layered with elegant simplicity over his tonally coordinated cashmere turtleneck and trousers.

• Light brown shearling sheepskin zip-up funnel-neck blouson jacket with brown piled fur lining, vertical welted hand pockets, brown ribbed-knit cuffs, and brown ribbed-knit waist hem
• Bronze cashmere turtleneck sweater
• Fallow-brown woolen twill flat front trousers with plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown leather side-zip cap-toe boots
• Brown leather 3-point gloves
• Light brown leather shoulder holster with cream strap, for Walther PPK
• SEIKO H357-5040/WHV-005 duo-display alarm chronograph with black square face and stainless bracelet

Classic sheepskin can be very expensive—though often worth the investment—and it’s difficult to find varieties that resemble Moore’s jacket with its darker fur inside and the ribbed-knit cuffs and hem. A comfortable and affordable modern substitute could be this faux-suede GUESS bomber jacket (available via Amazon) as well as the recent finds from Iconic Alternatives.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Ian Fleming’s first short story collection, also titled For Your Eyes Only, published in 1960.

The post For Your Eyes Only: Bond’s Sheepskin Jacket and New Lotus appeared first on BAMF Style.

Elliott Gould as Miles Cullen in The Silent Partner (1978)

Vitals

Elliott Gould as Miles Cullen, mild-mannered bank teller

Toronto, Christmas 1977

Film: The Silent Partner
Release Date: September 7, 1978
Director: Daryl Duke
Wardrobe Credit: Debi Weldon

Background

One of the most fun yet under-celebrated of Christmas-adjacent thrillers, The Silent Partner should sell most new viewers on the simple elevator pitch of Christopher Plummer as a gun-toting robber in a Santa Claus suit who increasingly torments Elliott Gould as a scheming teller.

The action begins on Tuesday, December 14—set exactly 44 years ago today—as the meek Miles Cullen (Gould) wraps up his daily duties at a First Bank of Toronto branch when his flirtatious sketches on a deposit slip wise him to a potential robbery plot. He’s about to reveal the note to his manager Charles Packard (Michael Kirby), who surprises him by asking Miles to him a favor by escorting his mistress—operations officer Julie Carver (Susannah York), the object of Miles’ clumsy affections—out for a few hours to distract her. The excitement of an evening with Julie—and the purchase of an angelfish—push the lingering larceny to the back of Miles’ mind as the two discuss her indiscretions over drinks as they await Packard’s arrival.

Two days later, back at work, Miles schemes to take advantage of the robbery plot, tucking away plenty of cash in his Superman lunchbox and triggering the silent alarm when Santa comes to collect.

Having had days to prepare, Miles has more than just milk and cookies ready when this sadistic Santa pays a visit.

What’d He Wear?

The Silent Partner is famous for its first act set around Christmas, though the action spans well into the next year so we see the full range of Elliott Gould’s on-screen wardrobe which includes seasonal tailoring like light linen suits for summer, heavier wool three-piece and double-breasted suits in winter, and sportier staples including a classic navy blazer and the tweed sports coat he frequently wears for wintry days at work, including the first scene set on Tuesday the 14th.

Miles Cullen’s brown tweed sport jacket is woven in a broken twill variation of the barleycorn weave, which you can read more about in Bond Suits‘ exploration of 11 classic checks and patterns. The wool consists of yarns alternating between a rich chocolate brown and a lighter fawn, woven into a series of irregular chevrons that present as the “barley kernels” that give the pattern its evocative appellation.

Note the “barley kernels” on Gould’s jacket that, upon closer inspection, are the result of a broken twill weave that presents like a series of jagged lines, rather than the more organized “crow’s feet” of traditional barleycorn or the balanced “fish skeleton” that gives classic herringbone its appellation.

Tweed as we know it had been developed for rugged outdoors pursuits in 19th century Scotland. Miles’ single-breasted jacket pays homage to these sporting origins, modeling traditionally equestrian elements like rear-slanted “hacking” pockets and a long single vent, a detail that also happened to be consistent with prevailing fashions at the time The Silent Partner was produced in the late 1970s.

The jacket otherwise reflects relatively timeless detailing and cut, with the welted-edge notch lapels—restrained to an eye-pleasingly moderate width for the ’70s—rolling cleanly to the top of two mixed brown horn buttons, where the buttoning point is positioned over Gould’s natural waist. The sleeves are roped at the shoulders and finished with two smaller horn buttons on each cuff. In addition to the aforementioned flapped hip pockets, the jacket boasts a welted breast pocket and a flapped ticket pocket rigged above the right-side hip pocket.

The long single vent and slanted hip pockets on Miles’ tweed sports coat are traditional equestrian elements found on hacking jackets.

Miles chooses his shirts to look professional at the office and also offer tonal coordination with the warmer cast of his coarse tweed jacket. The first shirt, seen on the afternoon and evening of the December 14th, is made from a pale ecru cotton and detailed with a front placket, single-button barrel cuffs, and a long point collar consistent with the decade’s trends.

His dark rust-colored tie has thin ochre bar stripes spaced apart in a “downhill” diagonal direction, each flanked on top and bottom by a narrower gold stripe.

Miles doesn’t get the opportunity to present the suggestive deposit slip he found… though this presents a unique opportunity for him in the days to follow.

For several subsequent days at work, Miles wears a plain white cotton shirt that presents a starker contrast than the softer ecru of his previous shirt. Like that one, it’s detailed with a long point collar and single-button cuffs, but it buttons up a plain front rather than a placket. When Miles removes his jacket, we see the shirt also has a breast pocket.

When he’s first confronted by a gun-toting Santa on Thursday, December 16, Miles wears a dark brown tie patterned with a spotted medallion print in beige and taupe.

Miles is anxiously back at his station on the day he anticipates “Santa” to return, packing heat and unafraid to land himself on the naughty list.

Miles’ perceived coolness under pressure makes him a minor celebrity at the bank, earning some additional attention from Julie. During one of these days at the office, he wears a plain brown twill tie, possibly polyester.

Following weeks of “Santa” threatening and terrorizing Miles after having been hoodwinked during his attempted robbery, Miles frames the thief for a robbery that leads to his arrest on other charges. Miles is called in to identify Santa as Harry Reikle, again dressing in his favorite tweed jacket but appointing it with his busiest shirt and tie combination of the movie.

The cream shirt is patterned with a field of tonal satin dots that each shine gold under the harsh lights of the police station. Other than this unique detail, the shirt resembles his others with its long point collar, front placket, and single-button cuffs. Miles’ tie consists of an interlocking cream grid connecting unique arrangements of four squares—cream-on-black, black-on-gray, and black-on-bronze—against a field of gold and bronze silk.

Miles wears chocolate brown flat front trousers that provide a tonally coordinated contrast to the lighter brown jacket. As he tends to keep the jacket buttoned in professional settings, we don’t see much of the top of these trousers but we can assume they’re fashioned like his others, held up with a belt and detailed with western-style “frogmouth” front pockets.

The trousers’ plain-hemmed bottoms are fashionably flared with a considerable break over his shoes, which appear to be dark brown plain-toe ankle boots. No laces appear over the front of these boots, so they’re likely pull on boots that may be aided by side zips or elastic gussets—à la Chelsea boots—but the full break of the trouser bottoms prevents seeing much more of his footwear.

Miles’ gold-cased wristwatch was likely Gould’s personal watch, with a round, off-white dial detailed with plain gold hour markers and secured to his left wrist on a dark brown textured leather strap.

Layered to combat the December chill, Miles wears a fawn-colored wool coat with quasi-martial detailing like the shoulder straps (epaulettes) sewn against the roped sleeveheads with the pointed end buttoned toward each side of his neck. The six dark brown woven leather shank buttons comprising the double-breasted front are arranged in two neat columns of three buttons each. The wide peak lapels have slanted gorges that direct each peak toward the shoulders, with “swelled” welted edges that echo the detailing on the welted breast pocket and the dramatically rear-slanting flaps over each hip pocket. Each cuff has a single button, and the back is split with a long vent.

Miles’ additional outerwear pieces are consistent with his brown tones, including the dark brown woolen scarf and his dark brown leather three-point gloves.

Even Miles’ new angelfish appears to be swimming in brown water, matching much of his clothing.

Miles’ shades of brown at the outset of The Silent Partner are appropriate for the earthy tones associated with the ’70s, though they also reinforce the lonely clerk’s boredom by juxtaposing his tastefully subdued colors against the decor of this most festive time of year.

That said, Miles’ co-workers showcase how the same palette can be employed in a more festive fashion, such as Simonson (a young John Candy), sprucing up his brown clothing with a sprig of holly pinned to the left lapel of his chocolate windowpane suit.

The Silent Partner was an early role for John Candy, portraying Miles’ co-workers at the First Bank of Toronto branch that also employs Louise with her suggestive shirts.

Less related to the points I’m making but still of sartorial note: one of my favorite aspects of The Silent Partner is the rotation of T-shirts worn by Miles’ comely colleague Louise (Gail Dahms), each printed with a banking-relevant double entendre like “Penalty for early withdrawal,” certainly a violation of the bank’s employee dress code but delightfully unaddressed throughout her on-screen appearances.

How to Get the Look

Elliott Gould as Miles Cullen in The Silent Partner (1978)

Many associate the ’70s with brown clothing, but Elliott Gould’s garb in The Silent Partner illustrates why this needn’t be a negative association as—with a shorter collar here and a more restrained trouser cuff there—his tasteful tweed jacket and tonally coordinated ties set a template for smart office-wear during cooler seasons.

• Brown broken twill “barleycorn” tweed single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with welted-edge notch lapels, welted breast pocket, flapped hacking pockets and ticket pocket, 2-button cuffs, and long single vent
• White or pale ecru cotton shirt with long point collar and button cuffs
• Brown plain or patterned tie
• Dark brown flat front trousers with belt loops, frogmouth front pockets, and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown leather belt
• Dark brown leather plain-toe ankle boots
• Fawn-colored wool double-breasted overcoat with welted-edge peak lapels, 6×3-button front, shoulder straps (epaulettes), welted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets, 1-button cuffs, long single vent
• Dark brown leather three-point gloves
• Dark brown woolen scarf
• Gold dress watch with round white dial on dark brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post The Silent Partner: Elliott Gould’s Holiday Tweed appeared first on BAMF Style.

Christmas is awesome. First of all, you get to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything. Third, you give presents. What’s better than giving presents? And fourth, getting presents. So, four things. Not bad for one day. It’s really the greatest day of all time.

With some offices reinstating the traditional holiday parties this year, I also want to return to my own December tradition of reviewing how the off-the-peg office drones of Dunder Mifflin Scranton dress for their annual Christmas extravaganza.

The Office first approached the festive season with the simply titled “Christmas Party”, midway through the series’ masterful second season. This has always been one of my favorite episodes of The Office, and “Christmas Party” was actually the first-ever iTunes Store purchase I had made after Christmas 2005 found a video iPod in my stocking… appropriately enough, as fans of the episode would realize.

At this point, The Office was still a more restrained satire of American workplaces—rather than the zanier character-driven comedy it would become—and the first Christmas party reflects that mundanity, with cheap decorations, cheap vodka, and cheap grab bag gifts, and seemingly none of the staff happy to be part of this forced corporate fun, save for the oblivious manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell).

The main cast of The Office—Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Steve Carell, B.J. Novak, and John Krasinski—in a promotional photo for the second season’s “Christmas Party”.

Series: The Office
Episode: “Christmas Party” (Episode 2.10)
Air Date: December 6, 2005
Director: Charles McDougall
Creator: Greg Daniels
Costume Designer: Carey Bennett

While many classic episodes would follow—including the two-part “A Benihana Christmas” the following season—this was the OG Christmas episode of The Office, filled with all the great cringe-worthy moments like Michael’s impulsive decision to switch Secret Santa to Yankee Swap, milestones in the Jim and Pam romance (that teapot note!), drunken hijinks like Xeroxed butts and lampshade hats, and moments for side characters to shine, from Kevin’s foot-bath to Meredith’s flashing incident.

“Christmas Party” also offered our first look at how the employees would switch up their work-wear for a corporate holiday party, with all the tacky ties, ugly sweaters, and half-hearted Santa hats that add some festive color against the office’s Jims and Ryans who choose not to sartorially partake. (Later seasons would increasingly show the men of Dunder Mifflin embracing the holiday spirit through their clothing, clad in reds and greens, with nary a man—even Jim!—failing to knot on neckwear painted with snowy scenes.)

Last month, I was thrilled when the great blogcast The Art of Costume welcomed The Office costume designer Carey Bennett for a festive installment to discuss both “Christmas Party” and “A Benihana Christmas”. Among the many insights shared, Bennett explained that she was intentional with each male character’s “tie story”, which makes it all the more interesting [to me, anyway] that Michael, Jim, and Creed would each repeat their ties the following year in “A Benihana Christmas”.

As usual, let’s start at the bottom and work our way toward the top of the tree as I offer my no-one-asked-for-these ratings on how the men of Dunder Mifflin Scranton adapted their office attire for the staff Christmas party…

10. Todd Packer (David Koechner)

Merry Christmas, asswipe!

Points for, uh, Christmas spirit… but the obnoxious Pacman’s evidently had a few too many spirits already by the time he arrives at the Dunder Mifflin holiday party, dressed conventionally but sloppily in a navy suit, unbuttoned white shirt, and exactly the type of “festive” tie you’d expect of a man whose license plate advertises the size of his penis. A field of snowflakes and colorful ornaments are scattered down the black tie, which would actually make it one of the more tasteful holiday ties of The Office… until we approach the blade, painted with a topless blonde pinup in a red Santa hat with matching skirt, boots, and nothing else. Costume designer Carey Bennett explained on The Art of Costume that this was one of the “wealth of bad ties” she had purchased for the characters to wear from the now-defunct California-based department store Mervyn’s.

On anyone else, the tie might have some ironic value, but you know Todd Packer’s the kind of guy who probably finds it both simultaneously classy and sexy… made all the worse by the woman’s likeness appearing just inches above his WLHUNG package.

“Don’t be this guy” may be an overused aphorism, but… don’t be this guy.

9. Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson)

“A real man makes his own luck.” Billy Zane. Titanic.

Saved from last place by Todd Packer’s late arrival, the arguably worst dresser among the men of Dunder Mifflin Scranton doesn’t do himself any favors the first time we see him at a Christmas party. As usual, he’s dressed in the palette of his olive-to-ochre spectrum, which was “100% J.C. Penney,” according to Carey Bennett.

Perhaps unwilling to suffer the wrath of Belsnickel, Dwight makes what he may consider a more admirable than impish attempt to infuse holiday color into his wardrobe, wearing one of his usual green gradient-shaded ties with an olive suit, though any sense of fashionability is thrown against the wall with Angela’s ornaments once he removes the suit jacket, revealing the avalanche of poor style decisions: his baggy creamy yellow shirt has his usual short sleeves, and the belt around the top of his pleated trousers is loaded with his usual beeper and cell phone. The black digital calculator watch strapped to his left wrist is one gadget too many, though it’s all part of Dwight’s regular kit.

Where Dwight diverges from his usual wardrobe is the addition of a cheap green felt elf hat with the ears to match. Though we see you trying, Dwight… the attempt is still impish at best.

I’d offer Dwight points for trying, but I don’t think this sort of trying should be encouraged.

8. Ryan Howard (B.J. Novak)

Angela drafted me into the party planning committee. Her memo said that we need to prepare for every possible disaster. Which, to me, seems… excessive.

Ryan doesn’t care… and it shows. You could argue that his all-blue look of a navy suit, French blue shirt, and tonal tie is meant to be a reflection of a wintry palette, but it’s more likely that he’s just actively avoiding holiday colors. He’s saved from a lower ranking by the fact that there’s nothing visually offensive about his look, and—for an unpaid temp at a northeastern Pennsylvania paper company in the mid-2000s—his clothes are tasteful and fit relatively well.

It may be a blue Christmas for Ryan now, but just give it a few years… by the time of the seventh season’s “Secret Santa”, he takes the BAMF Style top prize in his red shirt and green sweater vest!

Trapped in the land of ugly Christmas sweaters (and pins), Ryan may have just been better advised to wear one himself.

7. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski)

He obviously forgot to get me something, and then he went in his closet and dug out this little number… and then threw it in a bag.

Jim doesn’t seem too bothered by Creed’s lack of effort in his Secret Santa gift, and why should he? Though one of Dunder Mifflin Scranton’s top salesmen, Jim doesn’t give much effort to… anything at all. Even for the season’s Halloween party, his “three-hole punch Jim” costume was likely constructed in less than two minutes.

We see just about as much effort for the Christmas party as he wears his daily rig of a well-washed oxford shirt with a button-down collar, pleated slacks, and a loosened tie… though at least he thinks to cycle in the one that’s predominantly burgundy for some arguable shades of holiday red, subtly striped against low-contrasting flecked stripes in black and tan. (He would wear the same tie again in “A Benihana Christmas” but with somewhat more success, given the full suit and dressier shirt.)

Does it help or hurt Jim’s case when he puts on the old shirt that Creed had grabbed that morning before work?

For anyone looking to track down the wardrobe, Creed’s “gift” to Jim is a shirt by the budget brand Covington… a few years ahead (but a few sizes short) of the current flannel shacket trend. I also always liked Jim’s simple but strong Victorinox Swiss Army watch.

6. Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner)

I got myself as secret Santa. I was supposed to tell somebody, but I didn’t.

I wrestled with where in the bottom half of the list to rank poor Kevin, but ultimately I felt like his attempt paid off. Perhaps only a mid-sized paper company sales office in Scranton, Pennsylvania, could see such sartorial recognition for a guy like Kevin Malone, who—especially at this point in the series—doesn’t quite seem to grasp how to dress to flatter his more corpulent figure… not to mention the clashing patterns.

Kevin’s base outfit of an olive tic-checked sports coat, multi-striped shirt, and blue trousers might work on some level, but the impression I got was that the somewhat absent-minded accountant was leaving the house in a different tie before he was spotted by Stacy, who reminded him of his holiday party and swapped in a tie painted in a repeated scene of rows of snowmen standing around a Christmas tree… likely something she’d gifted to Kevin under the tree the previous year. (He would wear another snowman-motif tie the following year in “A Benihana Christmas”, establishing a pattern where Kevin evidently has a small accrued collection of seasonal neckwear!)

At least there’s some fortuitous coordination at work, from the wintry blues of the shirt striping, trouser color, and “sky” on the tie to the earthy shades of the jacket, alternating tie stripes, and the snowmen’s hats and tree on the tie.

Kevin shows off the “perfectly good mini-tree” that the ever-charitable Michael Scott wants to sell to charity. You read that right.

5. Creed Bratton

(following Jim’s theory about the lack of effort behind his Secret Santa gift) Yep. That’s exactly what happened.

Creed had only begun to emerge from the background by the middle of The Office‘s second season, showing increasingly bizarre traits such as his unapologetic regifting of an old shirt for the branch’s Secret Santa exchange. For all his eccentricities, it wasn’t until later that Creed would incorporate his unorthodoxy into his appearance, such as the ninth-season episode where he randomly wears sweatpants and Crocs with his sport jacket and tie.

He takes a characteristically subdued approach to dressing for the party, wearing a uniquely striped shirt consisting of varying gray gradient stripes against a white ground that provides a neutral background for the “holiday red” in his burgundy tie with a textured gray micro-grid that contributes to a gradient effect there as well. Creed would wear this tie again in “A Benihana Christmas”, in which I deemed him to be Dunder Mifflin’s best-dressed, though he spends the majority of this episode sans jacket, highlighting the shirt’s less-than-flattering off-the-peg fit that keeps him restrained to the middle of the rankings.

Creed Bratton, gift-giver extraordinaire.

4. Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez)

I got Creed. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know anything about Creed. I know his name’s Creed, I know he works right over there, I think he’s Irish, and I… I got him this shamrock keychain.

Oscar typically stands out as one of Dunder Mifflin’s better dressers. While I wouldn’t normally consider the wearer of such an animated tie to be considerably stylish, I appreciate the addition of his tweed sports coat as the group prepares to venture out to a post-party happy hour, with the brown wool of his jacket almost coordinating with the hide of that cheerful reindeer grinning from his tie blade. (Even if it is a tacky tie, it’s at least more office-appropriate than Packer’s horny neckwear.)

Maybe I’ve relaxed my attitude toward tacky holiday ties in my old age, but there’s still no reason for the tail to be longer than the blade. Plus, the fact that Oscar wouldn’t even be able to hide the tie’s flamboyance when buttoning his tasteful tweed jacket restrains his look to fourth position. A more restrained tie that’s been more proportionally tied would have likely secured him the top spot, but alas…

The tweed jacket takes Oscar’s holiday ensemble to the next level, but is it enough to counter the excessive exuberance of his tie?

3. Michael Scott (Steve Carell)

Unbelievable. I do the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for these people and they freak out. Well… happy birthday Jesus, sorry your party’s so lame.

As I mentioned, I’m finding more forgiveness for the yuletide tradition of tacky ties, and no one seems to appreciate them more than Michael Scott. The silk tie depicts a snowy scene at the North Pole, with a red-suited St. Nick greeting us with a Christmas carol from the blade. Behind him, four snowmen in red and green scarves are perched on a bridge ahead of a tall, decorated Christmas tree and a brown chalet—likely Santa’s famous workshop—silhouetted against a blue night sky. (I found a reversed version of the tie on Amazon, though it appears to be frequently out of stock.)

For its inaugural episode, Michael sports the tie with a decently cut business suit and a pale shirt that doesn’t threaten to clash with the busy scene painted on his tie. He completes the look with a red Santa hat, signaling his leadership of the office… and which he offers up to Daryl after stubbornly refusing to do earlier in the day. For its first run, Michael wears the tie well, but his insistence on wearing it for the two subsequent Dunder Mifflin Christmas parties suggests a lack of originality that he overwhelmingly corrects by the time he hosts a “Classy Christmas” during the seventh season.

Michael debuts his favorite Christmas tie in this episode, smartly wearing with a solid suit and shirt… though there’s no talking him out of that Santa hat.

2. Stanley Hudson (Leslie David Baker)

I know how to plug something in.

Stanley presents a tasteful alternative to the ostentatious holiday-themed ties of his colleagues, just livening up his usual business look with a bright red polka-dotted tie that adds a festive flair. The more subdued tie allows Stanley to wear a more patterned shirt, as seen by the subtly dobby-striped shirt with its spread collar.

The overall philosophy of Stanley’s suit in “Christmas Party” suggests a smart approach for corporate holiday celebrations, though the fit—particularly of that three-button jacket—may not be Stanley’s most flattering look.

Between Kevin’s over-the-top holiday tie and Ryan’s lack of any real spirit, Stanley looks just festive enough a red tie that shines from over the perhaps-too-high buttoning point of his gray suit jacket.

1. Toby Flenderson (Paul Lieberstein)

We’re really not supposed to serve alcohol…

Toby scores an early win with his smart dark brown suit that, in the world of Dunder Mifflin Scranton, earns the top spot for avoid the extremes of corporate banality or obnoxious festivity. His clothes fit relatively well, considering that he probably buys exclusively off the peg, like the rest of his office-mates.

It may not be the most spirited outfit, but the subtle holiday shades in his pale-green shirt and burgundy patterned tie neatly correspond to maintaining a sense of professionalism when dressing for an office Christmas party. Future years would find Toby incorporating more Christmas-themed neckwear into his yuletide wardrobe, evolving through nutcracker ties and penguin ties before swapping it all out for the warmth of a snowflake sweater in the seventh season’s “Classy Christmas”.

If Michael had his way, Toby would never leave his desk during Dunder Mifflin’s holiday celebrations.

Happy holidays, BAMF Style readers!

I hope all of you, particularly fans of The Office, enjoyed this exploration into one of my favorite holiday episodes… and I hope you all know I care about you at least a homemade oven mitt’s worth.

Check out The Office, streaming on Peacock and available in its entirety on Blu-ray and DVD.

The post The Office: Season 2’s Christmas Party – Ranking Holiday Looks appeared first on BAMF Style.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way (1996)

Vitals

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Howard Langston, massive Austrian bodybuilder midwestern mattress sales executive and family man

Minneapolis, Christmas Eve 1996

Film: Jingle All the Way
Release Date: November 22, 1996
Director: Brian Levant
Costume Designer: Jay Hurley

Background

With only a few more shopping days left until Christmas, some may still be scrambling for that perfect gift to put under the tree. This family-friendly ’90s comedy satirized the lengths to which people had to go in the blessed pre-Amazon days, represented by Minneapolis mattress king Howard Langston’s increasingly desperate attempts to track down a prized Turbo-Man action figure for his son… on Christmas Eve!

Sure, Jingle All the Way has plenty of goofy moments and a few too many Golden Raspberry and Stinkers Bad Movie Award nominations for me to whole-heartedly recommend it to any serious cinephiles, but it’s fun to watch Howard’s war amplified against excitable postman Myron Larabee (Sinbad), a snippy cop (Robert Conrad), a criminally enterprising mall Santa (Jim Belushi), and the smarmy wannabe-lothario neighbor Ted (Phil Hartman) with his designs on Howard’s wife Liz (Rita Wilson).

“You can’t bench-press your way out of this one,” Ted warns Howard, marking one of the few occasions where anyone in the movie acknowledges that the Austrian Oak may not be your average suburban dad; for his part, Howard almost immediately proves Ted’s theories of the value of physical strength incorrect when he has to literally punch a reindeer in the face seconds later to escape a dangerous situation.

If you really wanted to find a deeper meaning, you could sort through the silliness of retail riots and reindeer rumbles to glean a message about pernicious consumerism… though the fact that the movie premiered at the Mall of America a week before its general release suggests that it wasn’t exactly trying to be They Live.

“You know it’s all a ploy, don’t you?” Myron informs Howard when they meet in line outside the first of many toy stores. “We are being set up by rich and powerful toy cartels!” Myron proposes a partnership, citing examples like Starsky and Hutch, Bonnie and Clyde, and Ike and Tina (well, maybe not, he reconsiders) to “divide and conquer” in their shared quest for Turbo-Man, but Howard’s dismissal of the outrageous postman results in a fierce but festive rivalry that reaches an equally outrageous climax in the streets and over the skies of downtown Minneapolis.

What’d He Wear?

“Mr. Wear Your Fancy Cashmere Coat and Your Nice Little Suede Shoes,” disparages Myron of his new nemesis, providing a concise yet accurate description of Howard Langston’s clothing. Indeed, Howard tastefully layers on Christmas Eve, a day of increasing desperation during his desperate search for the prized Turbo Man action figure for his son.

Howard learns the hard way that Myron has a hard time saying it, not spraying it.

The “fancy cashmere coat” in question consists of a softly napped tan cashmere wool shell, styled at the crossroads of a thigh-length car coat and a more elegant variation of a chore jacket. (In fact, many promotional posters for the movie feature Arnie dressed in a more work-oriented Carhartt-style coat in the similar colorway of a brown collar against a lighter brown canvas body.)

When the screen-worn coat was auctioned by Julien’s Live in November 2012, the listing identified the maker as Giacomo Trabalza, an Italian-born tailor whose shop was a Hollywood fixture for decades before Trabalza’s death in 2009. According to a 2005 Robb Report article, Trabalza had started making suits for Schwarzenegger in 1984, using the skills he developed in suiting the actor’s muscular physique to cultivate more clientele of similar size. (Interestingly, similarly styled jackets would be made for the crew to wear, but in a reversed colorway of black wool bodies with tan leather collars, as seen at iCollector and Prop Store.)

Howard’s coat closes with four large mixed brown 4-hole sew-through buttons from the waist up to the neck, where a chocolate brown suede shirt-style collar lays flat. Before he wears the jacket totally open, Arnie just keeps the top button undone, showing the charcoal woolen lining that covers the few inches on each side—inside the fly—before the rest of the brown quilted nylon lining.

Nearly a decade after they co-starred in Red Heat, Arnie is reunited on screen with Jim Belushi, now in the form of a lecherous, larcenous mall Santa.

The only external pockets are patch pockets over the hips, which each close with a single-button pointed flap. A swelled horizontal yoke extends across the chest and the back, and the set-in sleeves are finished with two ornamental cuff buttons. Swollen seams extend down each side from the back of the armhole, cut into short vents on the sides that Howard keeps fastened with a single button through a short pointed tab.

Howard hits the deck during a radio station scuffle.

Howard’s base layer is a long-sleeved mock-neck jumper in marled stone-colored knit fabric, possibly cotton or a more luxurious blend of cashmere or silk. The short mock turtleneck is narrowly ribbed.

One last twist comes during the post-credits epilogue as Howard—stripped down to his mock-neck and corduroys—realizes one additional (but important) gift he may have also forgotten!

Howard typically wears the mock-neck under a checked button-up shirt, a tasteful alternative to the traditional crew-neck undershirt or T-shirt. The roomy over-shirt is woven in a balanced red-and-white mini-gingham check cotton flannel, the brushed fabric marling the white.

This shirt appears to take its styling queues from classic mid-century sports shirts, with a sporty convertible collar that can be worn flat—as Howard does—or buttoned up to the neck, presenting as a spread collar. The swollen burgundy plastic sew-through buttons are fastened up a plain front (no placket), echoing the buttons closing each barrel cuff and those that fasten the flaps over the two patch pockets on each side of the chest.

This is turning out to be a pretty rough Christmas Eve for Howard.

While his absenteeism and workaholism may have marred his holiday reputation with his family, Howard at least incorporates Christmas colors into his wardrobe, tucking the red-checked shirt into a pair of rich olive green corduroy trousers.

The corduroy is a medium-wale tufted cotton, rising to Schwarzenegger’s natural waist where he holds them up with a dark brown woven leather belt that closes through a polished gilt single-prong buckle. Rigged with double reverse-facing pleats, the trousers have slanted side pockets, back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the full-break bottoms.

The Santas revolt.

Myron had also called out Howard’s “nice little suede shoes,” and—while he may have been accurate about the material—he was a bit off-base in dismissing Schwarzenegger’s size 12 shoes as “little!” The uppers are made from a chocolate brown sueded leather, detailed with a split moc-toe and contrast-stitched around all edges with beige thread. These derby shoes are open-laced with round brown laces and are secured to the hefty black leather soles via traditional Goodyear welt construction. Howard’s dark socks also appear to be brown, though the full break of his trouser bottoms often cover most of his shoes, let alone his hosiery.

Arnie kicks the gas of his GMC Suburban, but his advantage over Myron would be short-lived as the massive SUV would be an overwhelming force against the “little mirror” on Officer Hummell’s motorcycle.

As reported by outlets like GQ and Watch & Bullion, Arnold Schwarzengger approaches watch collection with the same energetic enthusiasm as his larger-than-life action roles, often taking a role in choosing the timepieces that dress the wrists of his characters.

In Jingle All the Way, he wears a stainless dive watch that has been identified as an Armitron Analog-Digital Diver, uniquely detailed with large luminous hour markers—clockwise against the black dial from 8 o’clock to 4 o’clock—and a single-line LCD display across the bottom. This quartz-powered watch has a narrow black-finished rotating bezel and is secured on a black ridged rubber dive strap.

Aside from the watch, Howard accessorizes only with a gold wedding ring… which he won’t have for much longer if he doesn’t get his act together!

Howard ends Christmas Eve with his regular tradition of completing the Langston family tree with a gold star on top.

Before the proverbial—and literal—gloves come off as his hunt for Turbo Man intensifies, Howard wears a pair of taupe-brown suede three-point gloves.

After the calamities that befell him and found him splitting a beer with a reindeer named Ted (yes, after his neighbor), Howard keeps on the marled mock-neck but now wears it under the flecked tweed overcoat he had worn the previous night. He ditches the whole outfit as he’s being changed into the Turbo Man costume, a process that also briefly shows that he’s wearing a white ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt and light blue boxer shorts.

What to Imbibe

Howard warms up with a cup of diner coffee, which he allows his retail nemesis Myron to lace with a generous pour of “Old Homestead Kentucky Whiskey”, a fictional bourbon label affixed to the pint carried in Myron’s pocket. The prop bottle would portend Jamie’s possible future—as a kid doomed without an expensive in-demand toy under his Christmas tree—as he lifts the pint to his mouth and drolly toasts “here’s to you, Dad,” in Howard’s imagination.

The two yuletide rivals briefly set aside their differences over some bourbon-laced coffee.

Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way (1996)

From his chore-like car coat to his two-pocket shirt and corduroy trousers, Howard Langston’s Christmas Eve garb presents as more elegant evolutions of classic work-wear, reimagined for the holidays in festive colors like his red-checked shirt and olive-green corduroy. Additional layers reinforce his warmth in the winter weather, like the mockneck base layer and the luxurious cashmere coat worn over all.

In addition to being a smart holiday-themed outfit, I also find Howard’s attire to be a relatively timeless and tasteful approach to casual dress!

The post Jingle All the Way: Schwarzenegger in Cashmere and Corduroy appeared first on BAMF Style.

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace in White Christmas (1954)

Vitals

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace, Broadway crooner and World War II veteran

Pine Tree, Vermont, December 1954

Film: White Christmas
Release Date: October 14, 1954
Director: Michael Curtiz
Costume Designer: Edith Head

Background

Merry Christmas Eve! One of my family’s favorite perennial movies to watch during the holiday season is White Christmas, the VistaVision that opened and closed with the iconic eponymous tune that Bing Crosby had introduced over a decade earlier in Holiday Inn.

Bing and Danny Kaye star as a pair of song-and-dance men—Crosby as crooner Bob Wallace and Kaye as comic Phil Davis—who find themselves unexpectedly spending the holidays in a quiet New England inn which coincidentally happens to be run by the popular general (Dean Jagger) who led their division during World War II. The holiday hijinks had commenced after the two were enticed to review a sister act at a Florida nightclub. Noticing the newfound sparkle in Bob’s eye when watching the older sister Betty (Rosemary Clooney), Phil engineered a gambit that found the two ladies indebted to them… as they all ended up on the same train heading to the wintry hamlet of Pine Tree, Vermont.

As Bob and Phil conspire to reverse the general’s misfortunes by bringing their boffo act to the inn, the reserved and responsible Betty finds herself growing closer to the similarly tempered Bob—also thanks to the conspiratorial urgings of Phil and her sister Judy (Vera-Ellen)—and a late-night stroll in search of a snack finds her sharing a cozy crooning session with Bob over sandwiches and buttermilk.

What’d He Wear?

Even in the most laidback moments, Bob Wallace embraces decorum while dressing throughout White Christmas, never seen dressed down in anything less formal than an odd jacket with an open-neck shirt or knitted polo. Venturing into the main building of the Pine Tree Inn, Bob pulls on a warm gray flannel jacket, likely tailored by his usual tailor H. Huntsman of Savile Row. (He later wears a similar gray flannel blazer, though that jacket visibly differs with its gilt buttons and sporty patch pockets.)

Bob introduces Betty to his theories linking ham, turkey, and liverwurst—well, maybe not liverwurst—to romantic dreams.

The single-breasted jacket blends American and English elements, respectively befitting Bing Crosby’s nationality and his Savile Row tailor. The Italian-influenced 3/2-roll button configuration had been popularized by outfitters like Brooks Brothers during the early 20th century in the United States, where it was elevated to an Ivy style staple by mid-century. The well-padded shoulders are another English tradition and, like the substantial breadth of his notch lapels, were also a predominant element of men’s tailoring by the 1950s.

The jacket’s single vent is characteristic of American styles, though the flapped ticket pocket—in addition to the straight flapped hip pockets—signals more English influence, though this detail would be co-opted globally over the decades to follow. The jacket also has a welted breast pocket, where Bing keeps his trusty pipe, and three cuff buttons at the end of each sleeve.

After reminding Betty to count her blessings instead of sheep, Bob rewards himself with a smoke while she extols his generosity toward General Waverly.

Bob wears a white cotton shirt with a spread collar, plain button-up front, and double (French) cuffs. There’s some incongruity in Bob wearing a French-cuffed shirt—complete with links, a pair of gold discs with blue stone faces—without a tie, but it’s possible he removed a tie he’d been wearing earlier in the day. Some sartorial gatekeepers might even say that French cuffs have no business being worn with anything but a full suit, so I can only imagine their horror at Bob’s choices.

Under the left cuff of his shirt, we spy Crosby’s personal wristwatch, the rounded gold case positioned on the inside of his wrist and secured to a tooled brown leather strap that closes through a gilt single-prong buckle.

Bob’s brown woolen trousers are likely the same slacks he’d sported with his powder-blue mini-checked sports coat in Florida, rigged with triple reverse pleats on each side, on-seam side pockets, and a self-belt that closes through a gilt-toned buckle.

The bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs), which ride high enough when seated to flash his bright scarlet socks. White Christmas establishes Bing as a champion of colorful hosiery, mixing up his more conventional browns and grays with yellows and reds. His derby shoes have a pointed moc-toe and appear to be constructed with dark cordovan leather uppers.

Bing flashes us some holiday spirit via his bright red socks, which nicely coordinate with Rosemary Clooney’s night-dress.

What to Imbibe

As Bob Wallace would advise, your midnight snack should depend entirely on what you intend to dream about:

Bob: We got New England blue plate or the Vermont smorgasbord. Not as flashy as Toots Shor’s probably, but I think you’ll find the price is right… tell me what you want to dream about, I’ll know what to give you. I got a whole big theory about it. Different kinds of food make for different kinds of dreams. Now, if I have ham and cheese on rye like that, I dream about a tall cool blonde. Sort of a first sacker type, you know. Turkey, I dream about a brunette. A little on the scatback side, but sexy, sexy.
Betty: What about liverwurst?
Bob: I dream about liverwurst.

Whether you’re eating turkey, ham, or liverwurst sandwiches, Bob recommends pairing each one with a glass of milk. “Here, grab the cow,” he asks Betty, referring to the pitcher of milk and introducing us to yet another unconventional Bing-ism that’s right up there with “weirdsmobile” and “Vermont volleyball.”

How to Get the Look

Bing Crosby as Bob Wallace in White Christmas (1954)

Bob Wallace’s serious demeanor and determination are consistent with his tasteful approach to dress, though he isn’t afraid to inject some subtly festive frivolity with the occasionally colorful accoutrement like the red socks that add holiday color to his otherwise subdued gray flannel jacket, white shirt, and brown slacks.

• Gray flannel single-breasted 3/2-roll tailored jacket with notch lapels, padded shoulders, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets with flapped ticket pocket, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• White cotton shirt with spread collar, plain front, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold-mounted blue stone cuff links
• Dark chocolate brown wool triple reverse-pleated trousers with self-belt, straight/on-seam side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Dark cordovan leather pointed moc-toe derby shoes
• Scarlet-red socks
• Gold wristwatch on tooled brown leather curved strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and have a very happy holiday!

The Quote

Makes a fellow feel a little shaky to hole up there all alone on one of those bleached chargers.

The post White Christmas: Bing’s Fireside Flannel and Festive Socks appeared first on BAMF Style.

Don Cheadle as Buck Swope in Boogie Nights (1997)

Vitals

Don Cheadle as Buck Swope, adult film star-turned-stereo entrepreneur

Los Angeles, Winter 1983

Film: Boogie Nights
Release Date: October 10, 1997
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Costume Designer: Mark Bridges

WARNING! Spoilers and gore ahead!

Background

Approaching the new year and the prospect of fresh starts, I wanted to revisit the modern masterpiece Boogie Nights and in particular one of its ensemble cast that I have always found most compelling: Don Cheadle’s performance as the well-meaning but oft-hindered Buck Swope, a former porn actor looking to build a new life with his wife and fellow ex-porn star Jessie (Melora Walters).

After his employment history interferes with his prospects to fund his entrepreneurial endeavor to open his own stereo shop, Buck encounters a reversal of fortune just two weeks before Christmas. We don’t know where the Swopes were off to in their station wagon on this pivotal December evening, but fate directs them into the parking lot of Miss Donuts on Sherman Way, not far from the crossroads of tragedy for others in his orbit, blocks away from where a desperate Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) had just been beaten, and just passed by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and “Rollergirl” (Heather Graham) in the limo where she suffered her own humiliation.

I love the tension hanging over the scene as the sweet-natured Buck picks out pastries for his pregnant wife as she patiently waits outside. After all, we’ve just seen the horrible, rock-bottom nights of his two former co-stars, and tragedy often comes in threes. When Buck slowly turns in response to that gunman storms into the café to the dulcet strains of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, tragedy seems inevitable for the most pure-hearted of Jack Horner’s coterie.

Indeed, tragedy does strike, but in an astounding manner that leaves Buck the last man standing… and better poised for the prosperity he so deserves. As his bloodied suit and bank history suggest, Buck will always carry the stains of his past, but at least he now has a leg up to position himself and his growing family for the future.

What’d He Wear?

Though down on his luck, Buck continues his pattern of dressing for the life he wants, manifesting success in his head-to-toe white suit and tie. Some argue that white is best reserved for summer, but southern California seems as good a place as any to rotate through one’s “winter whites”… though it’s a tricky fabric for a late-night cruller run where one runs the risk of ruining their bleached vestments at the mercy of a half-eaten jelly donut or the blood spattered by a gunfight between an armed vigilante and a violent thief.

Costume designer Mark Bridges explained to Clothes on Film that “the white suit on Buck was written in the script and was an inspired moment from Paul Thomas Anderson.” Bridges followed that direction to find an ensemble he would describe as “as early ’80s as possible”, making sure there would be multiples for additional takes after the white-suited Cheadle would be covered in arterial spray and brain matter.

Having emerged the unscathed survivor of a bloodbath, Buck considers his opportunity.

The lightweight white suiting presents a slubby texture, suggestive of linen or a linen blend. Though this lightweight natural fabric may be unseasonal for December, it would at least be more comfortable in a city like Los Angeles that reports an average high temperature of 73°F throughout the month. An unsophisticated dresser like Buck would be less concerned with whether or not white clothing was in season, focused more on how the clothes make him feel in that moment.

From collar to hem, Buck’s suit jacket reflects many excesses of ’80s fashion, as though he was trying to blend into a Duran Duran cover shoot. The lapels are uniquely shaped, consisting of a narrow collar around the neck like a shawl or roll collar, which is then sewn to the angular lower half of the lapel, creating the effect as if someone had cut off the top point of a traditional notch lapel. These lapels are folded over nearly the entire front of each side of the jacket, only tapering just a few inches above the short hem.

The red, white, and green Santas flanking Buck portend his future for the night; already clad in white, he’s soon to be doused in red… only to come away from the exchange with some unexpected green.

Buck’s jacket has a double-breasted configuration of four cream-colored plastic sew-through buttons, in two widely spaced columns, presumably designed so that only the lowest row could be fastened. The short hem doesn’t extend far beyond Cheadle’s hips, about as long as the ends of the sleeves, which are each finished with three decorative cuff-buttons.

The ventless jacket has padded shoulders and shallow welted hip pockets but no breast pocket.

Sifting through the blood and brains, note the unique detailing of Buck’s jacket, which falls short on his frame with the narrow-welted hip pockets offering relatively shallow storage compared to a more conventional suit jacket.

Buck wears a white cotton voile shirt with tonal self-stripes made somewhat more prominent against the semi-sheer ground. The shirt has a narrow point collar, front placket, and single-button mitred barrel cuffs. His narrow solid white tie is only somewhat wider than the tail, which hangs freely sans keeper loop or clip.

The suit’s matching white single-reverse pleated trousers have a lower rise, held up around the waistband with a white leather belt that closes through an elongated gold-toned buckle that’s rounded on one side and presents the only non-white aspect of his clothing, albeit subtly. The plain-hemmed bottoms break over his all-white leather cap-toe oxfords. Buck’s socks are presumably also white, as any other color would scream its contrast from his ankles.

Buck strides into Miss Donuts, perhaps considering the only threat to his clothing would be a dab of jelly squeezed out of a donut.

From what I’ve observed, Paul Thomas Anderson occasionally balances cynicism with hope, unafraid to bless some of his characters with happy endings… once they’ve earned them. As one of the purest-intended characters in Boogie Nights—if not the entire PTA canon— the sensitive and considerate Buck Swope emerges as a definite candidate to be put through the wringer to earn the elusive potential of a bright future.

Stepping into Miss Donuts, Buck looks almost angelic in his all-white vestments, soon sacrificing their purity (as well as some of his own) in the midst of an overpowering opportunity for Buck to trade some of his hard-maintained honesty for a long-deserved chance at success. The effect of the evening’s mayhem amplified by the contrast of the gore on Buck’s white clothing, PTA has finally if swiftly broken his proverbial cutie—in the parlance of TV Tropes—to allow Buck to earn his happy ending, once and for all.

How to Get the Look

Don Cheadle as Buck Swope in Boogie Nights (1997)

I wish we knew more about the Swope family plans for this fateful December evening that deemed Buck to pull this all-white ensemble from his closet… though we can be sure that he wasn’t going anymore after his then-trendy suit was doused in blood and brains.

• White linen ’80s suit:
  • Short double-breasted 4×1-button jacket with collarless lapels, welted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single reverse-pleated low-rise trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White self-striped cotton voile shirt with narrow point collar, front placket, and mitred barrel cuffs
• White skinny tie
• White leather belt with semi-rounded gold buckle
• White leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• White dress socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Speaking of PTA, I’m also looking forward to watching Licorice Pizza… has anyone seen it yet?

The Quote

How’s my little kung-fu fighter?

The post Boogie Nights: Don Cheadle’s White ’80s Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.