Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan assure their old acquaintance won’t be forgot among fellow New Year revelers as the eponymous leads in When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

Vitals

Billy Crystal as Harry Burns, sarcastic political consultant

New York City, New Year’s Eve 1988

Film: When Harry Met Sally…
Release Date: July 14, 1989
Director: Rob Reiner
Costume Designer: Gloria Gresham

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy New Year’s Eve!

One of my favorite romantic comedies, When Harry Met Sally… follows its two eponymous leads over twelve years of off-and-on friendship from their contentious meeting during a ride home from the University of Chicago up through a climactic New Year’s Eve party.

Several hours before the ball drops, Harry Burns is spending a lonely New Year’s Eve at home with Dick Clark and Mallomars, having all but ruined his friendship with Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) by sleeping with her at a moment of shared vulnerability… then awkwardly panicking to the extent that he alienates her, ruining not only their fledgling relationship but also their sincere friendship. Sally’s on his mind during Harry’s despondent stroll through the city, set to Sinatra crooning “It Had to Be You”, until he realizes that it had to be Sally and runs to find her at the party she was trying to leave.

After the dust settles, the kisses are shared, and the two are renewed by the promise of a new relationship in the new year, Harry returns to his neurotic nitpicking, this time at the expense of “Auld Lang Syne”:

What does this song mean? My whole life, I don’t know what this song means. I mean “should old acquaintance be forgot…” Does that mean we should forget old acquaintances or, does it mean that—if we happen to meet them—that we should remember them… which is not possible because we already forgot ’em!

What’d He Wear?

Billy Crystal’s on-screen wardrobe often reflects military outerwear repurposed as comfortable civilian dress, such as the field jackets seen in both Running Scared and When Harry Met Sally. The latter presents yet another military-influenced jacket for the final sequence, as Harry pulls on a sage-green CWU-style flight jacket.

The nylon-like shell was a flame-resistant compound known as Nomex, developed by DuPont in the 1960s. In response to learning that the nylon used to make its MA-1 bomber jackets was prone to burning, the U.S. Air Force introduced Nomex as the shell material for the new garments authorized as the “Jacket, Flyer’s, Cold Weather” for pilots beginning in 1972, as reported by Albert Muzquiz for Heddels.

Made from this innovative material that proved resistant to flames, chemicals, and certain degrees of radiation, the new design provided the foundation for two Cold Weather Uniform (CWU) jackets: the lighter-weight CWU-36/P and the more insulated CWU-45/P. The design would be colloquialized as the “MA-2” by the late 1980s when the Cobles Clothing Company reportedly introduced it to market their civilian streetwear variations of these jackets. Nearly a half-century after their introduction, the CWU-36/P and CWU-45/P remain the primary active duty flight jackets for both USAF pilots and U.S. Navy aviators.

Harry’s jacket appears to be a commercial variant of the lighter CWU-36/P, defined by the same details of the mil-spec jackets aside from the lack of a velcro patch over the breast. The front zip is backed by a storm flap that runs the length of the zipper from hem up to the shirt-style collar. As with the earlier MA-1, the cuffs and hem are made from a ribbed knitting that matches the rest of the jacket, and there’s a zip-entry pocket on the left sleeve, but the primary outer pockets are now two large cargo pockets with angled seams over the edges of each patch, covered by a substantial flap.

Based on how the jacket wrinkles over Crystal’s frame, we can deduce that Harry’s jacket is based on the CWU-36/P rather than the more insulated CWU-45/P, though even this lighter-weight jacket would offer plenty of comfort, warmth, and protection for a brisk evening stroll.

For an extra layer against the wintry chill, Harry wears the intermediate layer of a gray cotton crew-neck sweatshirt, which he appears to wear inside-out with the fleecy reverse side showing. This casual but comfortable-looking reversal considerably dressed down the outfit, making his already-informal outfit even moreso against the sea of revelers in their fancy suits and gowns.

Harry’s reversed-out sweatshirt under a Nomex flight jacket may not be consistent with the party’s dress code, but he’s unfazed as he makes his case to Sally.

Harry’s base layer is a cotton T-shirt, horizontally striped in black and marled gray with a black banded crew-neck and sleeves. As Sophia Benoit pointed out in her great ranking of Harry’s costumes, there may be some significance to Harry wearing the same T-shirt here that he had layered under his sweater and Army jacket on the pivotal night that he and Sally first slept together.

A subdued New Year’s Eve, complete with Mallomars (“the greatest cookie of all time”) and basketball.

Although Crystal had worn Levi’s in earlier scenes, these blue jeans don’t appear to have any of the hallmarks of the “Big Three” denim brands: Levi’s, Lee, or Wrangler. He holds them up with a brown woven leather belt that closes through a brass single-prong squared buckle.

Harry’s sneakers are all white, save for the blue lining that extends over the collars of each shoe. Small navy swooshes toward the top of each heel suggest that these may be the same Nike sneakers he had worn when he and Sally ran into his ex-wife Helen and the dreaded Ira while singing karaoke at The Sharper Image months earlier.

“This is good.” Harry catches up on his window shopping.

For more appreciation of Harry’s style in When Harry Met Sally…, check out Sophia Benoit’s GQ feature story, in which she ranked all 32 of Crystal’s costume changes in celebration of the landmark comedy’s 30th anniversary. She places this outfit at #10, though the stripped-down T-shirt comes in only at #25, commenting that “I can’t be the only one who thinks it might be A Thing that he’s wearing the shirt he wore over to her house when they hooked up because it reminds him of her!”

What to Imbibe

Mallomars.

How to Get the Look

Billy Crystal as Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

While I’d probably favor Harry’s mil-spec flight jacket, layered crew-necks, jeans, and sneakers for something along the lines of weekend errands, his functionally fashionable look has potential for low-key New Year’s Eve festivities if you swap out the sweatshirt for a dressier sweater and the sneakers for chukka boots.

• Sage-green Nomex CWU-36/P zip-up flight jacket with shirt-style collar, slanted-flap patch pockets, zip-up left-sleeve pocket, and ribbed-knit cuffs and hem
• Heather gray cotton crew-neck sweatshirt (worn inside-out)
• Black-and-gray horizontal-striped cotton short-sleeved T-shirt with black banded crew-neck and sleeve-ends
• Blue denim jeans
• Brown woven leather belt with brass squared single-prong buckle
• White sneakers

CWU-style flight jackets can be purchased with both mil-spec Nomex and less expensive nylon shells:

• Alpha Industries CWU-45/P Bomber Jacket (Heritage) in sage-green nylon (available from Alpha Industries and Amazon)
• Alpha Industries CWU-36/P Nomex Mil-Spec Lightweight Flight Jacket in sage-green Nomex (available from Alpha Industries)
• Genuine Issue CWU-36/P Nomex Summer Jacket in sage-green Nomex (available from Walmart)
• Mil-Tec CWU Flight Jacket in olive-green nylon (available from Amazon)
• Rothco CWU-45/P Flight Jacket in sage-green nylon (available from Rothco)
• TOPMAN Bomber in military-green polyester (available from YOOX)

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve… I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

The post When Harry Met Sally: A Nomex Flight Jacket on New Year’s Eve appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jared Harris as Lane Pryce on Mad Men (Episode 4.03: “The Good News”)

Vitals

Jared Harris as Lane Pryce, advertising agency financial chief

New York City, New Year’s Day 1965

Series: Mad Men
Episode: “The Good News” (Episode 4.03)
Air Date: August 8, 2010
Director: Jennifer Getzinger
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

Background

Even with the increasing adoption of hybrid and remote workplaces, there are still many returning to offices and cubicles for the first day of the new year, a specific occupational dread that provides a “welcome distraction” for at least one lonely Brit during the final act of “The Good News”, the third episode of Mad Men‘s fourth season.

The reserved Lane Pryce hadn’t been too popular at work following his introduction to the Sterling Cooper offices the past season, though he finally ingratiated himself to the partners by doing them all the surprising favor of firing them—and himself—thus freeing them to reorganize the agency as the independent Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

A year later, SCDP gives the impression to clients that it’s thriving, though the British bean counter knows better that “things are precarious, financially.” The Pryce marriage isn’t doing much better, as the “quite severe” Rebecca (Embeth Davidtz) yearns for dear old England while Lane increasingly appreciates his adopted home.

Thus, Lane finds himself alone at the start of the new year, bound to his desk with little respite aside from a “very large” sandwich. He’s surprised by the early return of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), who encourages him to abandon his desk for a Scotch-soaked day of movies, medium rare steak, and meeting Don’s “lady friends.”

What’d He Wear?

With the SCDP office presumably closed for New Year’s Day, there was little chance of Lane Pryce seeing his colleagues but the dignified Brit still dresses to his usual standard in a smart business suit, odd waistcoat, pocket square, and tie.

Lane is pleasantly surprised to find he’s not alone at the office when he looks up to see a dour Don darkening his doorway.

Lane is arguably a more interesting dresser than Don Draper, more willing to exhibit his personality through individualistic touches like odd waistcoats, brighter ties, and the occasionally fussy addition of a tie pin or watch chain. He also varies his wardrobe with more regularity, rotating through two- and three-piece suits, single- and double-breasted jackets, notch and peak lapels, and waistcoats of nearly every color, cut, and pattern. (In 2019, Brett White penned a fine retrospective appreciation of Lane’s singular style for Decider.)

For his day in the office—which becomes an evening out on the town with Don—Lane wears a dark navy worsted wool suit patterned with a gray pinstripe. The single-breasted, two-button jacket has notch lapels, a single vent, and three-button cuffs. The jacket also has straight flapped hip pockets and a welted breast pocket, which Lane dresses with a neatly folded white pocket square that he doesn’t bother to revitalize the following day.

The next morning, Lane has put himself back together, buttoning up his waistcoat and tying his tie, though he foregoes the ceremony of displaying his pocket square before his “walk of shame”.

This wouldn’t be the sole occasion that Lane wears this suit; I believe he also wears it for the surprising events of “Signal 30” (Episode 5.05) the following season. However, Lane’s habit of adding character to his costume via his contrasting waistcoats adds variety to his wardrobe. (We in the States have colloquialized these sleeveless garments as “vests”, but a dignified Englishman like Lane would surely refer to it as a waistcoat.)

Appropriate for the winter chill of a New Year’s Day in Gotham, Lane layers his suit jacket over a heavy tweed waistcoat, detailed with five black buttons and two jetted pockets. The coarse woolen tweed is a woven in a birdseye pattern, predominantly light gray but mixed with colorful flecks. Back in England, Lane’s decision to wear a sporting cloth like tweed to the office may have been considered inappropriate. Indeed, I believe it’s not until the fourth season that we see him “dressing down” for the office in less businesslike waistcoats in tattersall and tweed, embracing the looser atmosphere of the American business world after dissolving his ties from his British overlords in the previous season.

In fact, Lane shows little interest in maintaining the image of a dignified British businessman by this point in the series.

The navy pinstripe suit’s matching flat front trousers have belt loops, though Lane still relies on his English grooming sensibilities to forego a belt with a waistcoat. That said, there’s little to stop him from leaping up from his chair at the steakhouse, holding “this beautiful piece of American meat” over his groin and declaring “I got a big Texas belt buckle… yee haw!”

Likely held up with suspenders (braces), the trousers also have side pockets and are finished on the bottoms with turn-ups (cuffs), which break over the tops of his black leather wingtip monk shoes. These handsome dress shoes bridge the formality of oxfords and derbies, lacking laces in favor of a single strap over the vamp that closes through a buckle—in Lane’s case, a squared gold buckle. Post-series auction listings included several pairs of Lane’s size 10 screen-worn monks, invariably black Peal & Co. shoes by Brooks Brothers.

Lane’s Barnard-educated “date”, Janine (Elaine Carroll), invites him to continue their private party in Don’s bedroom, leaving Don and Candace (Erin Cummings) to make use of the living room.

Perhaps not feeling as jaunty as usual, Lane keeps his accessories minimal and utilitarian: his gold wedding ring on his left hand, despite concerns that his marriage may be over, and his usual tortoise-framed wayfarer-style eyeglasses, made by Bausch & Lomb as indicated in a post-production auction listing.

Lane’s white cotton shirt has a spread collar and double (French) cuffs that he fastens with gold ridged cuff links. Tied with a Windsor knot, his navy blue tie is patterned in an equestrian theme of small, scattered jockey caps and whips. Each little hat has a red-and-cream paneled crown, bisected through the front of the crown by a brown whip. (If one should want to get deep into sartorial significance, this could foreshadow his father—the man who fueled his and Don’s New Year’s Day depravity—later whipping him in the head with his cane.)

Despite their fortification with 25-year-old whisky, Lane and Don still wisely pull on their topcoats before venturing out for an afternoon movie and all their adventures to follow. Lane’s charcoal wool coat extends to above his knees, more closely resembling a “walker coat” than a full-length overcoat. The single-breasted coat has peak lapels, roped sleeve-heads, and straight flapped hip pockets. Lane also wears a woolen scarf in a burgundy, white, and navy shadow plaid with a navy overcheck and fringed ends.

We all have that friend like Don who suggests going to a movie and then scoffs at everything that’s playing.

What to Imbibe

As Don moves to tipple from Lane’s office supply, Lane produces a gift-wrapped bottle, explaining “I received something rather special from my father for my birthday.”

“What is it?” Don asks.

“Who knows?” Lane admits with a smirk, as he pops the cork. “He’s one of those alcoholics who thinks that he’s connecting,” he adds, pouring them each a large dram without realizing he may also be describing the man standing before him. Without meditating too hard on that similarity, Don raises his glass to meet Lane’s cin cin, registering his contentment. “There’s almost no…”

“…no bite at all,” Lane concludes with a smile, likely proud to have made an inroad with a colleague… even if it was via the toxic avenue that his own father so frequently explored.

Cin cin!

The screen-used prop bottle from “The Good News”, sourced from the ScreenBid auction listing in 2015.

I recall plenty of speculation about the brand of booze so savored by Lane and Don, though a prop auction following the series wrapped proved that this was one of the few instances where the Mad Men production team relied on a fictional brand. Prominently headlined with “Aged 25 years,” the label goes on to read:

This exclusive bottling is from one of the few remaining casks of the 1939 vintage and was selected by the malt master, Thomas Emslie.

A photo of the prop bottle later appeared on Reddit, presumably posted by whoever had obtained the bottle following the auction. As seen on the label, the math adds up as the whisky inside had been casked on May 16, 1939 and bottled June 5, 1964, almost exactly 25 years later and thus gifted by the severe Mr. Pryce to his son sometime over the last half of 1964.

How to Get the Look

Jared Harris as Lane Pryce on Mad Men (Episode 4.03: “The Good News”)

Having sided with his American partners by the fourth season of Mad Men, Lane Pryce relaxes his once-rigidly correct dressing for the office, pairing his worsted business suits with seasonally appropriate waistcoats like this birdseye tweed vest that adds character to his pinstripe suit and monk shoes for what could have been a dreary New Year’s Day at the office.

• Navy gray-pinstripe worsted wool suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton shirt with spread collar and double/French cuffs
  • Gold ridged cuff links
• Navy tie patterned with jockey caps and whips
• Light gray birdseye tweed 5-button waistcoat with two jetted pockets
• Black leather wingtip monk-strap shoes
• Dark socks
• Tortoise-framed wayfarer-style eyeglasses
• Gold wedding ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

The Quote

We’re not homosexuals, we’re divorced!

The post Mad Men: Lane Pryce’s Business Suit and Tweed Waistcoat on New Year’s Day appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jude Law in The Holiday (2006)

Vitals

Jude Law as Graham Simpkins, charming book editor and widowed father

Surrey, England, Christmas 2005

Film: The Holiday
Release Date: December 8, 2006
Director: Nancy Meyers
Costume Designer: Marlene Stewart

Background

Happy 50th birthday, Jude Law! The London-born actor has been frequently featured on BAMF Style before but today’s post offers a more practical look for those of us who aren’t regularly jaunting off the Italian coast or solving crimes in Victorian England.

In recognition of Law’s December 29th birthday landing directly between Christmas and New Year’s Day, it feels most appropriate on his milestone birthday to review his scarf-positive performance in Nancy Meyers’ yuletide romantic comedy The Holiday, which was incorrectly rumored this month to be receiving a sequel 17 years after its initial release.

For those unfamiliar, The Holiday centers around American movie promoter Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) and English columnist Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) who arrange to escape their respective holiday heartbreak by swapping locales via homeexchange.com, and—this being a Nancy Meyers joint—finding love in the process. While Iris lands the affable composer Miles (Jack Black), Amanda ends up with Iris’ “semi-respectable big brother” Graham, who drunkenly dashes into her life with a tan that defies what admittedly little I know about UK winters.

Amanda meets Graham several days before Christmas when he drunkenly shows up at Iris’ cottage in Surrey, a situation that may have been a “meet-cute” for 2006 audiences but would surely trigger red flags among scores of murderinos today. Though initially alarmed by his pounding at the door and asking to use the bathroom, Amanda quickly grows comfortable with the stranger and shares how she ended up staying in his sister’s cottage to try to assuage her holiday loneliness. After Amanda fears she’s overshared, she quips “I bet you’re glad you knocked on this door,” to which Graham earnestly responds “I am, actually,” and kisses her goodnight… a well-received risk that results in her impulsively asking him to spend the night.

What’d He Wear?

Graham had likely started his day dressed for work before it devolved into an evening at the pub, clad in a plaid sports coat and tie dressed down with jeans and layered under one of his requisite overcoat-and-scarf combinations. Though it’s only a relatively brief scene, we get a clear sense of his wardrobe as he strips down from being inside to crash on Iris’ couch as usual… and then to dress again the next morning after sleeping with Amanda.

This first scarf is arguably the simplest of Graham’s screen-worn collection, made from a thick charcoal wool that has significant pilled. While certainly functional, this scarf doesn’t make as much of an impression as the natty plaid scarf he would wear the following evening when hoping to run into Amanda at his local pub.

I’m particularly fond of Graham’s topcoat in these scenes, a brown Donegal tweed thigh-length coat with the colorful flecking characteristic of this Irish-woven woolen fabric. Other than its length, the flattering three-button coat is styled like a tailored single-breasted sport jacket with its “swelled”-edge notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, single vent, and set-in sleeves with roped shoulders and four “kissing” buttons on each cuff.

When Graham drunkenly slides out of his coat while getting to know Amanda, we briefly see his stylish wool sports coat, patterned in a black-on-brown glen plaid with a teal-blue graph overcheck. The single-breasted, two-button jacket has straight, padded shoulders, roped sleeveheads, and long double vents. Front darts shape the jacket into a handsome hourglass silhouette. In addition to the welted breast pocket, the hip pockets are slanted rearward with wide, rounded flaps.

The most unique aspect of the jacket are the skirted cuffs, which have a deep vent and wide gauntlets that each fasten to a single button in lieu of traditional cuff buttons.

Aside from the white shirt during the New Year’s Eve-set finale, Graham wears exclusively light blue shirts, both solid and in various stripes like the shirt he wears when he meets Amanda. This particular shirt is pale-blue cotton with stripes alternating between a narrow double set of burgundy track stripes and a hairline-width light-blue stripe. Fitted to flatter Law’s frame, the shirt has a spread collar, French front (no placket), and single-button rounded cuffs with additional gauntlet buttons.

Coordinating with his shirt’s track stripes, Graham’s dark burgundy silk tie is patterned with a neatly organized field of white pin-dots and tied in a four-in-hand that—given how he spent the first part of his evening—is already considerably loosened by the time he arrives at Amanda’s door.

Even with a jacket and tie, Graham typically wears dark indigo denim jeans, which he mentions are often battling hot chocolate stains thanks to his fatherly festivities with Sophie (Miffy Englefield) and Olivia (Emma Pritchard). As was fashionable through the mid-2000s when The Holiday was filmed, Graham’s jeans have gently flared boot-cut bottoms with full breaks that envelop his brown leather oxford-laced shoes… though we admittedly don’t see enough of them to know that they’re not boots. The footwear likely match his dark brown leather belt that goes unseen here but flashes a silver-toned square single-prong buckle in other scenes.

Graham wears a gold dress watch that has a gold dial detailed with non-numeric hour indices and sub-dials at the 12 and 6 o’clock positions, worn on a russet crocodile-scaled leather strap.

Having misplaced his contact lenses, Graham puts on his black-framed glasses the following morning, adding a dash of bookish sensitivity apropos this self-proclaimed “weeper” that indicate his increased vulnerability as he stumbles through trying to share his feelings for Amanda in the morning.

Law wore the FACE À FACE “Oscar” frame that reportedly garnered the French eyewear brand so many inquiries that they rereleased a limited run of 300 copies stamped with The Holiday markings along the inside.

What to Imbibe

Despite the fact that he’s returned from getting “inordinately pissed” at the local pub, Amanda offers Graham a drink (“Glass of water? Tea? Wine, maybe?”) to which he responds by pointing out a bottle of Raynal VSOP tucked among Iris’ Bombay Sapphire gin and Glen Moray whisky, requesting “Maybe there’s a bottle of brandy… fancy a glass?”

I’ve never tasted Raynal myself, but Total Wine & More describes this budget-friendly brandy as:

A blend of three eaux-de-vie sourced from the most famous French wine regions. Carefully handcrafted and aged in French oak to provide a smooth, velvety taste containing notes of almond and walnut. Long finish, with hints of candied fruit and ginger.

How to Get the Look

Jude Law in The Holiday (2006)

There are certain things I suspect Graham Simpkins can get away with because he’s played by Jude Law—for instance, spontaneously kissing a woman just minutes after you met her by drunkenly pounding on her front door—but a distinctive sport jacket should be on any man’s wishlist, incorporating an eye-catching design like Graham’s plaid as well as unique detailing like his button-down gauntlets. It may be just the panache you need to wear a jacket, tie, and jeans without looking like Jerry Seinfeld. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

• Brown-and-black glen plaid (with teal-blue overcheck) wool single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, wide button-down gauntlet cuffs, and long double vents
• Pale-blue track-striped cotton shirt with spread collar, plain front, and 1-button rounded cuffs
• Dark burgundy pin-dot silk tie
• Dark indigo denim jeans
• Dark brown leather belt with silver-toned square single-prong buckle
• Brown leather oxford shoes
• Brown flecked Donegal tweed single-breasted 3-button thigh-length overcoat with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button “kissing” cuffs, and single vent
• Charcoal woolen scarf
• Black-framed glasses
• Gold dress watch with gold dial on russet croc leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Utter honesty! Very refreshing…

The post The Holiday: Jude Law’s Brown Plaid Jacket and Tie appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ernest Borgnine and Stella Stevens in The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Vitals

Ernest Borgnine as Mike Rogo, a tough New York detective

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! Fifty years ago, the holiday was celebrated in spectacular fashion aboard the S.S. Poseidon, the fictitious ship at the center of “Master of Disaster” Irwin Allen’s Academy Award-winning 1972 blockbuster The Poseidon Adventure, based on Paul Gallico’s novel on the same name inspired by a journey on the RMS Queen Mary, the now-defunct ship where parts of the movie were filmed. Following the example set by the subgenre-establishing Airport two years earlier, The Poseidon Adventure gathered a group of a stars in a perilous situation that picked them off one by one, allowing its substantial advertising campaign to ask audiences “who will survive?”

Of course, before an undersea earthquake capsizes the aging ship just as auld acquaintances be forgot, its passengers are navigating their own personal dramas like “by-the-book” New York detective Mike Rogo (Ernest Borgnine), who continues struggling coming to terms with how his ex-prostitute wife Linda (Stella Stevens) had made her living before their marriage. His jealousies make their way onto the menu as the two are seated with Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) at the captain’s table for a New Year’s Eve dinner, but the broadside wave that literally turns their lives upside down plunges the Rogos and their fellow passengers and crew into a desperate adventure to survive.

Let’s hope your New Year is off to an easier start!

What’d He Wear?

Contrasted agains the staid dark suit and neutral turtleneck worn by Reverend Scott, Mike Rogo embraces the flashy festivity of New Year’s Eve in a burgundy silk dinner jacket, pink evening shirt, and black bow tie. Although colorfully coordinated tuxedoes dominated the tackier corners of 1970s fashion—if the powder-blue tailoring in my dad’s prom photos are any indication—Mike’s evening-wear features narrower details that suggest they were made through the late ’60s before the more excessive trends of the ’70s entered the mainstream.

Though the flashy color may not be for everyone, Mike’s burgundy silk dinner jacket is still flatteringly tailored for the burly Ernest Borgnine, with a narrow self-faced shawl collar that rolls to a single button positioned at his natural waist, though we never see Mike wear the jacket buttoned. The short length of Mike’s double side vents would also have been popular during the previous decade as vents grew generally longer in the ’70s.

The jacket has no breast pocket, and the straight jetted hip pockets are trimmed in the same black silk piping along the narrow turnback (gauntlet) cuffs detailing the end of each sleeve with their two buttons. Turnback cuffs are a neo-Edwardian detail that tailors resurrected through the 1950s and ’60s across a variety of styles from dressed-down sports coats to dinner jackets, as spied on Sean Connery’s first tuxedo as James Bond in Dr. No. Some regard turnback cuffs a sporty addition, making them particularly appropriate for Mike’s creative black tie ensemble.

Mike and Linda toast to the new year!

Mike wears a black bow tie in a straight batwing shape as was popular early in the previous decade and harmonizes with the narrower collars of his jacket and shirt, though he may lose some sartorial credit after the wreck when the unfastened tie hangs from his neck, revealing that it’s not only pre-tied but likely of the clip-on variety.

Mike Rogo may mock his wife for not wearing anything under her dress, but at least she’s not the one wearing a clip-on bow tie.

Mike wears a rose-pink cotton formal evening shirt that softly coordinates with his dinner jacket by remaining in the red color family. A classic white evening shirt could work just as well with a burgundy dinner jacket—and could be argued as the classier choice—but wearing a pink shirt indicates that Mike built his evening-wear with intention.

In spite of the trendy color, Mike’s shirt thankfully avoids some of the gaudier fashions of the era like ruffles or oversized collars. Indeed, the shirt’s slim spread collar is proportional with his jacket, also detailed with a narrowly pleated bib with four polished silver studs visible that match the cuff links fastening his double (French) cuffs.

To balance the colorful upper half of his black-tie kit, Mike wears the conventional black formal trousers detailed with black silk braiding down each side seam from the waist to the plain-hemmed bottoms. Mike’s suspenders (braces) are white silk with a tonal satin bar-stripe down the center, rigged with silver adjuster hardware and white leather back-patch and double-ears that fasten to the pairs of buttons along the inside of the front of the waistband and a pair on the outside of the rear center. In addition to the suspenders, Mike’s trousers are self-suspended with a set of button-tab adjusters rigged on each side of the waistband.

Though the aforementioned Mr. Bond often forewent the evening-wear tradition of covering his waist with either a waistcoat or cummerbund, Mike Rogo plays by the rules by sliding a black satin silk cummerbund around his waist, fastened in the back through an adjustable silver-toned buckle. “While shawl-lapel dinner jackets look elegant with either form of waistband covering, the cummerbund’s curved design harmonizes particularly well with this shape of lapel,” wrote the eminent Alan Flusser in Style & the Man.

When Reverend Scott suggests that the women in his escape party can’t climb up the fallen tree to the galley in their long gowns, Mike observes the potential issue if his wife disrobes as “she’s got nothin’ on underneath,” which she confirms by stating: “Just panties, what else do I need?”

For the sake of decorum, Mike—with a groan—yields his pink dress shirt to Linda for the duration of their escape attempt, stripping himself down to a white cotton short-sleeved undershirt with a V-shaped neckline that only gets deeper as the shirt gets wetter… and not in a way that would win Mr. Borgnine any contests at sleazy bars.

The Poseidon passengers’ fancy dinner clothes significantly devolve over the course of their attempted escape, with Mike protecting his wife’s modesty by giving her his pink evening shirt and wearing just his undershirt.

Mike wears the traditional black-tie footwear of black leather lace-ups and dress socks. His shoes appear to be cap-toe derbies, a tasteful but traditionally less formal alternative to oxfords.

Mike wears a simple stainless steel wristwatch with a plain round white dial on a black leather strap around his left wrist. On his left ring finger, he wears a hefty gold ring with a substantial red ovular stone that luckily doesn’t weigh him down as he swims through the ship’s submerged bowels.

How to Get the Look

Ernest Borgnine in The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Ernest Borgnine wears a reasonable execution of creative black tie for a New Year’s Eve at sea in the early ’70s, a festive situation that arguably allows the frivolity of a burgundy silk dinner jacket and tonally coordinated pink shirt, tastefully appointed with black formal trousers, cummerbund, suspenders, and black leather lace-ups.

• Burgundy silk single-button dinner jacket with narrow shawl collar, black-jetted hip pockets, 2-button cuffs with narrow black-piped gauntlets, and short double vents
• Rose-pink cotton evening shirt with spread collar, narrowly pleated front, and double/French cuffs
  • Silver shirt studs
  • Silver cuff links
• Black straight batwing-shaped bowtie
• Black darted-front formal trousers with black silk side-seam braiding, button-tab side adjusters, on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White silk tonal-striped suspenders/braces with silver adjuster hardware and white leather back-patch and double-ears
• Black silk cummerbund with silver-toned back buckle
• Black leather cap-toe derby shoes
• Black dress socks
• White cotton V-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round white dial on black leather strap
• Gold ring with large red stone

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Well, I had to figure out some way to keep you off the streets… until you’d marry me.

The post The Poseidon Adventure: Ernest Borgnine’s Burgundy Dinner Jacket on New Year’s Eve appeared first on BAMF Style.

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV (1985)

Vitals

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, two-time heavyweight world champion boxer

Krasnogorsk, Russia, Winter 1985

Film: Rocky IV
Release Date: November 27, 1985
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Costume Designer: Tom Bronson

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

“New year, new you” messaging seems to dominate the beginning of every January, and what character better embodies getting in shape than the Italian Stallion and his famous training montages?

The Rocky story famously began as a passion project for Sylvester Stallone, who became an overnight star after tenaciously refusing to sell the rights to the screenplay he wrote in three days unless he could play the lead role… resulting in an iconic sports drama that received ten Academy Award nominations and became the highest-grossing movie of 1976.

As Stallone’s stardom rose, he took directorial control of the series as well, evolving the Rocky series with a new sequel every three years until Rocky IV, when the stakes had grown so high that the scrappy Philadelphia boxer was now basically responsible for defending the very concept of American freedom against the Soviet Union, represented by the cold-hearted Russian champion and Army captain Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) who famously commented “if he dies, he dies,” after brutally clobbering Rocky’s respected rival Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) in the ring.

Apollo’s death inspires Rocky to surrender his world championship by challenging Drago, who agrees to an unsanctioned Christmas Day fight in the Soviet Union, selected to protect Drago from supposed American threats of reprisal. While the steroid-enhanced Drago undergoes high-tech training with state-of-the-art equipment, Rocky returns to his more modest analog methods with saws, sleds, split logs, and speed bags around his snowy secluded cabin in Krasnogorsk, located north of Moscow… though you may think it looks suspiciously similar to Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming.

Rocky receives the usual support from his gruff brother-in-law Paulie Pennino (Burt Young) and Apollo’s devoted trainer Duke Evers (Tony Burton) as well as unexpected emotional support from his wife Adrian (Talia Shire), who had initially protested the match.

Yo, Adrian, thanks for coming!

Rocky IV remains the only entry not to include an original score composed by Bill Conti, though a few of his beats can be heard in Vince DiCola’s score, including during the “Training Montage” track. In addition to reprising the Rocky III theme “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, the Rocky IV soundtrack produced the hit singles “Burning Heart” (also by Survivor) and “Living in America”, performed by James Brown to Drago’s hilariously increasing bemusement at the spectacle of American boxing.

Despite considerable criticism, Rocky IV punched its way to box-office success as the third highest-grossing movie of 1985 and the highest-grossing overall in the franchise. Stallone released a director’s cut in 2021 that somewhat rebuilt Rocky IV‘s critical reputation as it was considered an improvement on the theatrical release.

What’d He Wear?

The Shearling Jacket

Rocky wisely dresses for his freezing destination in a civilian bomber jacket made from heavy shearling, the venerated sheep or lamb hide that has protected wearers in cold climates since the Stone Age. Shearling is produced by tanning, processing, and dying the hide of a sheep with the wool still intact on the reverse side, providing a plush fleece often used as lining while the outer shell presents the tanned hide with either a grain or sueded finish.

As aviation innovation in the early 20th century took pilots higher and required heavier outerwear for colder air temperature, air forces around the world pressed shearling and its insular qualities into service, from the UK-developed Irvin flying jacket authorized for the Royal Air Force to the B-3 worn by American bomber crews during World War II.

Rocky’s waist-length sheepskin jacket incorporates styling details from both of these iconic jackets, such as the front-belted waist of the Irvin flying jacket and the slanted hand pockets found on the American B-3 flight jacket.

On Rocky’s jacket, the grain leather outer shell has been dyed to a dark seal brown like the American mil-spec B-3; the naturally beige piled fur reverse side lines the jacket and presents across the broad collar and around the edges of the cuffs and waist hem. The seams have been reinforced by strips of dark grain leather, seen around and down the set-in sleeves and criss-crossing on the back. The collar can be turned up and latched into place over the throat with a strap extending from the right side of the collar through a buckle presumably rigged under the left side of the collar.

The end of each sleeve has a zipper that can be unzipped to more easily fit the jacket over heavier layers, then zipped closed again for insulation. Three grommets under each armpit allow air to pass through to ventilate the wearer, which Rocky would have found particularly suitable during the rigors of his analog workouts.

Like its military forebears, Rocky’s shearling jacket closes with a straight front zipper, int his case brass with a brown leather pull tied onto the slider. As mentioned, a full belt also extends across the front of the jacket, positioned just above the waistline through a leather self-loop on each side. You can tell by looking at the belt buckles that more than one jacket was used; the primary jacket was made by the California company Golden Bear Sportswear (which uses the slogan “A Bear for Wear”) and closes through a squared brass single-prong buckle, while a secondary jacket has a more rounded, D-shaped buckle.

Warmly clad in his shearling bomber jacket, Rocky trains with saw and axe to organically develop the strength he’ll need to take down the Siberian Bull. Note the squared belt buckle of his more frequently worn Golden Bear jacket as he saws logs, while the jacket he wears while downing a tree with an axe has the rounded D-shaped belt buckle.

Stallone’s size 40 screen-worn Golden Bear sheepskin jacket was sold by Heritage Auctions in December 2015, with the listing including a personal anecdote from the actor, writer, and director:

I remember buying this jacket because I wanted it to represent the difficulty Rocky had training in Siberia, at such high altitudes. The jacket has a military feel and it was made for severe weather. It became an important story point because it represented how difficult Rocky’s training was in order to fight Drago. We were at about seven thousand feet in the Grand Tetons and it was freezing when I was doing the training montage, where I finally arrive at the top of the mountain and yell at Drago. Thank God I was wearing this coat or I woulda froze to death.

“Draaaagggggoooooooooo!”

Shop the jacket:

Many inexpensive copies of shearling jackets abound, often marketed as "sherpa" jackets with artificial fleece lining. In many cases, these can still be quality items (and in many cases, not), but true shearling sheepskin jackets are worth the investment.

---

The Champ Sheepskin Jacket from Cockpit USA

Cockpit USA currently offers two sheepskin bomber jackets resembling the Rocky IV coat, with the description for "The Champ" suggesting it was directly inspired by the Italian Stallion:

• Cockpit USA The Champ Sheepskin Jacket Z21C101 ($1,360 on Cockpit USA)
• Cockpit USA R.A.F Sheepskin Bomber Jacket Z2109 ($1,380 on Cockpit USA)

Price and availability current as of Jan. 5, 2023.

From Philly to Russia

The fall weather is more temperate when Rocky leaves his Philadelphia estate, his shearling jacket merely flung over his left shoulder until he gets to the limousine that takes him to the airport.

Rocky wears a soft cream-colored sweater, possibly cashmere, with broken tic-stitched vertical stripes spaced about two inches apart across the body and set-in sleeves. The sweater is accented by a wide ribbed taupe bandolier that slants down from the right armpit across the torso, running perpendicular to two more sharply diagonal cream-ribbed bands that extend down from the left shoulder.

Outside the sweater’s round crew-neck, Rocky wears the short gold necklace with the boxing glove pendant that first appeared in Rocky III (1982) but wasn’t explained in-universe until Rocky V (1990) when Rocky’s trainer Mickey Goldmill (Burgess Meredith) gave it to him, sharing that it had once been one of the real-life boxer Rocky Marciano’s cufflinks. According to a story Stallone shared in a Heritage Auctions listing for the screen-worn necklace, it actually did once belong to Marciano, who had given the pendant to Rat Pack comedian Joey Bishop, who—in turn—gifted it to Stallone in the late 1970s after being impressed by the first Rocky.

When not actively exercising or dressing in a suit and tie, Rocky typically spends Rocky IV wearing black gabardine double reverse-pleated trousers with on-seam side pockets, no back pockets, and straight-cut legs down to the plain-hemmed bottoms, perhaps best seen under the bright Vegas spotlights during the fatal Apollo Creed v. Ivan Drago match in Vegas.

He arrives in Russia with his feet adequately protected in a pair of heavy-duty black lace-up snow boots, constructed of vulcanized leather mid-calf uppers and heavy rubber soles with a narrow white band around the outsoles and lugs that provide traction in the snow and ice.

From the Keystone State to Krasnogourbinsk.

Rocky arrives in Russia wearing a soft paneled-crown newsboy cap woven in black-and-white that creates an overall gray effect, with the colorful flecks characteristic of Donegal tweed. He wore the same cap at the start of the movie, when his son Rocky Jr. (Rocky Krakoff) asked “where’d you get that hat?” to which his dad responded “a friend gave it to me, you like it?”

Rocky sports a pair of black leather gloves, presumably lined for additional warmth. Between the gloves and the substantial fur-covered cuffs of his jacket, we can’t see if Rocky wears any rings or watches. He also wears a gray scarf with super-soft fibers suggesting mohair, though angora and alpaca fleece are also possibilities.

Cold-Weather Training

Through the duration of his outdoor training montages, Rocky wears his shearling jacket zipped up over his invariably black workout gear. His intermediate top layer is a black cotton or cotton-blend pullover sweatshirt with a drawstring funnel-neck, like a hoodie without the hood. He appears to layer the sweatshirt over an off-white henley shirt and white thermal cotton long underwear.

Rather than the more fashionable peaked newsboy cap, Rocky keeps his head warm with a plain black ribbed-knit beanie.

Rocky works out in skin-tight black elasticized workout pants with a double black drawstring waist closure. The manufacturer can be identified by the gray chevron logo positioned over the left thigh, though I can’t discern who it is.

Rocky presumably tucks the bottoms of his workout pants into the tops of his boots, though his exercises in the heavy snow call for the addition of black polyester gauntlets around his calves that strap around the boots.

A Different Jacket

At the start of the movie, Rocky arrives home for Paulie’s birthday party wearing a similar waist-length brown leather jacket with a shawl collar faced in a beige fleece, over his black crew-neck sweatshirt, red-striped warmup pants, and white sneakers.

Rocky returns home at the start of the movie, excited to join his family in presenting Paulie with a birthday robot that he gradually falls in love with. When it comes to this part of Rocky IV, YMMV.
Note that he wears a brown leather jacket with a fleece-faced collar; whether this is a costume-related continuity error meant to be his later shearling jacket remains unknown.

How to Get the Look

Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV (1985)

When spending time in a place so chilly that it’s detrimental to Paulie’s sinuses, you’ll want a hardy outer layer from a time-tested fabric that will keep you warm and dry without sacrificing any of its own abilities to do so. Like generations of pilots who literally rose up straight to the top before him, Rocky relies on a sheepskin bomber jacket with military-informed details like a belted waist.

That said, sheepskin may not be the most practical workout gear for most people’s purposes… unless you’re training to fight a deadly boxer nicknamed the Siberian Express on his frozen home turf.

• Dark brown sheepskin shearling zip-up bomber jacket with beige natural fleece reverse side, broad collar with throat latch strap, brass zipper, full front belt, slanted welted hand pockets, and zip-back set-in sleeves
• Cream cashmere crew-neck sweater with V-shaped contrast ribbing
• Black gabardine double reverse-pleated straight-leg trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black vulcanized lace-up mid-calf snow boots with heavy lugged rubber soles
• Black-and-white Donegal tweed newsboy cap
• Dark gray mohair scarf
• Black leather gloves
• Gold necklace with boxing glove pendant

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I just wanted to get away from things, you know?

The post The Rocky IV Shearling Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Karl Urban as Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Vitals

Karl Urban as Kirill, determined FSB assassin

Moscow, Winter 2004

Film: The Bourne Supremacy
Release Date: July 23, 2004
Director: Paul Greengrass
Costume Designer: Dinah Collin

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

After Wednesday’s post about Ford v Ferrari, today features another Matt Damon movie… but instead focused on one of his co-stars. In the spirit of Friday the 13th, let’s check out the style of one of the unlucky assassins assigned with exterminating the elusive Jason Bourne.

The Bourne Identity was followed by The Bourne Supremacy, a sequel that borrowed the title of Robert Ludlum’s follow-up novel but scrapped mostly the entire plot in favor of following a new direction more in line with the cinematic narrative, aside from beginning with Bourne living relatively happily with Marie—whom he had met during the events of the prior installment—until he’s called back into action.

The movie brings Bourne back into the fray with Marie’s death, the victim of an assassination attempt meant to exterminate both of them. Her killer, Kirill (Karl Urban), is an operative of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who was independently hired by an oligarch to frame Bourne for an earlier attack and then take out the amnesiac agent himself. Once Kirill’s employer realizes the mission failed, Kirill is again ordered to hunt Bourne… a futile task, as a Paris safehouse full of dead CIA mooks can attest.

Naturally, Bourne gets the upper hand after an exciting pursuit through the streets of Moscow that results in the perhaps poetic catharsis of Kirill dying just as Marie did—in the driver’s seat of an SUV—though the slumped Kirill’s pained expression implies that he justifiably dies a slower, painful death than what he dealt to Marie.

What’d He Wear?

Like his target, Kirill dresses appropriately for the context of his missions, like a lightweight linen henley when hunting down Bourne and Marie in India. When chasing Bourne through the wintry streets of Moscow, he dresses in sleek, dark layers that enhance his lethal image.

Kirill’s Moscow look is anchored by a unique brown leather knee-length coat, every bit the prototypical “badass long coat” to compete with Bourne’s charcoal overcoat. The coat has four buttons extending from the neck to just below the waist, which is defined by a seam and covered by a full belt that Kirill lets hang loose throughout the sequence.

The two-button standing collar resembles that of a Harrington jacket, and the shoulders are each reinforced by a triangular piece of leather that flares out from the neck to the set-in sleeve tops. The sleeves are fastened with a long strap around each cuff that closes through a button, and the right sleeve has a flapped utility pocket on the forearm. There are four other flapped patch pockets on the front of the jacket: two over the chest, one on each hip.

Kirill in pursuit.

Kirill wears the same charcoal single-breasted sport jacket that he was likely wearing in the Moscow nightclub when Gretkov (Karel Roden) tracks him down again, the jacket providing an additional layer of concealment to cover the black shoulder rig holstering his Walther P99 under his left arm.

Under that, he wears a dark navy cotton zip-up hoodie, zipped up to mid-chest (and sometimes higher) and with the hood pulled out to lay flat over his coat collar.

Though he likely wears an undershirt, Kirill’s base layer is a brown V-neck sweater made from a soft-knit lightweight wool, likely merino.

Kirill wears very dark brown flat front trousers, conventionally styled and finished with plain-hemmed bottoms that break over the tops of his black calf leather derby-laced combat boots.

After wounding Bourne with a well-placed shot from his P99, Kirill follows Bourne’s trail of blood through a grocery store.

The Gun

Kirill carries a Walther P99, specifically a 1st generation model with a QPQ-finished steel slide that presents as a bright silver that contrasts with the black polymer frame. The recoil-operated P99 was introduced in 1997, featuring an internal striker rather than an external hammer, with a red-painted striker tip on the back of the slide indicating when the pistol is cocked. As a full-sized pistol, the P99 can carry high-capacity magazines with up to 17 rounds of 9x19mm Parabellum or 12 rounds of .40 S&W, though Walther offers expanded magazines that further increase the respective capacity.

Prior to the introduction of the 2nd generation variations in 2004, the same year that The Bourne Supremacy was released, the 1st generation P99 was exclusively a traditional double/single-action pistol with a decocker button on top of the slide, which would revert the pistol from single-action Anti-Stress mode back to a full double-action shot. This was reconfigured as the P99AS (Anti-Stress) with the development of the 2nd generation, which also included the new double-action only P99DAO and the Glock-style P99QA (Quick Action) variants.

The “QPQ” slide refers to Walther’s “quench, polish, quench” process that begins with a case-hardening nitrocarbonization, followed by polish, and finally an oxidization that results in a bright silver-finished slide.

Hardly inconspicuous but certainly determined, Kirill takes careful aim with his Walther P99 and hits Bourne in the shoulder, but the arrival of police—as happens when discharging firearms so publicly—disrupts his ability to score a fatal follow-up shot.

The Walther P99 was more prominently featured on screen at this time as James Bond’s favored handgun, beginning in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) when Pierce Brosnan’s 007 swapped out his aging and comparatively anemic .32-caliber Walther PPK for this innovative newcomer to the Walther lineup. This product placement continued through Daniel Craig’s double-O debut in Casino Royale (2006) until Quantum of Solace (2008), when Craig’s Bond evidently retired the P99 as he reverted to the more concealable and classic PPK.

Despite Bond always carrying all-black P99 pistols on screen, I remember a Bond-licensed airsoft pistol in the mid-2000s that was similarly designed, albeit with a duller gray plastic slide that hardly resembled the silver QPQ of a true P99.

Where to Get the Stuff

Karl Urban as Kirill in The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

Kirill’s leather coat may be a bit long for anyone who isn’t cosplaying Carlito’s Way, but I still appreciate the sleek yet rugged street-ready sensibilities of his leather-over-hoodie layers.

• Brown leather knee-length coat with fully belted waist, 2-button standing collar, four-button front, four flapped pockets, right forearm sleeve utility pocket, set-in sleeves with button-strap cuffs, and single vent
• Charcoal wool single-breasted 2-button sport jacket
• Dark navy cotton zip-up hoodie
• Brown merino wool V-neck sweater
• Dark brown flat front trousers with plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather derby-laced combat boots

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post The Bourne Supremacy: Karl Urban as Kirill appeared first on BAMF Style.

Keith David in The Thing (1982)

Vitals

Keith David as Childs, skeptical research facility chief mechanic

Antarctica, Winter 1982

Film: The Thing
Release Date: June 25, 1982
Director: John Carpenter
Costume Supervisors: Ronald I. Caplan, Trish Keating, and Gilbert Loe

Background

One of my favorite movies to watch in the middle of winter is The Thing, a personal favorite of its director John Carpenter, who celebrates his 75th birthday tomorrow. For The Thing‘s 40th anniversary last year, I wrote about its lead protagonist—helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady (Kurt Russell)—though there’s plenty of unique wintry wardrobe choices among the research crew of U.S. Outpost 31.

Keith David made his major film debut as chief mechanic Childs, launching his prolific career in a versatile range of movies from the serious likes of Platoon (1986) and Requiem for a Dream (2000) to comedies like There’s Something About Mary (1998) and The Nice Guys (2016), most recently appearing in Nope (2022).

The Thing begins during the “first goddamn week of winter,” with the arrival of a seemingly benign wolfdog targeted by a Norwegian gunman. Without knowing much about the animal, the American research team locks it up among the dogs despite canine handler Clark (Richard Masur) warning that “it’s weird and pissed off, whatever it is.”

What’d He Wear?

Ever since Daniel Craig pulled on a British Army-inspired navy N.Peal drawstring-neck jumper for his finale as James Bond in No Time to Die, there has been a noted renaissance for commando sweaters.

Woolen sweaters and jumpers had long been worn by fighting forces around the world, but this distinctive military style likely originated during World War II as the United Kingdom sought to outfit its SAS commandos in a rugged layer that could resist cold weather and hard combat conditions. To meet these goals, sweaters were constructed from a heavy wool, ribbed to fit the wearer’s physique (which was typically athletic, given their occupation) and thus avoid flapping fabric that could snag and become a hindrance or liability. For additional resilience, the shoulders and elbows are reinforced with tightly woven canvas patches that prevent both tears and friction burns when carrying equipment or shouldering rifles.

Nicknamed the “woolly pully” for obvious reasons (they’re made of wool and you pull them on), these hard-wearing commando sweaters ultimately crossed the Atlantic to be adopted by branches of the United States military.

Childs’ sweater appears to be U.S. mil-spec, dyed navy blue rather than the more familiar olive drab (OD) green. The ribbed sweater has a high crew-neck, though we can still occasionally glimpse the neck of his white cotton undershirt, and navy canvas patches over the shoulders and elbows.

For an intermediate layer of warmth and protection, Childs pulls on a blue puffer vest with seven silver-finished snaps up the front from the straight waist hem to the neck for full chest coverage that could classify the garment as a gilet. The large patch-style pockets at hand level on each hip have a slanted entry.

I believe Childs is the only member of the U.S. Outpost 31 crew to wear jeans. The indigo blue denim continues the cyanic color palette established by the rest of his clothing, and—while it can be discerned that they’re styled with the now-standard five-pocket layout—there’s little other indicators of who made his jeans, though the cut doesn’t appear to be Levi’s or Lee, leaving Wrangler as a possibility among the “big three” American denim outfitters.

The only significant non-blue elements of Childs’ wardrobe are his hardy hiking boots, constructed with russet-brown leather uppers and lugged rubber soles. The plain-toe boots are derby-laced with the traditional red laces through five sets of gold-finished eyelets and three sets of speed hooks.

Out in the snowy, below-freezing Antarctic winter air, Childs benefits from the warmth of a blue heavyweight nylon parka with a fur-trimmed hood and filled with polyester down. A storm flap extends out over the silver-toned front zip to keep out the wind and chill, and the fur-trimmed hood has a black woven drawstring that would allow Childs to pull it tighter over his head. Large squared bellows pockets over each hip close with a snap-down flap.

Though there are mil-spec parkas authorized by the U.S. military, Childs’ thigh-length coat lacks the slanted chest pockets and additional button-closure of the contemporary “scrub snorkel” N-3B and is likely just a civilian parka. (If you’re interested in a blue N-3B, Alpha Industries would be the place to look first!)

The term “parka” has been used for centuries, but it didn’t enter its modern form until the mid-20th century following the separate contributions of Australian chemist George Finch, American outdoorsman Eddie Bauer, and English designer George James that resulted in the standard down-filled parka. Light-wearing yet highly effective against the cold, down jackets emerged as a favorite for extreme-weather expeditions.

Childs further protects himself out in the snow with dark blue polyester winter gloves and a dark blue knitted wool hood that extends down the back to cover more than a traditional watch cap, though it lacks the front facial coverage of a balaclava. He also wears a large set of snow goggles with a powder-blue rubberized frame around the one-piece lens.

How to Get the Look

Keith David in The Thing (1982)

Aside from his conventional brown leather work boots, Childs dresses exclusively in blue, though the contrasting shades and textures of his snow gear, sweater, and jeans are more visually interesting than the typical monochromatic apparel.

• Navy ribbed wool U.S. mil-spec “woolly pully” crew-neck commando sweater with canvas patch-reinforced shoulders and elbows
• Blue puffer gilet with 7-snap front and slanted-entry patch pockets
• Blue nylon thigh-length parka with fur-trimmed hood, zip front with storm flap, and squared bellows hip pockets with snap-down flaps
• Indigo denim jeans
• Russet leather plain-toe hiking boots with 5-eyelet/triple-speed hook derby-laced closure
• Dark blue knitted wool hood
• Snow goggles with powder-blue rubberized frame
• Dark blue polyester winter gloves

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I just cannot believe any of this voodoo bullshit.

The post Keith David in The Thing appeared first on BAMF Style.

Warren Beatty as John McCabe in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

Vitals

Warren Beatty as John McCabe, enterprising gambler and pimp

Presbyterian Church, Washington, Fall to winter 1902

Film: McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Release Date: June 24, 1971
Director: Robert Altman
Wardrobe Credit: Ilse Richter

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

There are moments every January where I envy the idiosyncratic wardrobe of John McCabe, warmly swaddled in hefty furs as he trots into the humble hamlet of Presbyterian Church, Washington, scored by Leonard Cohen’s mournful baritone.

One of the most prolific pioneers of the “New Hollywood” movement that began in the 1960s, Robert Altman followed up his maverick success with MASH (1970) and his artistic experiment with Brewster McCloud (1970) by setting his sights on one of the most venerated genres in American cinema. Altman and Brian McKay adapted a 1959 novel by Edmund Naughton to deliver McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which the director would ultimately deem an “anti-Western” for its subversion of genre conventions and expectations.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller was filmed mostly in sequence during the last months of 1970 as fall turned to winter, just as it does over the course of the film’s narrative, with the set in British Columbia being built up to coincide with McCabe’s expansion of the fictional town on screen.

John McCabe was merely a gambler when he arrived in town, though he quickly capitalizes on his self-aggrandized reputation as a feared gunfighter to grow his leadership position in Presbyterian Church, including partnering in managing a brothel with the Cockney madam Constance Miller (Julie Christie), forming a business partnership that evolves into a romantic situation. Unfortunately, McCabe’s fame earns him the ire of a competing mine that often resorts to ruthless means to quash competition, including a trio of hardened bounty hunters led by Butler (Hugh Millais). “Never did fit in this goddamn town,” McCabe utters to himself as Butler’s gunmen arrive in Presbyterian Church, resulting in the film’s now-famous snowbound shootout that—like so much of McCabe & Mrs. Miller—defies Western gunfight traditions.

Despite an unenthusiastic initial response from critics and audiences, it had contemporary champions like Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael and resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Christie’s performance as the semi-eponymous Mrs. Miller. Time has been kinder to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, now regarded not just among the best revisionist Westerns but considered by some to be among the best films ever made.

What’d He Wear?

Outerwear: Coat, Hats, and Gloves

Arguably the most memorable aspect of John McCabe’s wardrobe is the comically massive fur coat he wore for his arrival in Presbyterian Church and many subsequent scenes. The knee-length coat is a soft, light brown fur—perhaps bearskin, as opposed to the sealskin coat that McCabe admires draped around his business rival Eugene Sears (Michael Murphy). The coat is loosely and unevenly structured, more a swath of furry hide than tailored outerwear, with only the grand monastic sleeves and the addition of a somewhat darker fleece hood suggesting that it’s been adapted for human use.

Production still of Warren Beatty in McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

McCabe wears plain dark brown leather gloves that extend no farther back than his wrists.

McCabe raises a gloved hand to tip his hat as he rides into Presbyterian Church.

McCabe arrives in Presbyterian Church wearing an all-black felt derby hat, a style characterized by its round crown. The hat originated in London, where it was designed in 1849 by hatmakers Thomas and William Bowler, hence it being known predominantly as a “bowler hat” in England.

Despite its English origins, the bowler grew quickly popular across the pond to the degree that Lucius Beebe cited it as “the hat that won the West” due to its predominance in the American West.

McCabe had extracted his derby hat from the pouch on his saddle before doing business, which in this cases consists of negotiating the cost of three additional prostitutes from the town of Bearpaw. “$80 for a chippy? I can get a goddamn horse for $50.”

As McCabe establishes his leadership of the town, he adopts a new dark brown derby hat to replace the black one. This hat follows the same design and even has a black grosgrain band and edge trim.

As the snow falls, McCabe pokes his head around the corner of the church just in time to watch Butler draw first blood by blasting the shotgun-toting Reverend Elliot with his own shotgun.

Brown Frock Coats

McCabe cycles through two similarly styled brown frock coats over the course of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, beginning with one differentiated by its widely tufted woolen fabric (like a thick-waled corduroy) and narrow shoulders with significantly roped sleeveheads, reflecting period fashions.

Though it echoes similar design elements like the cutaway-style front and tails in the back with two decorative buttons at the waist, McCabe’s frock coat has a shorter length that’s consistent with the “lounge suit” jackets that were gradually becoming the norm in daily menswear. The single-breasted, three-button jacket has short peak lapels with swelled edges, a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and sleeves finished with two-button cuffs.

McCabe guides Mrs. Miller through Presbyterian Church’s muddy thoroughfare.

At the same time when McCabe debuts his new brown bowler hat, he has also evidently swapped out his jacket for another brown frock coat that—aside from its wider shoulders, smoother and lighter fabric, and three-button cuffs—follows generally the same design as his previous coat.

Since this frock coat only appears through the second half of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which we know Altman generally filmed in sequence, it’s possible that the first jacket was either ruined or misplaced at one point during the production and needed to be swiftly replaced by a relative lookalike. Or perhaps we’re just meant to understand that John McCabe is a fan of brown frock coats who fills his limited closet accordingly!

Shirts and Ties

McCabe rotates through a trio of shirts in varying degrees of formality. He arrives wearing a plain white cotton dress shirt with a front placket and two-button barrel cuffs. Per the standard practice for most men’s dress shirts in this era, the shirt itself is collarless with a neckband to which a detachable collar like McCabe’s stiff and sharp white wing collar could be attached, with brass studs in the front and black keeping the collar in place.

McCabe’s usual neckwear is a unique black satin silk cravat with a very short blade that extends just a few inches from his neck. The cravat is of the pre-tied variety, with its silver-toned metal clip visible from the back due to the exposed nature of the wing collar. Despite its almost comically short length, McCabe dresses the tie with a pearl stickpin.

In his stiff white wing collar and silk cravat, McCabe looks every bit the dandy compared to the hardscrabble denizens of Presbyterian Church.

McCabe’s second dress shirt is irregularly striped in pink and lilac against the white ground, though the neckband and two-button barrel cuffs are a contrasting solid white.

Wearing his pink-striped shirt, McCabe presses his teeth into service while evidently trying to mend a thread on his white shirt.

McCabe accessorizes the pink-striped shirt with both his usual short pointed black cravat as well as a now-conventional black four-in-hand tie, worn most prominently as he drunkenly stumbles through his initial meeting with Eugene Sears.

Finally, McCabe dresses down in a more utilitarian dark brown flannel shirt with an attached turndown point collar and a plain front that he buttons up to the neck.

Everything Else

McCabe wears a dark gray woolen waistcoat (vest), fastened with five black recessed buttons that close between the narrow notch lapels and the straight-cut bottom. The waistcoat has four jetted pockets, and McCabe keeps his gold pocket watch in one of the lower pockets, attached to a gold flat-link chain that droops across his mid-section to the fob in the opposing pocket.

McCabe regularly wears black-and-gray cashmere-striped “spongebag” trousers, a style now predominantly associated with old-fashioned morning dress. The “cashmere” nomenclature refers specifically to the specific track-stripe pattern rather than the fabric, which would have likely been wool.

When properly worn, these flat front trousers rise to Warren Beatty’s natural waist-line, where double sets of buttons around the outside of the waistband can be attached to suspenders (braces). McCabe holds up the trousers with wide cloth suspenders striped in black, tan, and white. The trousers have gently slanted “quarter-top” side pockets and jetted back pockets with a button-tab on the back left pocket. They are cut straight through the legs down to plain-hemmed bottoms.

A knife-wielding prostitute outside diverts McCabe’s attention from Sheehan’s attempt to negotiate a partnership with him.

McCabe wears black leather boots with tall shafts appropriate for riding and, as more of a city slicker than a cowboy, they have lower heels and less ornate shafts that remain covered by his trousers.

Befitting his reputation as a fearless gunfighter, McCabe responds to threats on his life by strapping a dark brown edge-stitched leather gun belt, his distinctive Gasser revolver holstered on the right side, with the requisite cartridge loops extending around the belt. As was the case for heavy-duty gun belts, the belt itself consists of a wide swath of leather that overlaps around the front of the waist, where a thinner overlaid strap buckles through a tall silver-toned single-prong buckle.

As McCabe dresses to get into bed with Mrs. Miller, we see that he wears an ivory cotton union suit, the full-length underwear that was most popular for men through the late 19th century into the early 20th century. McCabe’s long underwear lacks the “crap flap” on the back that allowed the wearer to relieve themselves without needing to fully disrobe.

“Once in a while, if you’d just learn to trust me, Constance… everything is going to be a lot easier. You’ll find that out.” McCabe celebrates his perceived success with Sears and Hollander by undressing to share a bed with Mrs. Miller, though she still asks him to pay for the privilege.

For the snowy final act, McCabe swaps out his fur coat for a dark oilskin slicker that serves more practical purposes and offers him significantly more mobility for the gunfight. Oilskin was a relatively new development at the time, pioneered in 1898 by a New Zealand sailor Edward Le Roy who painted old sailcloth with linseed oil and wax (hence “oilskin”) to produce a waterproof layer to be worn during rough weather at sea.

McCabe’s long oilskin coat extends nearly to his ankles, with four silver-toned hook latches between the neck and waist to close the front, similar to those on firemen’s jackets and would be later adopted for U.S. Navy deck jackets during World War II. The collared coat has raglan sleeves that smoothly slip over his hefty frock coat, and the back has a storm flap and single vent.

While his distinctive bearskin fur coat may have been warm, the oilskin allows McCabe a greater range of movement when darting through the snow-covered alleys and bridges of Presbyterian Church while fighting for his life.

The Guns

Montenegrin Gasser Revolver

“Say, do you know what kind of gun that was? That was a Swedish gun,” Sheehan’s patrons gossip of the newly arrived John McCabe at the start of the movie. While the low-rent denizens of Presbyterian Church are accurate that his European-made revolver wasn’t one of the Colt, Remington, or Smith & Wesson six-shooters they’d be familiar with, the distinctive revolver holstered in McCabe’s gun belt is actually an Austrian design.

“The final years of the 19th century saw innovations in the way pistols and revolvers were designed,” summarizes The Complete World Encyclopedia of Guns by Will Fowler, Anthony North, Charles Stronge, and Patrick Sweeney. “Among them were firearms made by Leopold Gasser who operated factories across Europe, which reputedly turned out 100,000 revolvers annually in the 1880s and 1890s.”

McCabe carries a Gasser M1880, also known as a “Second Pattern Montenegrin” in tribute to its Balkan target market. The weapon evolved from the original open-framed Gasser M1870 that had been adopted by the Austro-Hungarian military in August 1870. The Gasser M1870 had a gate-loading mechanism to load the cylinder with up to six rounds of the formidable 11.25×36mmR centerfire cartridge that was developed three years earlier for the Model 1867 Früwirth repeating carbine.

Gasser continued refining the design through the decades to follow, including a swing-out cylinder in the M1873 and M1870/74 models that was easier to load but reduced the capacity to five rounds. The M1870/74 was the first Gasser to be nicknamed the “Montenegrin”, a moniker that continued to the development of the Gasser M1880. This “Second Pattern Montenegrin” Gasser M1880 differed from its predecessors with its top-break mechanism that made it even easier to load than the swing-out variations. “A star-shaped automatic ejector [pushed] cartridges out of the cylinder when the barrel was tipped down for reloading,” described Martin J. Dougherty in Small Arms Visual Encyclopedia.

The break-top “Second Pattern Montenegrin” Gasser M1880 can be differentiated from the previous M1870/74 “Montenegrin Gasser” by the hinge in front of the cylinder and the addition of a top-strap that both allow the top-break functionality.

The weapon’s history grows more complex in 1910, when King Nicholas I of Montenegro decreed that all male citizens were thus members of a national militia with not only the right but a duty to own at least one Gasser Pattern revolver. While it makes sense that a Balkan country would be so focused on national defense in the “powder keg” era leading up to World War I, it was also rumored that the king’s partial ownership in Leopold Gasser Waffenfabrik may have significantly influenced his specific stipulation. That said, the immediate demand placed on Leopold Gasser resulted in the Austrian manufacturer needing to outsource production of the “Montenegrin Gasser” pattern revolver to other European firms, most often in Belgium and Spain, resulting in a wide range in operational quality from excellent to dangerous and significant differentiations like barrel lengths, five- vs. six-round cylinders, or single- vs. double-action triggers.

“The revolvers became status symbols among the Montenegrin population,” wrote Phillip Peterson for Gun Digest, and the variety of cottage companies churning out Montenegrin Gassers allowed owners to modify their appearance to their specific taste, including silver and gold inlay on the engraved frames or finishing the distinctively rounded “broomhandle” grips in ivory or bone.

McCabe’s bone-handled Montenegrin Gasser was likely produced at some point during the 1910s after King Nicholas’ proclamation, making it slightly anachronistic for the turn-of-the-century setting, though this pattern had existed since 1880 and it could be argued that an eccentric like McCabe may have made his own modifications to a period-correct revolver to further his reputation as a gunfighter.

Fortified by yet another raw egg dropped into whiskey, McCabe braces for his last stand with his Montenegrin Gasser in hand.

The Derringer

After McCabe’s unsuccessful attempt to negotiate with Butler upon their first meeting, Patrick Sheehan (René Auberjonois) assures Butler of McCabe’s killer reputation by telling that he shot Bill Roundtree “with a derringer,” prompting Butler to respond “That man? That man never killed anybody…”

In a twist of delicious irony, McCabe uses his dying energy to kill Butler by shooting him with a derringer. The term emerged in the 1860s after it was widely reported that John Wilkes Booth had killed President Lincoln with a Deringer, at that time a specific brand of muzzle-loaded single-shot .41-caliber pocket pistol that had been manufactured by Henry Deringer of Philadelphia since 1825. Like “Kleenex” and “Xerox”, the misspelling “derringer” became a synecdoche for easily concealed pocket pistols that widely varied in design, including two- and four-barrel models by Remington and Sharps (respectively) that shared little in common with the single-barrel Deringer.

The small size of derringers made them popular backup or “holdout” weapons in the old west, particularly associated with gamblers like McCabe who may have been dissuaded or disallowed from wearing their guns to a game but would need a quick means of defense when accused of cheating. The derringer that McCabe produces while covered in snow has a silver-toned frame and a single barrel, similar to the Colt Theur and Iver Johnson Eclipse models that were produced through the second half of the 19th century.

Downed by a mighty blast from Butler’s large-bore long gun, McCabe surprises the killer by quickly raising his derringer and making efficient use of its single shot to dent Butler’s forehead.

The Shotgun

While anticipating the confrontation against Butler’s gunmen, McCabe takes a long double-barreled shotgun to the church, stashing it when he ascends to look out on the town from the steeple. He climbs back down to find the shotgun in the hands of Reverend Elliot (Corey Fischer), who protests that “this is a house of God!”

“Uh, that there’s my shotgun… could I have it please?” McCabe meekly asks. In response, Elliot cocks both exposed hammers and raises the shotgun, demanding that McCabe “get out!” The mixup proves briefly fortuitous for McCabe, who escapes just as Butler kicks in the door and—mistaking the shotgun-toting reverend as an enemy combatant—immediately blasts him, naturally causing the dead Elliot to drop his oil lamp and start a fire that burns in the background of the ensuing chase.

What to Imbibe

“Uh, I’ll just have my double whiskey and a raw egg,” McCabe orders from saloonkeeper Sheehan, though he also drinks plenty of straight rye without mixing the egg in. If you’re curious about McCabe’s go-to whiskey brands, the most common label appears to be the fictional “Jonathan Collier” brand that also appeared in Westerns like 3:10 to Yuma (1957), How the West Was Won (1962), 5 Card Stud (1968), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), True Grit (1969), Unforgiven (1992), and the first episode of the Black Hills-set series Deadwood, as well as the noir Criss Cross (1949).

McCabe’s trademark drink seems like a waste of an egg, especially these days when eggs would probably be more expensive than whiskey! However, the combination has a long tradition as a “hair of the dog” hangover cure known as an Amber Moon, albeit often with the addition of Tabasco sauce for taste as prominently seen when the dutiful butler Beddoes (John Gielgud) arrives with his murdered master’s Amber Moon “pick-me-up” in the 1974 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. McCabe foregoes McIlhenny’s famous Louisiana hot sauce, simply drinking a raw egg dropped into double shots of whiskey.

Eggs? In this economy?

McCabe frequently smokes stogies pulled from his frock coat’s breast pocket, identified by the box in his room as Marsh Wheeling, a product of M. Marsh & Sons cigar company.

Mifflin M. Marsh started his business in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1840, making it the oldest cigar manufacturing company founded in the United States. The National Road had arrived in Wheeling more than 20 years earlier, linking the Ohio River to the Potomac and establishing the city—then still part of the Commonwealth of Virginia—as a major transportation hub. Marsh reportedly capitalized on this location and found early success peddling his cigars to many frontiersmen, merchants, and settlers who were traveling west on wagons and steamboats during this age of western expansion.

Eight years into his business, Marsh developed the now-iconic Marsh Wheeling Stogie, a longer and thinner alternative to traditional cigars that measured seven inches long with a 34-ring gauge. Marsh named his new products “stogies” in tribute to the Conestoga wagons that carried many of his new customers west. Already affordable at less than a penny a piece, Marsh ensured that he would develop a customer base by liberally distributing free samples of his product, including issuing free stogies to Union soldiers during the Civil War. (When the Civil War began in 1861, Wheeling was part of the Confederacy in Virginia, though West Virginia split from its home state in 1863 to be admitted to the Union.)

Marsh Wheeling Stogies emerged as a favorite among smokers like P.T. Barnum, Abraham Lincoln, Annie Oakley, Mark Twain, John Wayne, and Ulysses Grant, who smoked up to twenty per day according to Frank Seltzer for Smokeshop Magazine.

McCabe bites off the end of one of his many Marsh Wheeling stogies.

How to Get the Look

Warren Beatty as John McCabe in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

John McCabe cuts a distinctive figure in the small mining town of Presbyterian Church, not just for his city dude duds of a frock coat, striped trousers, wing collar, and tie, but also the hefty hooded fur coat that keeps him warm in the wintry climate of the Pacific Northwest.

• Brown bearskin fur knee-length hooded coat
• Dark brown wool single-breasted 3-button frock coat with short peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and tails with decorative 2-button back
• White or pink/lilac-striped cotton neckband shirt with front placket and white contrasting 2-button barrel cuffs
  • White stiff wing collar
• Black satin silk short-pointed cravat
  • Pearl stickpin
• Charcoal wool single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with narrow notch lapels, four jetted pockets, and straight-cut bottom
  • Gold pocket watch on gold flat-link chain
• Black, gray, and white “cashmere”-striped wool flat-front “spongebag” trousers with waistband suspender buttons, quarter-top side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black, tan, and white-striped cloth suspenders
• Black leather riding boots
• Ivory cotton full-length union suit underwear
• Black or dark brown felt derby hat with black grosgrain band and edges
• Dark brown leather gloves
• Dark brown leather gunbelt with ranger-style buckle and cartridge loops

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass so much.

The post Warren Beatty in McCabe and Mrs. Miller appeared first on BAMF Style.

Colin Farrell as Ray in In Bruges (2008)

Vitals

Colin Farrell as Ray, conflicted contract killer

Bruges, Belgium, Winter 2007

Film: In Bruges
Release Date: February 8, 2008
Director: Martin McDonagh
Costume Designer: Jany Temime

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Shortly thereafter, the instructions came through: “Get the fook out of London youse dumb fucks. Get to Bruges.” I didn’t even know where Bruges fuckin’ was. It’s in Belgium.

Despite it being directly up my alley, I somehow went 15 years without seeing In Bruges, Martin McDonagh’s critically acclaimed hit that opened the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. For his performance as the exiled hitman Ray, Colin Farrell received his first Golden Globe Award for In Bruges, fifteen years before winning his second this year for his performance in The Banshees of Inisherin, which re-teamed him with McDonagh and co-star Brendan Gleeson and also landed Farrell his first Academy Award nomination as announced this morning.

Following a botched first job in which he assassinates a priest and, tragically, a young boy in the path of one of his bullets, the inexperienced and irritable Ray is sent with his good-natured and literal partner-in-crime Ken (Brendn Gleeson) to Bruges, where they’re to lay low and await further instructions from their profane boss Harry Waters (Ralph Fiennes). Much to Ray’s particular dismay, the only available accommodation is a shared twin hotel room as the rest of the “shithole” berg is fully booked for Christmas.

Wracked with guilt from the boy’s death, Ray grows on Ken’s nerves as “the worst tourist in the world,” though he grows more genial after downing a few beers—specifically, six pints and seven bottles—and striding onto a Dutch film set where he makes a date with the charming Chloë Villette (Clémence Poésy).

“I shoot people for money,” Ray confesses during their first dinner date, “priests, children… you know, the usual.” His cheeky tone may suggest to Chloë that he’s joking, but she’s equally transparent when she immediately reveals that her role on the film set consists of selling hard drugs to the crew. It’s only the first of several revelations over the course of the unorthodox date, as he later describes to Ken:

My date involved two instances of extreme violence, one instance of her hand on my cock and my finger up her thing, which lasted all too briefly—isn’t that always the way?—one instance of me stealing five grams of her very high-quality cocaine, and one instance of me blinding a poofy little skinhead… so, all in all, my evening pretty much balanced out fine.

Before their cocaine binge with a race war-obsessed dwarf actor (Jordan Prentice) and a duo of prostitutes, Ken receives the long-awaited call from Harry who explains the true purpose of their reason to Bruges: eliminating Ray.

What’d He Wear?

Unlike his voluble companion Ken who rotates through a few tasteful suits and sport jackets, Ray never changes his clothing through the duration of In Bruges, aside from a few variations in how he wears his shirt.

Ray’s wardrobe is anchored by a thigh-length topcoat in a wide-scaled black-and-gray herringbone woolen tweed that presents an overall charcoal finish. It’s a warm enough layer, though perhaps not enough for winter in Belgium, as Ray often sinks himself into the buttoned-up coat, visually representing how over his head he is as a novice hitman.

Ray doesn’t share Ken’s enthusiasm for observing Bruges from its chilly canals.

The single-breasted coat has padded shoulders, a single vent, and notch lapels with dark blue felt around the undercollar. There are three flat black buttons up the front to close the jacket—which Ray wears both fully open and fully closed—which match the single button that closes the semi-strap around the cuff of each sleeve. The side pockets are widely welted and on a gentle slant that keeps them from being totally vertical.

Nor does Ray share Ken’s enthusiasm for being forgiving of their fellow tourists.

Ray wears a distinctive ice-white cotton shirt by DKNY, printed in what the Prop Store calls “a jazzy pattern of black geometric shapes” against a subtle tonal texture, all “a bit over-elaborate” just as Ray had described their hideout situation. The spread-collared shirt has a front placket and barrel cuffs that each fasten with white buttons.

It’s no Dan Flashes, but DKNY showed that they could still make a hell of a complicated pattern.

Ray’s undershirt is a long-sleeved henley in pale-ecru cotton, with a five-button top that closes over a slate track-striped inner placket.

Ray makes a date with Chloë. When joining her for dinner the following evening, he would dress the same but forego the henley undershirt.

With just a few exceptions, I associate solid black suits with death, either worn to funerals or by movie hitmen. Ray is obviously the latter, running through Bruges in a black suit made from a gently napped lightweight cloth that’s prone to wrinkling.

The single-breasted suit jacket has a two-button front, which Ray typically wears undone but wears fully fastened when he also uncharacteristically buttons his shirt to the neck in preparation for his aborted suicide attempt. The jacket has notch lapels with pick stitching, padded shoulders, four-button cuffs, a welted breast pocket, and straight flapped hip pockets.

“A great day this has turned out to be. I’m suicidal, me mate tries to kill me, me gun gets nicked, and we’re still in fookin’ Bruges!”
The playground setting makes Ray look even more the chastened schoolchild after Ken prevents him from committing suicide with the revolver he stole from Chloë and her skinhead ex.

Held up by a black leather belt that closes through a squared silver-toned single-prong buckle, the black flat-front suit trousers have side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Ray maintains the color palette by wearing black leather side-zip ankle boots.

What’s black, white, and red all over?

While the rest of his outfit is predominantly black and white, Ray shows some rare color in his socks, which are primarily dark gray but with red and white bands across the top that, like the shirt, are also in complicated patterns.

Ray shows us his best attempt at a butterfly pose.

When not wearing his contact lenses, Ray pulls on a pair of tortoise-framed glasses in the narrow rectangular shape that was so popular through the early-to-mid 2000s.

Being a movie assassin may sound like an intriguing job, but even that entails the droll nighttime routines of taking out contact lenses and brushing your teeth.

The Guns

Beretta 92S

As Ray and Ken theorize that they’ve been sent to Bruges on a job rather than simply to sightsee, Ray worries that “we haven’t got any guns,” until Ken reassures him that “Harry can get guns anywhere.” Ken’s prediction proves to be true enough when Harry calls and directs him to a man named Yuri at Raamstraat 17, where Ken is ordered to pick up the gun he’ll use to murder Ray. Yuri provides Ken with a Beretta 92S semi-automatic pistol and a suppressor that “might be necessary”.

Beretta developed the 92S in 1977 as the first improved variant of the original Model 92 that was introduced just two years earlier. These pistols evolved from a half-century of Beretta innovation, retaining the alloy frame and open-slide design with a traditional double-action (DA/SA) trigger and double-stacked magazines that could feed 15 rounds or more of 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition. To meet the specifications of certain law enforcement agencies hoping to authorize the pistol, the new Beretta 92S included modifications that would be present through the rest of the series like a slide-mounted combined safety/decocker, though this was still only located on the left side.

Ray looks over the silenced Beretta 92S that Ken had been given to use to kill him. The lack of a decocker present on the right side of the frame, as well as the butt-positioned magazine release we see when Ken takes the pistol back, informs us that this could only be the 92S variant.

When Beretta evolved the pistol into the Model 92SB introduced in 1980, this became an ambidextrous control with a lever on each side of the slide, in addition to the magazine release button relocated from the bottom of the butt to the increasingly more conventional location aside the trigger. These first variants in the Beretta 92 series all feature a rounded trigger guard, which would be more squared with the development of the Model 92F/FS in 1984, which would be made cinematically famous through its use in the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon franchises and remains one of the most commonly seen firearms in movies and TV.

The screen-used pistol shows plenty of wear, appropriate given its age (Beretta stopped producing the 92S by 1982) and the fact that Ken was likely intended to dispose of it after the job was complete.

Ken pockets the suppressor issued with his Beretta as Ray pulls the Rossi revolver from his waistband. Note the magazine release on the Beretta’s butt that, combined with the decocker lever, informs us that the pistol has to be a Beretta 92S.

Rossi Model 88

When Chloë’s jealous boyfriend Eirik (Jérémie Renier) threatens Ray with a snub-nosed Rossi Model 88 that is revealed to be loaded with blanks, Ray disarms Eirik of the weapon and fires it in his face at such close range that he blinds him in his left eye, leaving the man screaming on the floor about his lost vision. “Of course you can’t see, I just shot a blank in your fuckin’ eyes!” Ray explains.

Given the potential danger awaiting him in the form of his erstwhile partner-in-crime being assigned to kill him, Ray fortuitously keeps the weapon and swaps out the blank ammunition with five live rounds of .38 Special that he finds in Chloë’s apartment… though, ultimately, Ray proves to be his own biggest danger as he contemplates suicide.

Note “AMADEO ROSSI S.A.” clearly etched on the barrel’s left side.

Unlike semi-automatic handguns and submachine guns that need to be specifically modified to fire blanks (despite how simple Die Hard 2 made it look), revolvers typically need no such modification so Ray being able to swap out blanks for live rounds would be possible in real life.

Comparing his found sidearm to the silenced pistol assigned to Ken, Ray complains that “mine’s a bloody girl’s gun,” though I’d argue there’s hardly anything emasculating about a snub-nosed .38 Special. Ken ends up pocketing the revolver as Ray is “a suicide case,” a very responsible duty for a friend of someone undergoing a mental health crisis… even if that friend just moments earlier was attempting to carry out a hit on their pal.

Ken places Ray’s commandeered Rossi in a drawer in his hotel room.

IMFDB currently identifies Ray’s revolver as a Smith & Wesson Model 60, which likely served as an obvious inspiration for the Rossi Model 88. Not only are both stainless steel-framed .38 Special revolvers with five-round cylinders and two-inch barrels, but the similarities in the front ramp sight, cylinder release, and grips make it very clear why one may think the S&W revolver was used on screen. (Check out this brief Youtube video if you want to further compare each revolver’s respective design.)

Smith & Wesson 5903

In the flashback to Ray’s hit in London that resulted in the death of a priest (as intended) and a little boy (as not intended), we see that the gun Ray referenced being tossed into the Thames was a Smith & Wesson 5903 pistol.

The Model 5903 was developed as part of Smith & Wesson’s third and final generation of fully metal-framed semi-automatic pistols, produced through the ’90s. In addition to lines in .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and 10mm, Smith & Wesson offered the full-size 5900 series and the smaller single-stack 3900 and double-stack 6900 series, all chambered in the universal 9x19mm Parabellum.

Each model number described what made each pistol unique; the “59” referred to being a part of the full-size 9mm lineup, while the “0” indicated a traditional double-action (DA/SA) trigger, and the “3” indicated an aluminum alloy frame as opposed to the heavier all-steel frame of the otherwise similar 5906.

Ray executes a priest (Ciarán Hinds) with his heavy stainless S&W 5903. Note that Ray wears the same herringbone topcoat he takes to Bruges, but he has evidently changed out of the white button-down collared shirt and light gray crew-neck sweater he wore during this hit.

The 3900, 5900, 6900 series and their differently chambered counterparts ended production by 2000 as Smith & Wesson shifted the focus for its semi-automatic pistols toward lighter polymer frames like its Sigma and M&P series pistols.

What to Imbibe

Bored to tears in their shared hotel room, Ray talks Ken into joining him for some nighttime sightseeing, knowing that Ken would be interested in the medieval architecture while Ray can content himself with taking pulls from a bottle of Leffe Blonde, an appropriately Belgian-produced abbey beer. Over the course of the same evening, Ray reports to having six pints and seven bottles of the 6.6% ABV beer, “and I’m not even pissed!”

Having baited Ken out of their room on the promise of admiring Bruges’ architecture, Ray entertains himself with a bottle of Leffe Blonde.

The following evening, Ray takes Chloë out to dinner, where they are poured from a 1998 bottle of Château Haut Pingat, a relatively inexpensive Bordeaux produced from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes with a “silky and smooth” palate, according to EWGA Wines.

A Canadian woman (Stephanie Carey) at their neighboring table wields a bottle of the same to retaliate against Ray for punching out her boyfriend (Zeljko Ivanek), inadvertently triggering Ray’s anti-bottle defensive reflexes.

How to Get the Look

Colin Farrell as Ray in In Bruges (2008)

Ray illustrates how a black-and-white color palette doesn’t have to be boring, shaking up what could have been a somber black-suited dynamic with a frivolously printed shirt that he wears insouciantly untucked and with the top few buttons undone to show his henley.

• Charcoal herringbone woolen tweed single-breasted 3-button thigh-length topcoat with notch lapels, slanted welt side pockets, single-button strap cuffs, and single vent
• Black lightweight wool suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with pick-stitched notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat-front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White (with black geometric print) tonal-textured cotton shirt with spread collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Pale-ecru cotton long-sleeved henley shirt with 5-button top and slate-striped inner placket
• Black leather belt with squared silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather side-zip ankle boots
• Dark-gray cotton lisle socks with dark red and white patterned bands
• Tortoise rectangular-framed glasses

For reference, you can see Ray’s bloodied suit and topcoat displayed by the Irish Costume Archive Project.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You can’t sell horse tranquilizers to a midget!

The post In Bruges: Colin Farrell as Ray appeared first on BAMF Style.

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in Die Another Day (2002).
Photo sourced from thunderballs.org.

Vitals

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, smooth British government agent

Iceland, Winter 2002

Film: Die Another Day
Release Date: November 20, 2002
Director: Lee Tamahori
Costume Designer: Lindy Hemming

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Keep warm on this chilly 00-7th of February! Some of 007’s cinematic adventures are ideal “summer movies” (looking at you, Thunderball) while other adventures that follow Mr. Bond into snowy surroundings feel more appropriate to watch around this time of the year. Pierce Brosnan made his fourth and final appearance as James Bond in Die Another Day, which—with its Icelandic ice palace and cozy turtlenecks—clearly falls into the latter.

For his first MI6 mission as a reactivated double-0 agent after being released from North Korean captivity, Bond arrives in Iceland to investigate the mysterious millionaire Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), who was modeled after the villainous Hugo Drax from Ian Fleming’s third Bond novel Moonraker though Graves also shares a few biographical similarities with Jay Gatsby, whom Stephens had portrayed in a 2000 A&E TV movie.

His relationship with fellow agent Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) appears to have warmed since her initially chilly reception, as she spends the night with Bond in his room at Graves’ ice castle. He awakes to continue looking into Graves’ operation, connecting with NSA agent Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson (Halle Berry) along the way. Just as Bond thinks he and Miranda have the drop on Graves, the latter reveals that he’s had an ace in the hole… or under the sheets.

What’d He Wear?

Die Another Day continues James Bond’s sartorial tradition dating back to Goldfinger where 007 dresses in all black for sneaking around a villain’s compound. While adapted for a wintry climate with multiple layers and a bulky sweater, Mr. Bond couldn’t have hoped to be too inconspicuous by wearing all black against the snowy grounds of Gustav Graves’ ice palace… after all, it’s not like Q R equipped him with adaptive camouflage like his Aston Martin!

Bond’s outer layer is the dark navy polyester insulated coat that he had worn for his arrival the previous day. The thigh-length coat recalls military field jackets, particularly with its shoulder straps (epaulets) and the flapped pockets over the hips that snap closed. It closes with a straight plastic front-zip and a fly with covered snaps (poppers) for additional insulation against the wind, plus two additional covered snaps to close the large collar when turned up over Bond’s neck.

Bond’s outer jacket is the first item he abandons after drilling a hole in the ice to submerge himself, bringing the Thunderball-era rebreather back into service.

Bond takes off his outer jacket to reveal a waist-length diving jacket made of black neoprene, a synthetic foamed rubber material favored for aquatic clothing due to its water resistance and light-wearing insular properties that keep the wearer warm even when diving in cold water.

The jacket has a straight front zip up to the base of the standing collar that overlaps, covering the top of his turtleneck. A full-chest flap covers the torso, secured in place by a black-piped zipper that arcs across the upper chest. A black inflation valve is positioned at mid-chest, and the jacket also appears to have two zip-entry pockets at hand level.

Bond prepares to dive another day.

After Bond drops into Graves’ greenhouse, he slips out of the diving jacket to show the heavy, widely ribbed charcoal cashmere turtleneck that elevates his outfit from strictly task-driven tactical-wear. Perhaps more than any Bond film before it, Die Another Day strove to incorporate many callbacks to 007’s previous cinematic adventures, and this may have been selected as the cold-weather update to the black turtleneck and trousers worn by Roger Moore in Live and Let Die.

The screen-worn turtleneck was made by Ballantyne, a Scottish knitwear label founded in 1921 that “uses only first-rate natural cashmere yarns” sourced from Mongolian goat herds, according to James Bond Lifestyle, where you can read more about this sweater and the company.

Production photo sourced from Thunderballs.org.

Bond wears black neoprene flat-front diving trousers that match his jacket, styled with front pockets with black-piped openings that curve out from under the belt-line. The calves, knees, and back-thighs are reinforced in a tightly woven black, blue, and white that presents a low-contrast charcoal finish. The trousers have very wide loops around the waistband, through which Bond wears a belt of black heavy-duty nylon webbing that fastens through a black plastic “quick-release” slide buckle.

Production photo sourced from Thunderballs.org.

Bond wears Gore-Tex hiking boots with lugged black rubber outsoles that would provide better traction on the ice. These mid-calf boots follow a black, gray, and blue color scheme that coordinates with the rest of his outfit, with charcoal sueded uppers, lighter gray collars, and slate-gray rubberized toecaps that arc around the front of each boot with matching mudguards on the sides. The round black laces cross over dark blue tongues, anchored through a “quick-laced” system of four black vinyl side loops rather than traditional eyelets.

The Bond series has been linked with dive watches ever since Sean Connery strapped on his Rolex Submariner in the first movie, Dr. No, and it’s refreshing to see him wearing a diver while actually… diving! After decades of brand shifts between Rolex and Seiko, the Brosnan era introduced Omega as 007’s watch of choice, a product placement deal that has continued through Daniel Craig’s portrayal of Bond.

While Craig’s Bond would rotate through multiple Omegas over the course of one movie, Brosnan’s Bond switched only once, updating his quartz-powered Seamaster in GoldenEye to the automatic Omega Seamaster Professional 2531.80.00 that he would wear from Tomorrow Never Dies through Die Another Day. (You can read more about the Brosnan-era Seamaster 2531.80.00 at James Bond Lifestyle.)

Omega introduced the Seamaster in 1948 as a water-resistant dress watch, expanding the line over the centuries to include dive watches in the ’50s, updated with the introduction of the sporty Diver 300M series in 1993, named in reference to their water resistance down to 300 meters.

Brosnan’s screen-worn Seamaster Diver 300M features a 12-sided uni-directional rotating bezel and wave-motif dial both colored blue, suggesting both the dive watch’s maritime associations and Commander Bond’s naval background. In lieu of numeric hour indices, the watch has luminous markers in addition to a white date window at the 3 o’clock position, with the hour, minute, and second hands each detailed with a luminous end. The five-piece link bracelet is rhodium-plated 316L stainless steel to match the 41mm case, with its helium release valve jutting out from 10 o’clock and a screw-down crown at 3 o’clock… though the Die Another Day Seamaster has been reconfigured by Q Branch with a laser integrated into the crown that allows Bond to literally break the ice.

They say a nice watch can be an ice-breaker, but really, 007!

On his “standard-issue ring finger”, Bond wears what R (John Cleese) had dubbed an “ultra high-frequency single-digit sonic agitator unit”… in other words, a glass-breaking ring that should come in handy if a villain would ever be holding you at gunpoint against a glass surface. (You can find a replica of the ring at Your Props.)

The gold band consists of ten panels, separated by a rope-like detail, with a silver-toned knob jutting out from each panel. The ring’s high-frequency sonic agitation can evidently be activated by quickly rotating the ring around the wearer’s finger, resulting in a high-pitched whirr that precedes the ring breaking through whatever glass surface it happens to be contacting.

Like so many self-aggrandizing LinkedIn posters, Bond prepares to break the glass ceiling.

Thanks to help from Q Branch’s Glass-Breaking Ring Division and Die Another Day‘s CGI effects team that granted Mr. Bond the ability to windsurf through an arctic storm, 007 para-sails back to land and into the cockpit of his latest Aston Martin, where he engages not just the “adaptive camouflage” but also the heating system, pulling off his turtleneck to show yet another dark layer: a black mid-weight pullover with a snap-fastened quarter-top that extends up to the standing collar. He pushes the set-in sleeves up his forearms before speeding across the ice.

Being a secret agent in an invisible car with ice-traction tires is no excuse not to wear a seatbelt, especially in the 21st century!

You can read more about 007’s wintry layers in Die Another Day at Bond Suits.

The Car

“Aston Martin calls it the Vanquish, we call it the Vanish,”… and Harry Potter called it an invisibility cloak. The latest development from Q Branch equips Bond with an invisible car, a highly improbably technology that many lambasted as a low mark for the series, including the late Sir Roger Moore, who quipped “I thought it just went too far—and that’s from me, the first Bond in space!”

The latter half of Bond’s “KE02 EWW” registration plate echoes many fans’ sentiments about the inclusion of an invisible car.
Production photo sourced from thunderballs.org.

Of course, that’s not to criticize the car itself, a stunning silver 2002 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, a sleek sports tourer that had just been unveiled at the 2001 Geneva Motor Show. The Vanquish became Aston Martin’s flagship car through the early 2000s, boasting a naturally aspirated 5.9-liter V12 engine mated to a six-speed automated manual transmission that generated 460 rated horsepower, accelerating from 0-60 mph in 4.5 seconds with a top speed exceeding 190 mph.

In addition to its stock performance, Q Branch has modified Bond’s Vanquish with “all the usual refinements” including an ejector seat, torpedoes, and target-seeking shotguns that 007 immediately employs to “shoot through” the manual, though the “adaptive camouflage” capabilities remain its most-associated aspect.

And to think some say rear-wheel drive cars aren’t great in snow!

2002 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish

Body Style: 2+2 grand tourer

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

Engine: 5.9 L 48-valve V12

Power: 460 hp (343 kW; 466 PS) @ 6500 rpm

Torque: 400 lb·ft (542 N·m) @ 5000 rpm

Transmission: 6-speed automated manual

Wheelbase: 105.9 inches (2690 mm)

Length: 183.7 inches (4665 mm)

Width: 75.7 inches (1923 mm)

Height: 51.9 inches (1318 mm)

According to a Bonhams auction listing for one of the screen-used Aston Martins, “EON Productions commissioned three production Vanquishes, chassis nos. ‘172’, ‘173’, and ‘174’ to become ‘hero’ cars for the close-ups of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. Strikingly presented in Tungsten Silver livery with charcoal leather interiors, Linn audio systems and brushed aluminum centre consoles… these three cars had a relatively easy life during filming and were used exclusively for close-ups, being spared the dramatic and punishing stunts and chase sequences which were the province of vehicles commissioned by EON special effects department. These were four-wheel drive, Ford Explorer-based vehicles with Vanquish coachwork. Two of the special effects vehicles survive, remaining the property of Aston Martin Ltd. and neither can be sold or registered for road use.”

The Explorer-based Aston Martins had their V12 engines swapped out for 300-horsepower V8 engines and four-wheel-drive systems that functioned better for stuntwork on the ice.

The Gun

As the Bond series evolved to keep up with modern action cinema in the ’90s, so did his choice of armament. Bond’s iconic Walther PPK had been originally designed nearly 70 years before Pierce Brosnan starred as 007 for a second time in Tomorrow Never Dies, so EON and Walther worked together to arm the world’s most famous secret agent with their most innovative handgun, the Walther P99.

Promotional photo of Pierce Brosnan wielding his suppressed Walther P99 against a green-screen background, sourced from Thunderballs.org. Note that he’s wearing the base-layer black quarter-snap with his neoprene diving pants and Gore-Tex boots.

The striker-fired, recoil-operated P99 was developed in response to trends established by competition from manufacturers like Glock, which had revolutionized semi-automatic pistols in the late 20th century with their polymer-framed, high-capacity handguns. The first generation of P99 pistols operate with a traditional double-action/single-action (DA/SA) system, though with a decocker rather than an external hammer; for the second generation of P99 pistols, this would become the P99 AS (Anti-Stress), in addition to the new P99 DAO (Double-Action Only) and Glock-style P99 QA (Quick-Action) variants.

The P99 has been produced in both 9x19mm Parabellum and .40 S&W versions, the former more common while the second was in response to prevailing American law enforcement needs of the era. Depending on the age of the pistol, the P99 can carry magazines with up to 15 or 16 rounds of 9mm, with an additional round in the chamber.

Though considerably larger and with double the ammunition load (of a heavier, more powerful ammunition, no less), the P99’s polymer frame meant that the weapon generally equalled the weight of the all-metal PPK when unloaded.

“My defense mechanism is right here.”

His hesitation to shoot former sexual partners softened after the events of The World is Not Enough, Bond indicates that he would have very willingly shot Miranda in the face after she reveals herself to be a double agent… but his gun simply clicks empty! The deceptive Miranda reveals that she took advantage of Bond sleeping with his gun under the pillow (as established in Tomorrow Never Dies) by swapping out his P99’s loaded magazine with an empty one.

In my opinion, this is a bit ridiculous, especially for a gun like the Walther P99 that becomes about 30% heavier (from 24.75 ounces empty to about 32 ounces loaded) when fully loaded with 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition. Such a scenario may have been possible if Bond still carried his PPK, as the weight of a PPK’s full magazine is somewhat more negligible against the full-metal PPK’s overall mass, but you would still expect a trained agent to immediately tell the difference. Of course, Bond has been out of practice for about a year and a half thanks to the North Koreans; the VR sequence further illustrates that, in that time, MI6 increasingly relied on digital rather than practical training, perhaps to the detriment of real-life lessons like being able to tell whether or not your gun is loaded.

I’ll allow the possibility that Miranda—whom, as a fellow MI6 agent, carries her own P99—had specially prepared a magazine full of snap caps or dummy rounds that she slipped into Bond’s P99 while he was sleeping, to some degree making up the difference in weight vs. a fully empty magazine.

Miranda hands Bond his own Walther P99, intending on serving her own brand of death for breakfast.

The Walther P99 starred as Bond’s preferred sidearm from 1997 (Tomorrow Never Dies) until 2006, when Daniel Craig carried it for his debut as Bond in Casino Royale before reverting back to the PPK series from Quantum of Solace onward.

How to Get the Look

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in Die Another Day (2002).
Photo sourced from thunderballs.org.

Bond’s turtleneck and trousers alone would be attractive après-ski apparel, though you may want to introduce a touch of color so that your fellow après-skiers don’t think you’re cosplaying as a secret agent… or don’t blow your cover if you actually are one!

• Dark-navy polyester thigh-length field jacket with zip/snap-up front, shoulder straps (epaulets), and flapped hip pockets
• Black neoprene waist-length diving jacket with standing collar, arced chest-zip flap with integrated valve, and zip-entry hand pockets
• Charcoal cashmere wide-ribbed turtleneck sweater
• Black soft quarter-top pullover shirt with snap buttons
• Black neoprene flat-front diving trousers with wide belt loops, straight front pockets, and blue/gray-woven reinforced knees, thighs, and calves
• Black nylon webbed belt with black plastic “quick-release” sliding buckle
• Black, gray, and blue Gore-Tex mid-calf hiking boots
• Gold-paneled and silver-knobbed ring
• Omega Seamaster 300M Chronometer 2531.80.00 with 39mm stainless case, blue bezel and dial (with 3:00 date window), and stainless link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

So you live to die another day.

The post Die Another Day: Bond’s Turtleneck and Diving Gear in Iceland appeared first on BAMF Style.

Robert Shaw in Black Sunday (1977)

Vitals

Robert Shaw as David Kabakov, experienced Mossad agent and Major

Miami, January 1976

Film: Black Sunday
Release Date: April 1, 1977
Director: John Frankenheimer
Costume Designer: Ray Summers

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

It’s Super Bowl Sunday! To many of us, the Big Game (as the NFL would prefer us unlicensed folks call it) is an opportunity to spend a Sunday with friends, beer, and buffalo chicken dip while halfheartedly rooting for a team that we may not care about and catching a glimpse of some over-produced multimillion-dollar ad buys. For director John Frankenheimer, it’s an opportunity to yet again present the thrills and cynicism of ruthless criminals exploiting geopolitical dilemmas for their own gain with considerable human lives at stake. In short: Black Sunday.

After the Cold War had dominated culture of the ’60s, the zeitgeist shifted in ’70s toward anxiety around international terrorism, with events like the Munich massacre—an attack by the militant Black September organization that resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German policeman during the 1972 Summer Olympics—still very fresh in global minds. This specific event inspired Thomas Harris to write his debut novel Black Sunday, which re-imagined the scenario by aligning Black September with a suicidal Navy veteran determined to crash his explosives-laden Goodyear blimp into eighty thousand attendees—including the President—during Super Bowl X.

The story was swiftly adapted into a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, Ivan Moffat, and Kenneth Ross, the latter of whom had penned the similarly themed The Day of the Jackal, also directed by John Frankenheimer. Bruce Dern and Marthe Keller respectively star as the self-destructive blimp pilot and the seductive Black September operative who team up opposite Robert Shaw as Major David Kabakov, a grizzled Mossad counter-terrorist whose hunt for them intensifies after the death of his colleague.

After the hunt leads Kabakov and his FBI counterpart Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver) to Miami, Kabakov realizes that the plan likely involves an atrocity committed during the Super Bowl and meets with Miami Dolphins founder Joe Robbie, making a cameo as himself.

Kabakov: With Black September, there’s no way you can take every possible precaution. They know exactly what they’re going to do, why, and when. The only way we can take every possible precaution is to cancel the game.
Robbie: Cancel the Super Bowl? That’s the most ridiculous suggestion I’ve ever heard. That’s like canceling Christmas!

Joe Robbie cameos as himself in a brief scene with Robert Shaw, whose brown leather jacket I’ll have to write about in a later post.

Once the production was surprisingly supplied with a legitimate Goodyear blimp, the challenge arose to depict the Big Game itself. The NFL also cooperated with the production, allowing footage to be secured when the Pittsburgh Steelers faced the Dallas Cowboys during Super Bowl X on January 18, 1976; as a Pittsburgher, it’s cool to see coach Chuck Noll and players from the legendary ’76 team like Mel Blount, Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, the late Franco Harris, and the famous “Steel Curtain” defensive line, all while fans bedecked in black and gold hoist their cans of Iron City.

Go Steelers!

A week and a half after the Steelers beat the Cowboys 21-17, the Miami Dolphins stepped in for additional shots, dressed in Cowboys and Steelers uniforms for continuity. Interestingly, the actor who briefly portrays “the President” more resembles Jimmy Carter than Gerald Ford, who was still in office at the time Black Sunday was filmed in early 1976.

There are certainly aspects of Black Sunday that felt bizarre—for instance, the climactic blimp explosion does not pay off for me—but I was otherwise impressed to see how Frankenheimer et al pulled this off, with plenty of gratuitous footage reminding us of the fact that we’re often watching an actual Super Bowl being played behind Robert Shaw on the sidelines. This felt especially impactful during the soaring shot that began with Dahlia driving her Delta 88 hitched to a speedboat full of explosives before cinematographer John A. Alonzo’s camera pulled back and panned over into the Miami Orange Bowl stadium full of Super Bowl fans, zooming onto the field where Kabakov stands vigilant.

What’d He Wear?

Major Kabakov arrived in Miami on New Year’s Day wearing the brown leather sport jacket he had with him in D.C., eventually updating his wardrobe for Magic City’s tropical climate that remains unseasonably warm in winter.

It’s difficult to imagine dressing for a modern American football game like Kabakov does, swathed in a distinctive collarless jacket made of brown dupioni silk, evident by the irregular slubs and the way the material shines under the sun.

Kabakov’s collarless jacket defies any simple classification, to the extent of my sartorial knowledge, though the cut recalls “loafer jackets” or “Hollywood jackets” that were the 1940s precursor to ’70s leisure jackets. The jacket has a two-button front, similar to a traditional sport jacket. A vertical pleat strip runs down each side of the front, from the shoulder seam to behind the semi-bellowed hip pocket, and the ventless back is semi-belted across the waist. The wide shoulders have significant padding, though loose through the sleeves down to the gathered cuffs with their large, shirt-style single-button closure.

Kabakov wears a cream-colored long-sleeved camp shirt, styled with a breast pocket, button cuffs, and a plain front (also known as a French placket.)

Kabakov navigates the crowd of Steelers fans bedecked in black and gold and hoisting cans of Iron City.

Kabakov’s trousers are dark-gray gabardine flat front slacks with side pockets, jetted back pockets (with a button through the back left), and plain-hemmed bottoms. He holds them up with a hefty brown leather belt that closes through a brass-finished single-prong buckle.

You’ll thank yourself for keeping your pants up with a sturdy belt while you’re clambering over the side of an explosives-laden Goodyear blimp.

Chukka boots had emerged as casual footwear through the mid-20th century, named for the seven-minute periods of play in polo, where the ankle-high derby-laced boot style is said to have been popularized. Kabakov wears dark brown leather plain-toe chukka boots with two-eyelet lacing and black outsoles. Especially around the toes, the leather boot uppers show plenty of wear. His socks are plain black.

You’ll also thank yourself for keeping your shoes firmly laced!

The day before, Kabakov had led interviews of the blimp team, including the intended pilot Farley (Tom McFadden), while wearing the same outfit though with a gold polyester shirt typical of the disco era with its long-pointed collar and white pearl-esque plastic buttons up the front placket and through the breast pocket yoke.

The Watch

Throughout Black Sunday, Kabakov clearly wears a Rolex GMT Master ref. 1675 that, according to IMDB, was director John Frankenheimer’s own “prized Rolex”. This GMT Master features the distinctive combination of brown and gold that resulted in nicknames like “Root Beer” Rolex and “Eye of the Tiger”, evolving into updated models like the ref. 1675/3 and ref. 16753 that would be famously worn by Clint Eastwood.

Worn on a dark brown leather strap, Kabakov’s Rolex has a stainless steel 40mm case and lugs, contrasted by the 18-karat yellow gold bezel with its duo-toned finish. This rotating 24-hour scale bezel has the even-numbered hour indices printed from 2 to 22, with the top half of the 24-hour bezel is brown with gold-printed indices while the “daylight” bottom half presents the inverse of brown-printed indices against a gold background. The brown “nipple dial” is known as such for the slightly protruding round hour indices on the dial itself, lume-filled for additional visibility like the baton indices at 6 and 9 o’clock and the triangular index at 12 o’clock. A gold date window is positioned at 3 o’clock.

Take good care of that Rolex, Major Kabakov!

1970s Rolex GMT Masters on eBay

The Guns

Kabakov carries a snub-nosed Colt Lawman MK III as his service sidearm. The Lawman was introduced in 1969 as the “service grade” variant of the Colt Trooper—itself described by IMFDB as the “Poor Man’s Python”—though the MK III lineup was considered a major improvement for Colt revolvers, which had not undergone a significant design refresh since the early 20th century.

As its name implied, the Lawman was intended primarily for use among law enforcement, able to fire .357 Magnum and .38 Special ammunition as was the contemporary standard for service revolvers. The Lawman was configured with either a full four-inch barrel or the shorter two-inch barrel, as carried by Kabakov, while finishes ranged from the basic “Colt Royal Blue” to two nickel finishes.

The shroud-less ejector rod and distinctive front sight shape help identify Kabakov’s revolver as the Colt Lawman MK III rather than the more frequently seen—and slightly smaller—Colt Detective Special.

After Kabakov realizes that he’s likely outgunned by the terrorists taking off in the Goodyear blimp, FBI Agent Corley offers that he’s “got a high-powered rifle and a submachine gun in the trunk” of his sedan. Kabakov takes the former, a sporterized Springfield M1903 bolt-action rifle, as he and Corley commandeer a Goodyear helicopter to chase the rogue blimp.

Corley’s trunk rifle that’s wielded by Kabakov illustrates one of the many examples of the early 20th century M1903 Springfield military rifles that were later converted to hunting purposes by shortening the fore-end and affixing a long-range telescopic scope.

Kabakov and Corley prepare to battle the Goodyear blimp.

After Corley gets wounded, he takes the agent’s blowback-operated Smith & Wesson M76 submachine gun, ultimately using this to bring the day’s events to their explosive conclusion.

The M76’s interesting history began in the mid-1960s, when the U.S. Navy contacted Smith & Wesson about contracting them for a 9x19mm Parabellum submachine gun to effectively replace the Carl Gustaf m/45 currently in service among Navy SEALs. The Navy had no issue with the reliable m/45, but it was instead the manufacturing company based in neutral Sweden who objected to its weapon being used in war.

Despite some cosmetic and operational similarities to the m/45, Smith & Wesson designed the M76 from scratch, rushing it into production just nine months later at the start of 1967 without the usual finishing touches to make their firearms attractive and marketable. Thus, the resulting M76 was an efficient brute that represented pure function over form, firing 9mm ammunition at a rate of 720 rounds per minute from box magazines with capacities up to 36 rounds.

Although the M76 development had once been considered a top priority for the Navy, it eventually saw only limited combat use in Vietnam before production ended in 1974. (“M76” denotes “Model 76”, but this doesn’t represent the year of production as Smith & Wesson had ceased to manufacture the weapon two years before 1976. Instead, it’s merely a continuation of their standard numbering system as found on Smith & Wesson revolvers like the Model 10, 15, 19, 29, and 36, or their semi-automatic handguns like the Model 39 and 59.)

How to Get the Look

Robert Shaw in Black Sunday (1977)

David Kabakov dresses for his mission at the Super Bowl in a casual outfit that recalls the elegance of 1940s leisure-wear, which may be contextually unexpected for a football game—even one as high-profile as the Super Bowl—though this is consistent with his relative unfamiliarity with the sport and its reverence in American tradition.

• Brown dupioni silk 2-button collarless loafer jacket with front pleat strips, semi-bellowed hip pockets, 1-button shirt-style cuffs, and semi-belted ventless back
• Cream long-sleeved camp shirt with breast pocket, plain front, and button cuffs
• Dark-gray gabardine flat-front slacks with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown leather belt with brass single-prong buckle
• Dark brown leather plain-toe 2-eyelet chukka boots
• Black cotton lisle socks
• Rolex GMT Master ref. 1675 “Root Beer” automatic watch with stainless steel 40mm case, 18-karat yellow gold bezel (with brown-and-gold duotone fill), brown “nipple dial” with 3 o’clock date window, and dark brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Black Sunday: Robert Shaw in Brown Silk at the Super Bowl appeared first on BAMF Style.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in The Last of Us

Vitals

Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller, tough pandemic survivor and former contractor

Boston to Utah, Fall through winter 2023

Series: The Last of Us (Season 1)
Air Dates: January 15, 2023 – March 12, 2023
Created by: Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann
Costume Designer: Cynthia Ann Summers

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

It was fascinating to see my distaste for mushrooms validated in such a distressing manner in one of the biggest shows of the year.

Based on Naughty Dog’s popular video game of the same name, The Last of Us concluded its acclaimed first season on Sunday night. The series was primarily set in a post-apocalyptic 2023 in the grim aftermath in a global pandemic (albeit far more dystopian than our current reality), caused by a mass fungal infection that transforms its human hosts into grotesque quasi-zombies (shroombies?) that still roam the tattered world two decades following the societal collapse.

After a brief prologue that introduces a viral epidemiologist (John Hannah) on a Dick Cavett-type talk show in 1968, outlining the threat of a fungally spread pandemic triggered by climate change, we jump ahead to the fateful Friday in late September 2003, when Texas contractor Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and his sweet-natured daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) are celebrating his 36th birthday. Twenty years later, when Joel is asked how it all happened (other than that “the shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic”), he tries to sum up the situation to the best of his knowledge:

No one knows for sure, but best guess… cordyceps mutated, got into the food supply, probably a basic ingredient like flour or sugar. There were certain brands of food that were sold everywhere—all across the country, across the world. Bread, cereal… pancake mix. You eat enough of it, it’ll get you infected. So the tainted food all hits the store shelves around the same time Thursday. People bought it, ate some Thursday night or Friday morning. Day goes on. They started to get sick. Afternoon, evening, they got worse. Then they started bitin’. Friday night, September 26, 2003. By Monday, everything was gone.

After losing his daughter to a misguided military sentry’s rifle on the Friday night everything went to hell, we catch up with Joel twenty years later, now living among a large group of fellow haggard survivors in a federal-run quarantine zone in the ruins of Boston. Though he’s garnered a reputation for capability among people on all sides of what passes for law, Joel is forced to earn his rations through grim duties like disposing of infected corpses, maintaining sewers, and the occasional drug deal. He has developed a partnership—both personal and professional—with the equally apocalypse-hardened Tess (Anna Torv), which grows more complicated after they’re compelled by “Firefly” underground revolutionaries to spirit the fiery teenage survivor Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of the QZ and into the ostensible hands of fellow revolutionaries at the overgrown Massachusetts state house.

Though Joel has been rendered cynical by hearing similar stories countless times before, the bitten-but-not-infected Ellie is told that her resilience may contain the secret to unlocking a cure. Their attempt to smuggle Ellie to a local band of Fireflies is stymied when they find the state house abandoned… aside from hordes of infected. It’s hardly the last of their unexpected troubles, marking only the beginning of a nightmarish journey across the ruined nation. (Though set across the United States, The Last of Us was almost entirely filmed in Alberta, Canada.)

Their cross-country journey features the varying effectiveness of community philosophies that emerged after societal collapse, ranging from isolated individualism and self-sustaining communism to self-destructive totalitarianism and cannibalistic theocracy. And, while the badass battle sequences to be expected of post-apocalyptic fiction certainly delivered thrills, what I found most compelling about The Last of Us was the series’ nuanced focus on humanity, survival, and love.

What’d He Wear?

“When you’re on the run or the road like Joel and Ellie, you only have what you can fit in your backpack [and] on your body,” costume designer Cynthia Ann Summers explained to Emma Fraser for The Daily Beast‘s Obsessed, also expressing her surprise that there has been so much interest in Joel’s costume. “I didn’t want him to look like he thought about what he chose to put on. He needed utilitarian wear.”

Waxed jackets have been popular on screen recently, particularly among hardy characters like James Bond (specifically Daniel Craig’s Barbour sports jacket in Skyfall and the Rogue Territory supply jacket in No Time to Die) and the Dutton family and ranch cowboys on Yellowstone. In the bleak world of 2023, Joel maintains his hard-wearing style by adding a waxed, blanket-lined trucker jacket to the trusty jeans and boots he had worn two decades earlier as a contractor, the type of job that would have prioritized rugged function over fashion.

Sturdy jackets and jeans serve Joel and Ellie well as they walk through the wasteland of post-apocalyptic America in “Long, Long Time” (Episode 1.03).

The Waxed Trucker Jacket

Arguably the most popular item from Joel’s wardrobe is his flannel-lined trucker jacket from the Los Angeles-based outfitter Flint and Tinder, made from a waxed 7-oz. sailcloth cotton in the “field tan” shade.

“We were making our own jacket, because the jacket in the game kind of looked like a Carhartt… Carhartts are very boxy, and they’re also super stuff, and even though we have these amazing breakdown people, they’re super hard to break in,” Summers explained to Caroline Reilly for GQ UK. “So we decided to make our own, but the oiled cotton is super hard to work with, and it’s hard to break down. So we built several, none of them worked for various reasons. We got to one that Pedro really liked, but it didn’t fly with everybody else, the producers. And that’s the name of the game. So at the 12th hour, I was like, ‘Okay, shoppers, just get me every jacket on the market that we can multiply by 30 or more at the end of the day. And just let’s get as many here as we can, and let’s just see what we can do.’ And there was another close contender, but we landed on this one, it just fit him well.”

After some alterations and artificial aging, Summers’ team was ready to go with an array of Flint and Tinder jackets for Joel. Though Flint and Tinder prides their jackets on the protective qualities of the Martexin wax applied to both sides of the shell, Summers reported that this waxing was actually removed to make the cloth more vulnerable to their aging process.

Even at the relative start of their journey in “Infected” (Episode 1.02), Joel’s Flint and Tinder trucker jacket has already clearly withstood considerable wear.

Joel’s jacket follows the general design that has evolved in the decades since Levi’s 1905 introduction of the waist-length, rivet-button “Type I” 506XX—now considered the first trucker jacket.

The jacket has six nickel “donut”-style tack buttons up the front from the straight waist hem to the neck. A horizontal yoke extends across the chest above the second button, with a similarly positioned yoke straight across the back. A pointed patch pocket is situation on the left side of the chest (just below the yoke), with a mitred flap that closes through a single button. Vertical welted pockets are set-in at hand level on each side. The set-in sleeves are finished with squared cuffs that close through a single button, and the waist also has short squared tabs to adjust the fit by closing through one of two buttons.

The polyester flannel “blanket lining” is stripes in two shades of blue, offset by golden yellow bar stripes through the darker blue stripes. A “media pocket” made from the same waxed cloth as the outer shell is sewn against the inside left of the lining, specifically designed so that right-handed users could easily slip their cell phones in and out of this pocket, though Joel often carries his flashlight in it.

Note the distinctive striped flannel lining, both while leading his group through the museum in “Infected” (Episode 1.02), with the flashlight visible in his pocket, and as Ellie hands the jacket back to him in the following episode, “Long, Long Time” (Episode 1.03).

Joel’s Shirts

For the first three episodes of scenes set in 2023, Joel wears an indigo-blue denim shirt chosen to specifically reflect his clothing in the early stages of the game. After testing many blue denim and chambray work shirts, Summers chose a Wrangler shirt that she favored for its simplicity, specifically its lack of the pointed Western-style chest yokes that often characterize these snap-front shirts. This was an important factor for Summers, who told GQ that “Joel’s style is that of an everyday man, paying little attention to personal style details,” elaborating to The Daily Beast that “he’s angry, so I didn’t want to diffuse that with anything fashionable.”

“It actually is a piece that Wrangler does exclusively for Walmart,” Summers shared with Caroline Reilly for GQ UK. “Which makes total sense, because that’s where these guys go to get their workwear.”

Made from a ringspun denim cotton, the long-sleeved shirt appears to have been through plenty by the time we find Joel in the Boston QZ, with considerable wear along the seams and edges, including around the spread collar. The front placket closes with seven simple brass-finished snaps that match those on the two pointed chest pocket flaps and on the single-snap cuffs, which Joel typically wears unsnapped and rolled up his forearms.

Even with a broken watch, Joel’s never off the clock while trying to make ends meet in the Boston QZ.

Wrangler must be a favorite brand in the Texan-born Miller family, as Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) also wears a dark blue denim Wrangler shirt when they reunite in Wyoming in “Kin” (Episode 1.06), though Tommy’s shirt features both the pointed yokes as well as the brand’s characteristic “W”-stitch on both chest pockets. By that point, Joel has already changed his shirt anyway.

When tasked with corpse disposal for the Boston QZ in “When You’re Lost in the Darkness” (Episode 1.01), Joel briefly supplements his garb with a red-striped beige neckerchief that covers his nose and mouth, though he presumably abandons this after leaving the QZ.

In “Long, Long Time” (Episode 1.03), Joel and Ellie arrive at the home of the recently departed Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett). After the two travelers freshen up themselves and their supplies—including Bill’s arsenal and “piece of shit Chevy S10″—Joel also helps himself to the green plaid flannel shirt we had previously seen Frank wearing in a 2010 flashback.

The handsome shirt was first identified by Rachael Griffiths in New York‘s The Strategist as the laurel-green Fjällglim shirt by Swedish outdoor outfitter Fjällräven. The pattern consists of a wide-scaled black shadowed plaid framing a light-red windowpane overcheck, all against a forest-green ground.

Frank’s sartorial legacy lives on through Joel taking his shirt on the next leg of his journey.

Made from a lightweight polyester flannel twill, the shirts were significantly restructured from their stock configuration to better resemble the game-worn shirt. The standard Fjällglim has a red-branded button-through patch pocket over the left breast, with a vertical zip-up pocket set-in behind it. “For this particular shirt, we needed it in multiples of 30 for Joel, Joel’s stunt double, Joel’s photo double, and Frank,” Summers explained to Griffiths. “We took the fronts off the shirts, removing the zip pocket and creating our breast pockets to mimic the game shirt.”

The resulting screen-ready shirts present two button-through chest pockets with mitred corners on the bottom. The sleeves also have standard button cuffs, with the mid-bicep buttons removed from each sleeve.

As the action following “Long, Long Time” (Episode 1.03) continues through the increasingly chilly weather of fall, Joel layers his new plaid flannel shirt over a simple ecru cotton undershirt. The long-sleeved T-shirt has a crew-neck with a V-notch, the functional feature often found on sweatshirts that was introduced to catch sweat and keep the neck shape intact. A thread at The RPF, which I consider to be an ultimate source for identifying screen-worn gear, strongly suggested that Joel wore the Todd Snyder x Champion Midweight Pocket Sweatshirt in “heather fog” cotton.

Joel wears the green flannel Fjällräven button-up shirt and the ecru undershirt until “When We Are in Need” (Episode 1.08), as it was damaged two episodes earlier at the end of “Kin” (Episode 1.06).

Following his recovery, Joel appears at the start of “Look for the Light” (Episode 1.09) wearing a new shirt, identified as the River Island Regular Fit Washed Denim Shirt. The solid color and snap-front design recalls his earlier Wrangler shirt from the first three episodes, though the River Island shirt notably features the pointed shoulder yokes that Summers had specifically tried to avoid for the Wrangler, perhaps reflecting Joel’s warmer nature as he seeks to be more playful with Ellie… even suggesting the two play Boggle!

Made from a washed gray 100% cotton denim twill, the shirt has a spread collar and a straight hem that would typically allow it be effectively worn untucked, though Joel may have benefited from a curved hem that would better suit the holstered revolver on his belt. There are seven black-finished snaps up the front placket, matching the single snaps on each cuff and gauntlet. There are two pointed-bottom chest pockets, each covered with a narrow pointed flap that closes through another single snap.

Joel and Ellie bond in Salt Lake City.

The Jeans

Ellie: Joel… did you know diarrhea is hereditary?
Joel: What?
Ellie: Yeah… it runs in your jeans.

Luckily, 20-year-old cans of Chef Boyardee don’t seem to have this effect on Joel, as he’d be literally shit out of luck given that he’s been wearing the same pair of jeans since 2003.

Despite the many trials that went into finding the right items for the rest of Joel’s wardrobe, Summers reported to Digital Spy that “we were lucky” with the jeans, as the Levi’s 505 Regular Fit were one of the first two pairs that Pedro Pascal tried on during initial costume tests.

The 505 Regular Fit was introduced in 1967, with a zip fly differentiating it from the button-fly 501 Original Fit. The roomier fit of the straight-leg 505 would likely be more comfortable for the long-traveling Joel than the straighter-fitting 501. Joel’s screen-worn denim appears to be the’s dark indigo “Flying Bird” wash, with the signature Levis “red tab” removed from the back-right patch pocket, though each back pocket retains the brand’s characteristic arcuate stitch.

“Jury’s still out, but man… you can’t deny that view.”

Joel holds up his jeans with a dark burgundy leather belt that closes through a hefty silver-toned single-prong buckle. He keeps his defensive gear in handy reach, attached to the right side of his belt. He carries his revolver in a brown leather Triple K outside-the-waistband (OWB) holster with a snap retention strap.

Just behind it, he carries his steel Buck 119 Special fixed-blade knife in a Buck-branded black leather sheath with a single-snap loop that attaches around his belt. This venerated hunting knife has a stainless 6″ clip-shaped blade and a black phenolic handle and aluminum guard and pommel.

After the events of “Endure and Survive” (Episode 1.05), Joel has started wearing the backpack he obtained from Henry Burrell (Lamar Johnson), though he still has his same Buck knife and holstered Taurus in the final episode of the first season (“Look for the Light”) as he did when first setting out from Boston at the start of the season.

The Boots

Heavy-duty boots are requisite footwear for the unexpected calamities of dystopian post-pandemic life, whether wading through thigh-high murky water in a bombed-out hotel lobby or hiking up the snowy Grand Tetons.

Throughout the show from the 2003 scenes through 2023, Joel wears only Irish Setter boots, a brand of purpose-built footwear “for work and hunt” that evolved from the introduction of the iconic russet Red Wing 854 boots in 1950. The “Elk Tracker” and “Trailblazer” models have both been suggested as the screen-worn Irish Setter boots, though discussion among The RPF members and on Gear Patrol generally concludes that Joel wears the the former—specifically the Elk Tracker, style #861.

Though both mentioned varieties of Irish Setters are generally similar from the ankles down, certain details like the side wing shapes, number of visible outsole lugs, and the Goodyear welt appearance more closely align with the Elk Tracker style than the Trailblazer.

These plain-toe hunting boots are comprised of waterproofed dark brown full-grain leather uppers that rise 10″ to mid-calf and are Goodyear-welted to black lugged carbon rubber Bulls-Eye® Air Bob Aggressive outsoles, reinforced by a steel shank for added stability. Though it would have been significantly tested through Joel’s years of heavy wear, Irish Setter treats the memory foam insoles with a proprietary ScentBan odor control technology, designed to kill bacteria and its associated odors.

The boots are derby-laced through four sets of gilt-finished eyelets, plus four more sets of speed hooks up the shaft, though the lowest pair of hooks are larger and positioned farther back on each side of the boot. Irish Setter typically characterized this specific boot style with kilted tongue extensions, though these were evidently removed from Joel’s boots.

Joel’s “new” Elk Trackers are already considerably worn by the time he’s rampaging through the Fireflies’ hospital in “Look for the Light” (Episode 1.09).

At the start of “Kin” (Episode 1.06), Joel’s boots begin falling apart as he needs to secure the outsole of his right boot by duct-taping it around the rest of the boot. After reaching his brother Tommy at a Wyoming commune, Joel attempts to mend the boot himself, but Tommy simply presents him with a nearly identical pair of Irish Setters… an impressive find in a camp that prides itself on a collective notion of property.

Joel accepts Tommy’s donated Irish Setters, which appear to be the same model of Elk Trackers that he had been wearing up to this point.

Constantly in a state of alertness to avoid being caught off-guard by raiders or the infected, Joel rarely has his boots off. In the rare occasion that he does, attempting to mend the separated outsoles in the safety of that Jackson Hole commune workshop in “Kin” (Episode 1.06), we see that he wears light-gray woolen boot socks with gold-woven toes.

The Watch

“Your watch is broken,” Ellie comments shortly after their first meeting. Joel’s daughter Sarah (Nico Parker) had taken his watch to get repaired for him as a 36th birthday gift. Indeed, the affable jeweler’s fix was one of the last actions seen under any shred of normalcy before society unraveled overnight. While trying to make their escape in the early morning hours the next day, both the watch and poor Sarah herself were shot by a soldier ordered to kill them. Though it hasn’t functioned in the two decades since, Joel continues wearing it as a memento of the beloved daughter he lost.

Joel keeps his broken watch dutifully strapped to his wrist.

The watch was custom-made for the production by Andrew Taylor, an instructor at South Plains College Video Production Technology. Taylor’s collection of military memorabilia had attracted the attention of an assistant prop master on The Last of Us, who then contacted Taylor to hire him to construct Joel’s wristwatch. As instructed, Taylor’s design followed the simple but sturdy A-17 watches worn by American pilots during World War II as well as the aesthetics of the Lüm-Tec Super Combat B2 watch that reportedly inspired the game-worn timepiece.

The result was a plain steel-cased field watch with an unguarded crown and straight lugs through which an olive-green nylon NATO-style strap passes through. The round black dial has luminous hands and Arabic numeral indices, with the 12, 3, and 9 particularly prominent while a white-ringed sub-register at the 6 o’clock position features a red hand.

Before disaster strikes, Joel looks over the long-neglected watch that Sarah had fixed for him on his 36th birthday.

Shop the watch:

Joel's watch was custom-made for the series, but the shape and style reminds me of the simple and affordable Timex Weekender:

• Timex Weekender T2N647 (Amazon, $49 $36.02)

Especially if you're putting the look together for cosplay or costume purposes and plan on breaking the watch glass for a screen-accurate look, you may be glad to go with an inexpensive—yet still surprisingly reliable—piece like the Timex.

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Once you've got the watch, you can swap out the bracelet for an Army green NATO-style vinyl strap like Joel wears, with silver-toned buckle and keepers to match the watch metal:

• Benchmark Basics Nylon Watch Band in Army green (Amazon, $9.95)

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Prices and availability current as of March 15, 2023.

Winter Gear

By the sixth episode (“Kin”), Joel and Ellie finally reach Wyoming, where he layers against the snow in a thigh-length shearling coat over his trucker jacket.

The cognac-brown leather shell has a dual closure with a full-length zipper as well as an extended storm fly with five dark brown buttons that extend up to the top of the funnel neck. The inside of the coat is finished in a darker brown oiled leather with an inset piled shearling-style fleece.

The coat has set-in sleeves, left plain at the end of each cuff though there a seam rings around each forearm. On the front, the shoulders are yoked with seams that slant upward toward the neck, with another seam crossing horizontally above the fourth button. The back is similarly divided with a horizontal seam across the upper back while two perpendicular seams below it divided the rest of the back into four quadrants. There are also two slanted welt-entry hand pockets.

To the best of my knowledge, the coat remains unidentified, though Paolo Sandoval almost definitively reported for Inside Hook that Pascal wears the Aston “Laredo Shearling Coat” while others, including BAMF Style reader Jimmy Peeler, made the case for the Overland “Lucas Merino Shearling Sheepskin Coat”. To my eye, neither appears to be a 100% match for the screen-worn outerwear, but both are fine coats!

“Kin” also introduces Joel’s russet-brown cowhide gloves, uniquely detailed with red leather-piped edges, outward-facing seams, and paracord wrist adjusters. These specific features aided its identification as the Wakayama retro-inspired ski gloves in the “cork and brown” colorway. The Wakayama gloves have removable wool terry liners and neoprene cuffs for comfort. Each elasticized cuff has a short tab with a gunmetal grommet, through which the red-and-olive paracord passes through to adjust the fit around the wrist.

T-Shirt and Jeans in 2003

Joel’s look was much simpler twenty years earlier, when dressing for work on his 36th birthday—September 26, 2003. He rolls into breakfast with Sarah wearing his navy blue T-shirt inside-out, until she points it out so he can correct it before work. “That outfit was super hard to get, which sounds nutty because it is literally a T-shirt, jeans, and boots,” Summers shared with The Daily Beast, explaining the specific challenge posed by showrunner Craig Mazin’s vision for its color palette.

The navy-blue T-shirt that Mazin favored for the scene was from the Italian knitwear brand Crossley, detailed with a narrow crew-neck and double-banded short sleeves. With only four of the discontinued shirts initially sourced, Summers and her team worked to collect the at least 30 needed to account for the hardships of the scene and needs of stunt and photo doubles. Once obtained, the shirts were put through the usual breakdown rigors to present as well-worn staples from a contractor’s closet.

Joel already showed a preference for his dark blue denim Levi’s 505 Regular Fit jeans and brown leather Irish Setter boots that he would still be wearing two decades later. As Summers had mentioned the Irish Setter “Trailblazer” as a model worn by Pascal on screen, it’s possible that the Trailblazers were Joel’s 2003 boots before they were replaced by the Elk Trackers by 2023.

Forest-Green Flannel in 2010

The only other time we see Joel between the initial outbreak and the present-day scenes are his 2010 visit with Tess to the survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) and his gregarious partner Frank (Murray Barlett) in “Long, Long Time” (Episode 1.03), during which the paranoid Bill warily keeps his .45 trained on Joel for much of their dinner.

Joel wears a forest-green soft flannel long-sleeved work shirt with two button-through chest pockets, as well as his usual Levi’s jeans and Irish Setter work boots.

The Guns

Ellie: Can I have a gun?
Tess: No!
Joel: Absolutely not!
Ellie: Okay! Jesus… fine! I’ll just throw a fuckin’ sandwich at them.

Ellie asks the question after watching Joel pick up his rifle from the floor in the abandoned SuperClips where she just minutes earlier awakened to find him aiming it at her. Stepping out into the light of a bombed-out Boston, we see that he supplements the rifle with the same holstered revolver he had picked up from under the floorboards in the previous episode… and which Ellie spends much of the early part of the season begging to carry.

Joel digs up the 4″-barreled Taurus Model 66 revolver he keeps in a Triple K belt holster, stored under his floorboards.

Taurus Model 66

Following the example set in the game, Joel’s primary sidearm is a Taurus Model 66 service revolver, its once-blued finish considerably worn. Introduced by the Brazilian arms manufacturer Taurus in 1978, the Model 66 initially resembled many other medium-framed, traditional double-action service revolvers with its six-round cylinder until a new variant was introduced in 1999 with a unique seven-round cylinder. Despite the tactical advantage of an extra round, I believe Joel carries the more conventional six-shot model, holstered in a tan leather Triple K OWB holster on the right side of his belt.

The Model 66 is primarily chambered for .357 Magnum ammunition, though—like many other .357 revolvers—it can also fire the lower-powered .38 Special. As we see in “Infected” (Episode 1.02), he keeps the revolver’s spare rounds in his jacket’s right-hand pocket. The black rubber grips are detailed on each side with the familiar golden Taurus emblem at the bottom.

Standard barrel lengths are three, four, and six inches, with Joel’s four-inch model resulting in a total length of 10.5 inches and weighting just over two pounds with all six rounds loaded.

Joel keeps his trusty Taurus drawn while inspecting a Colorado college building in “Kin” (Episode 1.06).

M4A1

When Joel, Tess, and Ellie initially set out from the Boston QZ, they’re briefly stopped by the corrupt FEDRA soldier Lee (Max Montesi), whom Joel beats to death and relieves of his M4A1 carbine.

Joel primarily uses the M4A1 in combat when they’re attacked by a group of infected in the Bostonian Museum in “Infected” (Episode 1.02), then he stashes it with his backup supplies in the Cumberland Farms convenience store on the way to Bill and Frank’s compound in the following episode, “Long, Long Time” (Episode 1.03). “There’s not much ammo out there for this thing,” he rationalizes to a questioning Ellie, which “makes it mostly useless.”

Adapted from the AR-15 and M16 series of 5.56x45mm NATO battle rifles, the 14.5″-barreled M4A1 carbine served as the standard American military service rifle at the time of the show’s outbreak in 2003, so it makes sense that FEDRA soldiers would still be armed with it twenty years later, though—like many weapons in The Last of Us—the frames show considerable wear from years of usage and likely not much ability to properly clean or store it.

The M4A1 that Joel takes from Lee has a fore-end light but simple iron sights, likely configured to avoid needing to rely on battery-powered optics given the limited resources of The Last of Us‘ 2023. In addition to the standard triangular-shaped A2-style fixed post front sight, this particular M4A1 has an LMT fixed rear sight, a robust style designed to maintain zero during heavy combat usage by military and police.

Joel’s M4A1 also has duct tape over the fore-end of the collapsible stock, suggesting that Lee—or a previous user—made a simple field repair rather than swapping out for a different rifle.

During his rampage through the Firefly-controlled hospital in Salt Lake City in the finale, “Look for the Light” (Episode 1.09), Joel gets his hands on another M4A1 rifle after his commandeered Ruger Mini-14 is empty. This M4A1 also has iron sights, though it has carry handle rear sights affixed to the “flat top” A2-style upper.

In “Look for the Light” (Episode 1.09), Joel fights his way to Ellie through the hospital with a variety of high-powered weaponry like the M4A1.

Beretta Model 70

After Bill dies alongside Frank in “Long, Long Time”, Bill bequeaths all of his weaponry to Joel, stored in his basement bunker… but, even then, Joel doesn’t permit Ellie to arm herself. Luckily for her, she finds Frank’s Beretta Model 70 stashed in a desk drawer and figures that what Joel doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

In fact, it actually saves him only an episode later in “Please Hold to My Hand” (Episode 1.04) when she uses it to paralyze the twerpy Bryan (Juan Magana), one of the desperate aggressors they encounter in Kansas City. After realizing Ellie can handle herself—and that he wasn’t responsible for the first time she had to shoot someone, as she later discloses—he agrees to help her learn how to shoot it. His first step is to correct the technique she was taught by FEDRA: “thumb over your thumb, left hand squeezes down on right.”

Joel corrects Ellie’s grip on Frank’s Beretta Model 70 in “Please Hold to My Hand” (Episode 1.04).

Despite its nomenclature, Beretta actually introduced its semi-automatic Model 70 series in the late 1950s, intended to be an improvement on the World War II-era Model 1934 and 1935 pistols. Marketed as the “Puma”, the Model 70 was chambered for .32 ACP (7.65x17mm SR Browning), the same small but popular ammunition found in James Bond’s Walther PPK; in fact, continuity errors during the making of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) actually swapped in a Beretta Model 70 for 007’s usual PPK during a few scenes.

The Model 70 series also included the .22-caliber Model 71 Jaguar (famous for its use by the Mossad) that shared the Model 70’s compact dimensions of a 3.5-inch barrel, though there were also longer-barreled variations on full-sized and target frames.

Like Joel’s Taurus Model 66, the Beretta Model 70 was also Ellie’s handgun in The Last of Us game.

Winchester Model 70

From Bill’s collection, Joel helps himself to a Winchester Model 70 bolt-action rifle with black synthetic furniture that he ably uses to defend himself and Ellie against a pair of armed ambushers in Kansas City in “Please Hold to My Hand” (Episode 1.04).

Bill’s truck and rifle get Joel as far as Kansas City, where he’s forced to abandon both.

After he’s forced to abandon Bill’s blackened Model 70, Joel quickly arms himself with another after taking out an aging revolutionary sniper, Anthony (Ron J. Anderson), who had been sniping at Joel’s small group of survivors on their way out of Kansas City in “Endure and Survive” (Episode 1.05).

Anthony’s wooden-furniture Winchester Model 70 appears to have been a generally better-received pre-1964 version, operationally distinguished by a Mauser-type controlled round feed and cosmetically characterized by cut checkering. Anthony’s Model 70 also has a long-range scope, which Joel uses to battle Kathleen’s heavily armed revolutionary forces that chase after his band.

Remington Model 700 BDL

After Maria (Rutina Wesley) takes Joel’s pre-1964 Model 70 upon “welcoming” him into the protected Wyoming commune that used to be Jackson Hole, Joel borrows his brother Tommy’s “old 700”, presumably the same scoped Remington Model 700 BDL bolt-action rifle we had seen the brothers use during the outbreak scenes at the start of the series.

Remington has continuously produced the Model 700 since 1962, when it was introduced as an improvement on the earlier Model 721 and 722 sporting rifles. Available in over two dozen calibers and many different barrel lengths, finishes, and stock configurations, the Model 700 is typically fed from an internal tube magazine of between three to six rounds.

Tommy’s Model 700 “Better Deluxe” (BDL) variant is described by Remington as “American’s most popular bolt-action of all time,” with a high-gloss walnut stock capped with a black fore-end. The current lineup includes 6.5mm Creedmoor, .243 Winchester, .270 Winchester, .308 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, all with 22″ barrels and four-round internal tube magazines, in addition to 7mm Remington Magnum and .300 Winchester Magnum, with 24″ barrels but three-round tube magazines.

On their way to Colorado in “Kin” (Episode 1.06), Joel uses the Model 700 to teach Ellie how to shoot: “deep breath in, slow breath out… you squeeze the trigger like you love it. Gentle, steady… nice and slow.” “You gonna shoot this thing or get it pregnant?” she quips in response.

Both Joel and Ellie effectively use it as their preferred weapon through the next several episodes, until the Salt Lake City band of Fireflies take it from Joel in “Look for the Light” (Episode 1.09).

Ruger Mini-14 GB-F

Upon learning that the Fireflies intend to perform a fatal operation on Ellie’s brain in the hopes of extracting a potential cure, Joel overpowers the two Firefly guards escorting him out of the hospital, taking their Ruger Mini-14 GB-F and a spare magazine before charging back into the hospital to retrieve Ellie… and execute any Firefly in his path.

The Ruger Mini-14 was introduced in 1973 as a commercial evolution of the briefly issued M14 battle rifle, though the lightweight Mini-14 was chambered for the smaller 5.56×45 mm NATO cartridge used in the newer M16 series (rather than the larger 7.62×51 mm NATO round used in the M14) as well as the dimensionally equivalent .223 Remington caliber. It became popular as a sporting rifle, though—as described in The Complete World Encyclopedia of Guns—”as a select-fire rifle for military or police use, the Ruger Mini-14 proved to be just a bit too lightly constructed and not accurate enough.”

In the half-century since it was introduced, Ruger developed several variations of the Mini-14 like the “Government Barrel” (GB) and the GB-F, the latter fitted with a side-folding stock for additional portability.

Joel reloads his commandeered Ruger while battling Fireflies in the Salt Lake City hospital.

When he takes the Ruger Mini-14 GB-F from one downed Firefly, he also curiously appears to take a STANAG magazine from another Firefly that had been armed with an M4. While both rifles can fire 5.56×45 mm NATO ammunition, I don’t believe they have transferable magazines as the Mini-14 feeds from proprietary 20- and 30-round Ruger magazines.

Beretta 92FS

Finally, after his M4A1 runs out of ammunition, Joel picks up yet another discarded weapon—the Beretta 92FS. He performs a brass check to confirm one in the chamber and charges into the operating room.

The Beretta 92 pistol series consists of semi-automatic pistols with a traditional double-action/single-action trigger, chambered for the universal 9×19 mm Parabellum ammunition that feeds from double-stack magazines. Now almost universally recognizable following its role in movies like the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon series, Beretta had introduced the full-size 92F/92FS pistol in the 1980s as an improvement upon its earlier Model 92, also intended to compete in U.S. military trials to replace the aging M1911A1 service pistol.

With one fateful shot, Joel secures his and Ellie’s freedom for the moment… though at what potential cost for humanity?

Read more about the firearms in The Last of Us at IMFDB.

What to Imbibe

There are little opportunities for drinking in the world of The Last of Us, though the excellent third episode “Long, Long Time” depicts Joel and Tess spending an idyllic afternoon in 2010 with their new friends Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) on Bill’s fortified compound in Lincoln, Massachusetts, drinking some of the Caymus Vineyards red wine that we saw Bill liberating from their local liquor store during the initial outbreak. The label indicates that they’re enjoying the Cabernet Sauvignon variety, which the Napa Valley winery describes as characterized by “rich fruit and ripe tannins – as approachable in youth as in maturity.”

Bill only wants to serve his guests hot lead from his .45 while the far more genial Frank is willing to share their cabernet sauvignon with Joel and Tess.

When he has the choice, Joel seems to prefer whiskey, drinking from a sorry bottle in his apartment in the first episode and again pulling from a flask around the campfire with Ellie in “Kin” (Episode 1.06), reluctantly handing it over to her for a sip. Later in “Kin”, he joins his brother Tommy at the Jackson Hole bar—his first proper watering hole in decades—where Tommy pours them each a glass of homemade whiskey over ice.

The taped-on label suggests that Tommy’s commune had distilled the whiskey only months prior, in June 2023.

If you’re looking for a The Last of Us-approved meal to pair with your whiskey or wine, may I recommend 20-year-old cans of Chef Boyardee? As a one-time college student whose culinary skills left something to be desired, I’ve definitely subsisted on Beefaroni a few years past its expiration date, but I can attest that—as Joel admits—it was still pretty good.

Joel celebrates finding an untouched can of Beefaroni.

What to Listen to

Obviously:

How to Get the Look

Pedro Pascal on the set of The Last of Us (Sourced from @bellaramsey on Instagram)

Joel’s frayed yet functional fashions on The Last of Us are appropriate for both dystopian survival or a standard weekend adventure, built on timeless staples like a waxed trucker jacket, rugged work shirt, blue jeans, and hardy hiking boots.

• Tan waxed sailcloth cotton trucker jacket with 6 nickel “donut” tack buttons, horizontal chest and back yokes, patch chest pocket (with button-down flap), vertical welted hand pockets, button-tab waist adjusters, and squared single-button cuffs
  • Flint and Tinder Flannel-Lined Waxed Trucker Jacket
• Blue or gray denim cotton snap-front long-sleeve shirt with spread collar, two chest pockets (with narrow pointed snap-down flaps), and single-snap cuffs
• Dark blue denim straight-leg jeans with belt loops, zip-fly, and five-pocket layout
  • Levi’s 505 Regular Fit
• Dark burgundy leather belt with large silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Dark brown waterproofed leather 10″-high plain-toe work boots with four-eyelet derby-lacing, four sets of speed hooks, and Goodyear-welted black lugged outsoles
  • Irish Setter Elk Tracker 861
• Light-gray woolen boot socks
• Stainless steel field watch with unguarded crown, straight lugs, and round black dial (with luminous Arabic numeral indices and 6:00 sub-dial) on olive-green nylon NATO strap

Shop the jacket:

Flint and Tinder Flannel-Lined Waxed Trucker Jacket in field tan (Huckberry, $298)

Shop the blue denim shirt:

Wrangler Men's Premium Slim Fit Denim Shirt in dark wash (Walmart, $17.97)

Shop the plaid flannel shirt:

Fjällräven Fjällglim shirt in laurel green (Fjällräven, $110)

Shop the gray denim shirt:

River Island Regular Fit Washed Denim Shirt in gray cotton (River Island, £32)

Shop the jeans:

Levi's 505 Regular Fit in "Flying Bird" wash

• Amazon ($48.65)
• J.C. Penney ($59.99)
• Levi's ($59.99)

Prices and availability current as of March 15, 2023.

Shop the boots:

Irish Setter Elk Tracker boots

• Amazon ($152.93 and up)
• Cabela's ($204.99)
• Irish Setter ($239.99)
• Sportsman's Warehouse ($214.95)

Prices and availability current as of March 15, 2023.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series (one of my favorite new shows of the year), streaming on HBO Max.

To read more about The Last of Us, check out these sources for today’s post:

• The Daily Beast: “Finding Pedro Pascal’s Perfect ‘The Last of Us’ Jacket Was a Herculean Effort” by Emma Fraser
• Digital Spy: “The Last of Us costume designer reveals Pedro Pascal’s surprising reaction to Joel outfit” by Joe Anderton and Gabriella Geisinger
• Everything Lubbock: “South Plains instructor recreates watch featured in HBO TV show ‘The Last of Us'” by BrenShavia Jordan
• Gear Patrol: “These Are the Perfect Boots for Pedro Pascal in HBO’s ‘The Last of Us'” by Evan Malachosky
• GQ: “All of the Menswear We’ve Clocked on The Last of Us So Far” by Tyler Chin
• GQ: “The Best Part of The Last of Us Is Pedro Pascal’s Jacket” by Tyler Chin
• GQ: “Here’s Where to Buy Pedro Pascal’s The Last Of Us Denim Shirt” by Tyler Chin
• GQ UK: “Joel’s watch is The Last Of Us’s greatest and most confounding mystery” by Robert Leedham
• GQ UK: “On The Last of Us, costumes for the end of the world” by Caroline Reilly
• Huckberry: “Hey, Is Pedro Pascal Wearing a Huckberry Flannel-Lined Waxed Trucker Jacket in The Last of Us?”
• Inside Hook: “The Internet Wants to Know: Where Is Joel’s ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 6 Coat From?” by Paolo Sandoval
• The RPF: “The Last of Us HBO Joel Thread” (For my money, there are no better screen-sartorial detectives than The RPF community!)
• SEEK (Instagram Reel): “Brilliant @cynthiasummers breaks down Joel’s jacket from @thelastofus”
• The Strategist (New York): “We Found Pedro Pascal’s Flannel Shirt From The Last of Us” by Rachael Griffiths

The Quote

Sometimes things don’t work out the way we hope. You can feel like you’ve come to an end and you don’t know what to do next, but if you just keep going, you find something new to fight for.

The post Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973)

Vitals

Jack Nicholson as Billy L. “Badass” Buddusky, brash U.S. Navy Signalman 1st Class

Norfolk, Virginia, to Portsmouth Naval Prison, December 1972

Film: The Last Detail
Release Date: December 12, 1973
Director: Hal Ashby
Costume Designer: Theodore R. Parvin

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

On the “birthday” of the U.S. Navy, founded October 13, 1775, check out Cracker Jack Nicholson’s uniform in The Last Detail—released 50 years ago this December.

In the spirit of today also being Friday the 13th, The Last Detail chronicles the story of unlucky Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid), a glum kleptomaniac seaman being transferred to a military prison. The profane Navy lifer Billy Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and his more even-tempered colleague Richard “Mule” Mulhall (Otis Young) are tasked with accompanying Larry from the Norfolk Naval Investigative Service Office headquarters (“Shit City”) up to Portsmouth Naval Prison, where Larry has been sentenced to an eight-year stretch for the attempted theft of no more than $40 from a polio charity box.

The profane Navy lifer Buddusky conspires with Mule to make the most of their “shit detail”, stretching a two-day trip out to its full allotted week so unlucky Larry can live it up along the way with burgers, beer, and broads.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch, Badass,” the master-at-arms (Clifton James) greets Buddusky. “You are one lucky son of a bitch! How come you’re so lucky, Buddusky?” Billy Buddusky has been a long-overdue character for this blog’s focus. After all, his nickname is “Badass” and we all know what the B.A. in BAMF stands for!

Jack Nicholson turned down Robert Redford’s leading role in The Sting to star as Buddusky in The Last Detail, written by his pal Robert Towne, whose screenplay had been back-burnered by Columbia Pictures in the hopes that he would tone down the profanity, though Towne insisted on its value as “this is how people talk when they’re powerless, they bitch.”

Eventually, Towne won the waiting game as the relaxed cinematic standards by the early ’70s resulted in production of The Last Detail and its record-setting 65 uses of the word “fuck”, resulting in Academy Award nominations for Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid, and Towne’s screenplay.

What’d He Wear?

“Well, if that don’t make me just wanna shit in your flat hat,” Buddusky comments to Mulhall after Mule makes Meadows cry. Though Buddusky refers to the older blue woolen “pancake caps”, these had been all but superseded a decade earlier by the white “Dixie cup”-style sailor caps that all three of them wear during the journey.

These round white visorless sailor caps were written into Navy regulations in 1886 and remained “a mainstay of the enlisted Sailor’s sea bag for more than 100 years,” according to Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Daniel Garas for The Sextant. Indeed, the Navy’s attempt to discontinue these white hats in 1973—the same year The Last Detail was released—was protested so vehemently that the decision was soon reversed and the Dixie cup kept its place perched atop the iconic “Cracker jack” uniform… which would also be briefly (but unsuccessfully) phased out later that decade.

Officially designated the “Hat, White (E-1 to E-6),” it earned its moniker in reference to its resemblance to the disposable paper cups made by the Dixie Cup Corporation. Article 3501.27 of the current U.S. Navy regulations dictate that these must be “made of white cotton twill with rounded crown and full-stitched brim” and worn “squarely on the head with the lower front edge approximately 1-1/2 inch above the eyebrows and not crushed, bent, or rolled,” though especially the latter rule seems most frequently broken as sailors individualize their caps by molding them into different shapes.

Buddusky spends most of The Last Detail wearing the enlisted Blue Dress uniform, nicknamed the “Crackerjack” in reference to the sailor depicted as the Cracker Jack snack brand mascot from World War I onward. The uniform itself dates to considerably earlier, originating with the U.S. Navy’s first regulations for enlisted uniforms in 1841. The uniform slightly evolved over the decades to follow, with variations in the headgear, stars and stripes, rating badges, and trouser buttons, but the essence of the iconic Crackerjack dress blues has remained the same for nearly 200 years of American naval history.

Nancy: I can see what it’s done for you… must be the uniform.
Buddusky: They are cute, aren’t they? You know what I like about it? One of my favorite things about this uniform is the way that it makes your dick look.

The Crackerjack dress blues are anchored (so to speak) by a two-piece sailor suit made of dark blue 100% wool serge, as currently dictated by Navy uniform regulations. According to the Heritage Auctions listing for the screen-worn costume, Jack Nicholson actually wore a standard Navy-issue Crackerjack uniform in The Last Detail.

The top half is a pullover jumper, designated “Jumper, Blue Dress (E1-E6)” by article 3501.32. A subtly pointed yoke extends over the chest in the front and back, layered behind the V-neck opening by a “tar-flap” collar framed by three rows of white stripes and adorned with two white stars—one at each corner of the squared, nine-inch long back of the collar.

The cuffs match the collar with their triple white striping that encircles most of the wrist, aside from the two-button closure. The only pocket is a set-in jetted pocket over the left breast, horizontally positioned between the service awards and the chest yoke.

Rating badges and service stripes are worn on the left sleeve—ratings on the forearm and service stripes diagonally below the elbow. As a Signalman 1st Class, Buddusky is an E-6—the highest enlisted grade below the Chief Petty Officer (CPO) grades. The navy-blue wool serge rank insignia badge follows the E-6 pattern with three red chevrons positioned below a white-embroidered eagle and the crossed semaphore flags indicative of his Signalman rating. Established in the early 1920s for visual communication specialists, the Signalman job field was ultimately discontinued in 2003.

Like the Marine Corps and Coast Guard, the Navy assigns a service stripe for each four-year period of duty (as informed by article 4231), so the trio of 3/8″-wide red stripes on Buddusky’s forearm indicate that he has served in the Navy for at least twelve years.

One of the longest-lasting traditions of Navy dress is the black silk neckerchief that sailors have been authorized to wear since at least 1817, though they had been an unofficial—and very practical—part of a sailor’s kit for long before then. Article 3501.38 of the current regs dictates that ratings E-6 and under wear a black 36-inch square of either silk or synthetic fabric—folded diagonally, rolled continuously, and tied with a large square knot over the jumper’s V-neck opening.

Buddusky wears two rows of service awards, all presented in the correct order of precedence. Across the top row, he wears the Navy Unit Commendation, Navy Good Conduct Medal, and National Defense Service Medal. Across the bottom row, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal (with a bronze service star), and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal (with a 1960s device).

Marine O.D.: Sailor looks like he’s lost something.
Marine: Probably has trouble finding it with those thirteen buttons.
Buddusky: If I was a Marine, I wouldn’t have to fuck with no thirteen buttons, I’d just take my hat off.

The matching dark-blue wool serge trousers of the Navy’s enlisted service uniform are famous throughout the military and beyond for their 13-button “broadfall” front flap and wide bell-bottoms.

This flap had been added in 1864 during the Civil War with a simpler seven-button arrangement, though the expansion of the flap in 1894 resulted in six additional buttons. An erroneous yet enduring rumor states that the number was chosen to honor the original 13 colonies, though the most credible explanation is merely that this was merely the smartest number for the sake of symmetry. Though article 3501.92 of the current regs maintain the tradition of these thirteen black plastic anchor-motif buttons, the Navy reduced their functionality by sewing the flap into place and adding a simple zip-fly in 2012—reducing the classic thirteen buttons to decorative iconography.

The trousers have a lace-up rear waistband closure, comprised of seven sets of eyelets on a V-shaped gusset, as well as a set-in back-right pocket. The legs flare out to the famous bell-bottoms, which are apocryphally said to have been designed as makeshift life-preservers but were more likely just to differentiate sailors’ trousers in the era before the Navy regulated their uniforms. “These tailors unknowingly provided a great service with this design, which mariners claim was invented to keep the trousers’ legs dry after they were rolled up above the knees during shipboard duties,” wrote Joe Bartlett for All Hands in 1992.

This production photo of a cigar-smoking Jack Nicholson posing in his white “Dixie cup” cap and navy wool “broadfall” service trousers would be used for much of The Last Detail‘s promotional artwork.

Black shoes and socks are prescribed with the crackerjack uniform, specifically “plain toed, oxford style… low quarter, lace shoe, made of smooth leather or synthetic leather,” according to article 3501.54, while article 3501.78 reminds Navy personnel that socks are to match the shoe color and be “made of undecorated, plain, or ribbed knitted fabric.”

Buddusky generally follows the code with his black leather split-toe 5-eyelet derby shoes, appropriately worn with plain black socks.

Consistent with their personalities, Mule’s black cap-toe oxfords are more formal than Buddusky’s split-toe derbies.

The three sailors layer for the winter weather in their dark navy pea coats, the heavy, hip-length double-breasted outerwear made popular by mariners after centuries at sea. Inspired by their popularity among the Dutch and English navies, the U.S. Navy had adopted the pea coat early in the 19th century, named either for the Dutch pije cloth that characterized their coats or the Anglicized derivative, “pilot cloth”.

However the nomenclature originated, the silhouette of these time-and-weather-tested coats has remained generally unchanged for centuries: distinguished by a short, close fit said to have protected “reefers” who often had to face harsh water and winds while climbing their ships’ rigging. A double-breasted front offered fuller coverage than the alternative, and this was eventually standardized by the U.S. Navy with eight large black plastic buttons detailed with anchors—arranged in two columns of four buttons each. The top row of buttons is positioned higher than the rest, allowing for the convertible collar to be buttoned over the neck and chest during inclement weather. (Navy regs describe the enlisted pea coat in article 3501.41.)

The shell fabric is a dark navy-blue shade of hardy, dense melton wool. While some commercial variants add flapped pockets, classic Navy pea coats only have slanted set-in hand pockets on the outside. Echoing his service jumper worn under it, Buddusky’s pea coat appropriately features his Signalman 1st Class rank insignia rating badge affixed to his upper left sleeve.

While carrying out his Shore Patrol duties, Buddusky pulls on a black woolen felt brassard with “SP” emblazoned in yellow block letters. To avoid conflicting with his rank insignia on his left sleeve, Shore Patrol brassards are worn on the right arm. SPs were often also issued white lace-up leggings, which Buddusky and Mulhall are evidently excused from wearing.

The security-oriented nature of Shore Patrol also means Buddusky is armed (for better or worse), so he buckles on a wide white webbed gun belt that closes through a brass clip-style buckle and has brass adjusters. Stamped “U.S.”, a flapped black leather holster for his .45-caliber M1911A1 pistol hangs from a white rectangular two-eyelet flap that loops over the right side of the belt. (I’ve seen several contemporary examples of Vietnam-era Shore Patrol gun belt rigs, often with holsters made by the now-defunct company Bucheimer.)

Buddusky wears the standard white cotton undershirt and undershorts, with the crew-neck top of his short-sleeved T-shirt visible under the V-neck opening of his jumper.

While getting beer-drunk with Mulhall and Meadows in their hotel room, Buddusky spends most of the scene wearing little more than his mid-thigh white cotton undershorts, which have a long rise with his name “BUDDUSKY W.L.” stamped on the right side of the waistband. The shorts have lace-up sides and a front yoke that curves down just below the four-button fly.

At the start of The Last Detail, we meet Buddusky as he’s ironically napping in his “dungarees” working uniform of a blue chambray shirt and dark blue denim bell-bottoms, which he appoints with his same white “Dixie cup” cap, pea coat, and black derby shoes.

Working uniform or hardly working?

On his left wrist, Buddusky wears a stainless steel watch with a round silver dial on a steel bracelet.

The Gun

The nature of Buddusky and Mulhall’s assignment results in the master-at-arms issuing each of them an M1911A1 service pistol and a single accompanying magazine, loaded with seven rounds of .45 ACP ammunition.

While Mulhall signs for his M1911A1, the master-at-arms hands Buddusky the loaded magazine for the pistol already in his hand.

Not a full day goes by until Buddusky draws his M1911A1 on a bigoted bartender, memorably screaming:

I am the motherfucking Shore Patrol, motherfucker! I am the motherfucking Shore Patrol! Now give this man a beer.

Designed by John M. Browning in the early 20th century and first produced by Colt, the original M1911 was adopted by the U.S. Army in March 1911, followed two years later by the Marine Corps and Navy. Improvements to the design were standardized in the 1920s as the M1911A1, including the latter’s arched mainspring housing and shorter trigger. The M1911A1 reigned as the American armed forces’ venerated service pistol through much of the 20th century until it was generally replaced by the Beretta M9 in the 1980s, though some 1911 variants remain in use among special services.

What to imbibe, or… Give this man a beer!

“Everybody’s old enough for a beer,” Buddusky explains as he and a reluctant Mulhall bring the underage Meadows to a Washington, D.C. watering hole. The bartender is even more reluctant to serve Meadows, so—to fulfill Buddusky’s wish to fill Meadows with a bellyful of beer—the trio obtains a couple of Schlitz six-packs that they drink from under the flickering florescence of a parking garage. “Best goddamn drink in the world, isn’t it?” Buddusky comments.

They take the Schlitz back to their cheap motel room, supplementing it with “grenade”-style bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Just because we see Buddusky drinking PBR doesn’t mean he sides with Frank Booth in the beer debates, as he later defends Heineken as “the finest beer in the world, kid. President Kennedy used to drink it!”

Buddusky’s uniform

Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973)

• White cotton twill “Dixie cup” cap
• Navy wool serge U.S. Navy uniform pullover jumper with triple white-taped V-neck “sailor collar” (with squared back flap detailed with two white stars) and 2-button cuffs (trimmed with triple white tape)
  • Signalman 1st Class rate badge (white crow, white semaphore flags , three red chevrons) on upper left sleeve
  • Three red service stripes on forearm of left sleeve
• Black silk neckerchief
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• Navy wool serge U.S. Navy uniform trousers with 13-button “broadfall” front flap, set-in back-right pocket, laced back gusset, and flared plain-hemmed bell-bottoms
• Black leather split-toe 5-eyelet derby shoes
• Black socks
• White cotton boxer shorts with 4-button fly
• Dark navy melton wool double-breasted pea coat with convertible collar, 8×4-button front, and slanted hand pockets
• White cotton canvas 2¼”-wide gun belt with three rows of grommets and brass clip-buckle
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round silver dial on stainless bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Well kid, there’s more things in this life than you can possibly imagine. I knew a whore once in Wilmington. She had a glass eye… used to take it out and wink people off for a dollar.

The post The Last Detail: Jack Nicholson’s Navy Crackerjack Uniform and Pea Coat appeared first on BAMF Style.

Richard Roundtree as John Shaft in Shaft (1971)

Vitals

Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, tough private detective

New York City, Winter 1971 and 1972

Film: Shaft
Release Date: June 25, 1971
Director: Gordon Parks
Costume Designer: Joseph G. Aulisi

Film: Shaft’s Big Score!
Release Date: June 21, 1972
Director: Gordon Parks
Costume Designer: Joseph G. Aulisi

Background

R.I.P. Richard Roundtree (1942-2023), who shot to stardom in the early 1970s after making his iconic screen debut as the eponymous detective in Shaft.

Based on Ernest Tidyman’s series of novels, Shaft remains a pop cultural touchpoint for Roundtree’s charismatic performance and Isaac Hayes’ Academy Award-winning theme song. Alongside Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song released months earlier, Shaft firmly established the marketability of blaxploitation films and was also financially successful enough to save a then-struggling MGM from bankruptcy.

Roundtree would reprise the role in two immediate sequels, Shaft’s Big Score! (1972) and Shaft in Africa (1973), and two later films (both named Shaft) released in 2000 and 2019, now named John Shaft I as the uncle of Samuel L. Jackson’s leading character.

Shaft’s mission for his introductory film is simple but dangerous. Tasked with tracking down the kidnapped daughter of Harlem gangster Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn), Shaft gets beaten and shot but eventually teams up with militant leader Ben Buford (Christopher St. John) to infiltrate their hotel, outgun the crooks, and return Marcy (Sherri Brewer) to her family. Shaft’s Big Score! finds our hero seeking vengeance against the clarinet-playing Mafia boss Gus Mascola (Joseph Mascolo) and the crooked funeral director Johnny Kelly (Wally Taylor) following their role in a friend’s death.

Whether his goal is a rescue or revenge, no one does it cooler than John Shaft.

What’d He Wear?

In both Shaft and Shaft’s Big Score!, John Shaft follows his rotation of trendy brown leather jackets by dressing for the wintry action-packed finales in a matching black leather jacket and pants. The crew overlap and proximity between both films’ production suggests that costume designer Joe Aulisi recycled the same outfit from Shaft for Roundtree to wear again in the sequel.

Production photo of Richard Roundtree as John Shaft.

With its tapered waist-length cut and sharp, wide lapels, Shaft’s black leather jacket resembles a classic motorcycle jacket. However, rather than the traditional asymmetrical front zip found on jackets like the Schott Perfecto, Shaft’s jacket has a double-breasted arrangement of six buttons to close the jacket, including the extended square-ended waistband tab that closes through two buttonholes.

Shaft’s espresso is interrupted in Shaft.

The waistband expands out into a full waist belt that tightens through a large silver-toned single-prong buckle on each side and loops through a set of self-loops around the back of the jacket. The set-in sleeves are also finished with semi-belted cuffs that each have a short strap fastened through a silver-toned single-prong buckle. Vertical seams running down the front of the jacket curve inward to avoid colliding with the vertical jetted entries of the hand pockets where Shaft keeps his shotgun shells during the finale of Shaft’s Big Score!

In Shaft’s Big Score!, Shaft reloads from the shells carried in his jacket pockets. Based on the High Standard Model 10B’s reputation for being finnicky, he better have the correct magnum or “high brass” 12-gauge shells handy!

Shaft maintains his monochromatic “man in black” scheme with a black wool turtleneck, of which we see little aside from the ribbed roll-neck since he tends to keep his jacket closed during these scenes. However, he does keep the jacket open just enough to grant his left hand smooth access to the black leather shoulder holster carrying his nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver under his right arm.

Shaft’s black leather pants to match his broad-lapeled jacket recall a motorcyclist’s garb—think Peter Fonda in Easy Rider—though Shaft’s ride has four wheels instead of two, making his style more of a statement than anything borne of practicality. These flat-front trousers are typical of motorcycle pants, detailed with belt loops, jeans-style front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. Rather than back pockets (which would be uncomfortable and impractical for storing anything on a bike), these pants have a reinforced yoke across the seat.

Shaft holds them up with a black leather belt that closes through a large curved silver-toned single-prong buckle. With all this black leather, the obvious choice for Shaft’s footwear are black leather boots. These plain-toe boots are likely calf-high riding boots, worn with the shafts inside his trouser legs.

Waylaid in Shaft.

In Shaft’s Big Score!, Shaft spies how to make his speedboat getaway with a mob boss prisoner in tow.

In Shaft, Richard Roundtree wears a steel wristwatch with a round silver dial on a unique rally-style bracelet, detailed with three large holes on each side of the watch case that are connected by a series of smaller holes as the band extends around the wrist. BAMF Style reader Aldous suggested that the watch may be a Rado of late 1960s vintage.

A gangster holds his old-fashioned Tommy gun on our hero in Shaft.

By Shaft’s Big Score!, he has swapped out the rally-banded watch for a stainless steel chronograph. Flanked by a black-finished rotating bezel, the black dial has two white sub-registers at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions, and is secured around his wrist on a steel seven-row rice-grain bracelet. To me, the watch looks like a circa 1970 Heuer Autavia like the ref. 7763.

Now Shaft’s the one with the big gun, firing out the window of his ’69 Ford in Shaft’s Big Score!

In both films, Shaft pulls on a set of black leather gloves that protect his hands during the gunfighting while also keeping them warm against the winter chill.

The Guns

Appropriate for his profession as a private investigator, Shaft’s preferred sidearm across the first two Shaft movies is a snub-nosed .38 Special revolver—the “belly gun” widely seen carried by gumshoes and gangsters alike in classic detective fiction.

Colt Detective Special

Shaft establishes his weapon as a blued Colt Detective Special that he swaps out for the finale with the flashier nickel-plated model that he keeps in his refrigerator. Colt introduced the Detective Special in 1927, designed as the more easily concealed alternative to its full-sized Official Police model introduced the same year. Intended for the law enforcement market, the Detective Special’s blend of power and concealment made it popular among cops, crooks, and civilians alike.

The telltale free-hanging ejector rod of early 20th century Colts goes unseen behind the gangster’s ear, though you can discern the distinctively rounded shape of a Colt cylinder release, easily identifying Shaft’s nickel-plated Detective Special in Shaft.

Smith & Wesson Model 36

Shaft’s Big Score! abandons the “fridge gun” and keeps a nickel-plated snub-nose revolver in Shaft’s shoulder holster throughout the proceedings—though it’s not the previously seen Colt Detective Special but rather the Smith & Wesson Model 36.

Unlike the Detective Special with its full six-round cylinder, the Smith & Wesson Model 36 has a five-round cylinder that keeps it wider and slimmer for even greater concealment—albeit sacrificing a round of .38 Special in the process, bringing the weight down to around 19.5 ounces compared to the 21.5-ounce Detective Special.

Smith & Wesson had originally dubbed this weapon the “Chiefs Special” following a vote taken when it was introduced during an International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) convention in 1950, though the nomenclature was updated when Smith & Wesson began numbering all of its models later that decade. From the start, this weapon was available in both blued and nickel finishes, with the nickel frame costing approximately $11 more at the time Shaft’s Big Score! was produced in the 1970s.

Shaft with his nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Model 36 drawn in Shaft’s Big Score! Note how the ejector rod attaches to the front of the barrel, unlike a Colt.

High Standard Model 10B

When this baby starts kickin’, it won’t stop, so nobody get cute!

Shaft prepares to battle gangsters in Shaft’s Big Score! by supplementing his handgun with a High Standard Model 10B, a unique semi-automatic shotgun that he stores behind a few books in his apartment—with the 12-gauge shells kept in the hollowed-out pages of a Moody’s Industrials book right next to it.

Shaft prepares his High Standard Model 10B when anticipating battle against the mobsters in Shaft’s Big Score! The hefty Moody’s book next to him has a Shawshank-style hollowed-out midsection for his 12-gauge shells.

This gas-operated weapon had been in development for nearly a decade by Santa Monica police sergeant Alfred Crouch, who envisioned the ideal entry shotgun for tactical units. Crouch’s design followed the bullpup philosophy, relocating the action behind the trigger. As illustrated by popular modern weapons like the FAMAS F1, FN F2000 and FN P90, SA80, and Steyr AUG, this creates compact weapons that retain a longer barrel length, giving users more maneuverability without sacrificing ballistic effectiveness—theoretically a winning combination for close-quarters combat scenarios.

In the mid-1960s, Crouch sold his design to the High Standard Manufacturing Company of Hamden, Connecticut, who modified their more conventional C1200 Supermatic shotgun to deliver the Model 10A in 1967, followed three years later by the improved Model 10B, which added a left-hand charging handle, flip-up front sight, and an integrated carrying handle mount/rear sight on which the Kel-Lite flashlight (which was nonremovable on the Model 10A) could be removed.

Shaft takes aim.

Weighing approximately 10 pounds, the base Model 10 could fit four 12-gauge shells in its magazine tube, though an optional extended tube would add two extra. The 26″-long weapon has an 18-inch barrel that allows effectiveness up to nearly 50 yards.

Intended solely for law enforcement, High Standard produced the Model 10 shotgun from 1967 to 1977. During these ten years, the Model 10 was adopted in limited numbers by curious American police agencies that were intrigued by the design but soon stymied by its drawbacks, including frequent failures to cycle and the danger of firing it from the wrong side of the body—as shells were spit hot from the right side ejection port, shooters could only safely fire the Model 10 from their right shoulder to the point that High Standard had to print warnings directly on the weapon urging users not to fire it from the left shoulder.

Note the ejected shell as Shaft fires from out the window of his ’69 Ford.

How to Get the Look

Richard Roundtree as John Shaft in Shaft’s Big Score! (1972)

Dressed head to toe in black leather, John Shaft develops a signature look for the high-caliber climaxes of his dangerous adventures.

• Black leather motorcycle jacket with 6×3-button double-breasted front, extended waistband and full-belted back (with silver-toned single-prong adjuster buckles), vertical jetted hand pockets, and set-in sleeves with semi-belted cuffs
• Black ribbed wool turtleneck
• Black leather flat-front motorcycle pants with belt loops, front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather belt with round silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather plain-toe calf-high riding boots
• Black leather shoulder holster with vinyl support strap and belt connector strap
• Sporty steel wristwatch on steel bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the original Shaft trilogy.

The Criterion release of Shaft also includes Shaft’s Big Score! for interested fans.

The Quote

You still got a lot of burying to do.

The post Richard Roundtree’s Black Leather as Shaft appeared first on BAMF Style.

Al Pacino in Serpico (1973)

Vitals

Al Pacino as Frank Serpico, NYPD plainclothes officer

New York, Winter 1971

Film: Serpico
Release Date: December 5, 1973
Director: Sidney Lumet
Costume Designer: Anna Hill Johnstone

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Released 50 years ago today on December 5, 1973, Serpico chronicles the decade-long law enforcement career of Frank Serpico, a real-life New York Police Department plainclothes officer who exposed widespread corruption in the department, portrayed by Al Pacino in his second Academy Award-nominated performance. (This continues a trend of celebrating Pacino’s cinematic milestones, as readers may recall that this week is also the 40th anniversary of Scarface.)

Presented as an idiosyncratic individualist more beatnik than beat cop, Serpico hardly fit the traditional police mold with his idealistic values and hippie lifestyle, often putting him at odds with his colleagues as he refuses to take their bribes. After years of trying, Serpico finally manages to get public attention onto these levels of corruption with a New York Times article published in April 1970 that he celebrates with his fellow honest cops, Bob Blair (Tony Roberts) and Inspector Lombardo (Edward Grover), respective stand-ins for the real-life David Durk and Paul Delise.

Unfortunately, the media attention further ostracizes Serpico within the department to such a degree that, less than a year later on February 3, 1971, he nearly dies after being shot in the face with a .22 during a Brooklyn narcotics bust.

“Guess who got shot? Serpico,” a duty lieutenant informs a colleague at the film’s start. “Think a cop did it?” he gets asked. “I know six cops who’d like to.”

Just as his crooked colleague Tom Keough (Jack Kehoe) had warned him, it wasn’t any of his brother officers who physically pulled the trigger; instead, they grievously failed to intervene to protect him or call in the 10-13 (“officer down”), with some—though, to my knowledge, never Serpico himself—implying that they may have even set him up.

Serpico is bookended by the “present-day” sequence set on that cold Wednesday morning in early February 1971 as the eponymous officer bleeds out from the .22-caliber wound in his cheek. In addition to Pacino’s acclaimed starring role, Serpico includes a number of the actor’s regular cinematic collaborators, including director Sidney Lumet, costume designer Anna Hill Johnstone, and a supporting cast that includes F. Murray Abraham, Ted Beniades, and Sully Boyar.

What’d He Wear?

In the decade since the relatively clean-cut Frank Serpico joined the NYPD, we watch his appearance evolve with longer hair and facial hair (first a mustache, then a goatee, and ultimately a full beard), as well as plenty of jewelry and hippie-style clothing, even on the job.

On February 3, 1971, Serpico dresses for the job in “the padded army jacket, a leather vest, a heavy black woolen sweater, dungarees, and calf-high boots,” according to Peter Maas’ source book Serpico: The Cop Who Defied the System. Aside from the leather vest, costume designer Anna Hill Johnstone represented the same outfit on screen, right down to Serpico’s olive-green Army surplus M-65 field jacket.

“Frank! Why don’t you go up there and check it out?” urges the crooked cop played by F. Murray Abraham. “Why don’t you?” Serpico responds. “I got the wrong clothes.” “I’ll take ya shoppin’,” Serpico retorts before getting out of the car and approaching the building.

Serpico and his fellow officers approach the target’s door.

The real Serpico was indeed a U.S. Army veteran (whose mid-1950s service pre-dated the M-65), but Serpico likely wears this mil-spec field jacket not in tribute to his own service but rather in the same manner that Army clothing was increasingly embraced by Vietnam-protesting counterculture throughout the late 1960s. “The counterculture kid in Army gear could razz the warmongering machine that had endowed the jacket with symbolic power, and he could honor boys destined to die in their boots, and he could also effectively affect a bohemian pose,” wrote Troy Patternson of The New York Times, as cited by Sam Trotman for the Paynter Jacket Co. blog.

The M-65, officially designated as the “Coat, Cold Weather, Man’s Field” (MIL-C-43455J), was approved for U.S. military use in 1965 to replace the M-1951, which was an evolution of the World War II-era M-1943 and its shorter predecessor, the M-1941. Constructed from a 9-ounce olive green (OG-107) cotton sateen cloth, the M-65 maintains the hip-length design of its predecessors and features shoulder straps (epaulets) along with four outer pockets: two chest pockets and two larger hip pockets that each close with a single covered snap on pointed flaps.

The most significant departure from the M-65’s field jacket predecessors is the rounded collar with a built-in protective hood enclosed by a neck zipper. Additionally, an inner drawcord cinches the waist for a snug fit, and the jacket fastens with a large brass zipper covered by a snap-closed front storm flap. Pleats behind each armhole enhance the wearer’s range of movement, especially when layered over heavy uniform elements… or a substantial wool sweater with a holstered Browning pistol.

Still in usage at the time Serpico was set and produced, the classic M-65 concluded its service in 1980 as the U.S. military shifted to standardized camouflage Battle Dress Uniforms (BDU). While the M-65 design persisted in various branch-specific camouflage schemes until the 2000s, it was eventually replaced by the Army Combat Uniform (ACU) and Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP) uniforms.

Serpico’s field jacket appears to have once been issued and worn in service, evident by the remnants of where insignia had been stripped from the coat’s outer shell.

For a warm intermediate layer against the winter chill, Serpico wears a black ribbed wool cardigan sweater with a straight front-zip that could close up the sweater’s funnel neck, allowing for some versatility. Peter Maas’ book specifically describes the real Serpico’s jumper as a thick black woolen turtleneck sweater, which the cardigan technically becomes when he wears it zipped all the way to the neck.

Serpico’s sweater was a fortunate choice, as the zip-up front could be easily removed by surgeons after he’s rushed to the operating room.

Only once the sweater has been unzipped do we see more evidence of the distinctive and oft-flamboyant style that Serpico favors. His white voile undershirt has white lace embroidery around the round neckline and the deep V-shaped three-button placket, suggesting that it’s the same shirt he had previously worn with white trousers when meeting Keough and his fellow cops in the park.

Earlier, Serpico had worn this white voile popover shirt with embroidered detail when meeting fellow cops in the park to discuss his refusal to take payoffs.

In addition to his usual silver hoop earring in the lobe of his right ear, Serpico regularly rotates through an assortment of necklaces. He wears two on the day he gets shot, both specifically mentioned by the real Serpico in his 2017 interview with Doug Poppa for the Baltimore Star-Examiner:

• A silver box-chain necklace with a pendant depicting the Muslim symbol of a star inside a crescent moon
• A gold cable-link necklace from which dangles “a gold Winnie-the Pooh Bear with movable arms and legs” given to him by a Swedish girlfriend, mentioned frequently in Peter Maas’ book as well

“Miss Bennett tried to get the gold Winnie-the-Pooh over his head and when she couldn’t, she snipped the chain,” wrote Peter Maas of the wounded Serpico’s hospital intake. According to Frank himself, his star-shaped earring was inexplicably changed to a plain hoop for Maas’ book.

Serpico’s dark blue denim jeans are of the Navy dungaree-style, with patch-style front and back pockets rather than the five-pocket arrangement popularized by the likes of Lee, Levi’s, and Wrangler.

Through the belt loops of Serpico’s jeans, he wears a dark brown leather belt that he attaches his holstered pistol onto, via a simple tan suede leather IWB holster.

Consistent with the rest of his workwear-inspired aesthetic, Serpico wears heavy-duty work boots with brown leather uppers worn to a hardy patina. These moc-toe boots are derby-laced through seven pairs of brass-finished eyelets and have lugged dark brown leather soles. His socks are plain black.

Serpico keeps a number of rings in his rotation, including a few chunky rings and a gilted ring depicting a fish that he thankfully leaves at home for this particular job as its wiggling tail would’ve further impeded drawing his Hi-Power at that crucial moment. Here, he wears only his usual silver-toned overlap ring on his right index finger, detailed with a square-shaped gem stone shining from each end.

To fight the chill and further fit in in this grungy neighborhood, Serpico wears a dark-brown ribbed-knit beanie cap, a favorite style of his that he had worn in multiple colorways and patterns.

The Gun

After considering himself a “marked man” following his grand jury testimony against officers that take bribes, Serpico visits the famous (and now closed) John Jovino Gun Shop on Grand Street in Little Italy, where he purchases a blued Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol.

“That takes a 14-shot clip… you expectin’ an army?” asks the sales clerk, perhaps conflating the 13-round magazine with the pistol’s overall capacity of 14 rounds when an additional round is chambered.

The screen-used Browning Hi-Power from Serpico, serial #72C67613, as pictured in its 2018 auction listing. (Source: Heritage Auctions)

The Hi-Power revolutionized the handgun market upon its launch in 1935, after a full dozen years in development started by the legendary firearms designer John Browning, who died before the design was realized by his protégé Dieudonne Saive.

Mimicking aspects of Browning’s iconic 1911 design in its single-action trigger and short recoil operation, the Hi-Power diverged from its predecessor due to legal constraints around the 1911 design exclusively owned by Colt. Despite this hurdle, the Hi-Power has rightfully earned its status as a highly regarded pistol since its introduction by the Belgian firm Fabrique Nationale (FN) Herstal in 1935. The Hi-Power’s groundbreaking 13-round capacity of 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition foreshadowed what became known as the “Wonder Nine,” a term more conventionally associated with double-action/single-action (DA/SA) pistols introduced decades later.

Unlike the standard model, Serpico’s blued Hi-Power has target sights—a raised front ramp sight and adjustable rear sight. The 2018 Heritage Auctions listing describes the serial number as 72C67613, which implies a production date of 1972, making it brand-new for the film’s production and technically manufactured a year after Serpico had been shot.

Serpico was over him at once. He whipped out his Browning automatic, cocked it, and pressed it against the base of the plainclothesman’s skull. “Move, you motherfucker,” Serpico said, “and I’ll blow your brains out.”

The man’s body went limp, his face was jammed too tightly against the floor and he could not speak. Serpico kept the gun on him, looking around the room. Everyone was frozen in place, and no one was smirking anymore.

Perhaps 30 seconds passed before one of the other cops in the room coughed nervously and said, “Jesus Christ, is that a forty-five?”

“No, nine-millimeter,” said Serpico.

“Oh, so that’s the new Browning, huh? How many rounds does it hold?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen? What do you need fourteen rounds for?

“How many guys you got in this office?”

“Hey look, we were just joking.”

“Yea, so was I,” Serpico said.

— Peter Maas, Serpico: The Cop Who Defied the System

“The night I got shot, I had my Browning in my belt. I had my .38 Special Smith & Wesson snub-nose in my pocket, in my fatigue jacket. I always had my hand in my pocket, if I had to use it,” Serpico recalled in a 2017 interview with Doug Poppa for the Baltimore Post-Examiner.

Books and articles describe Serpico keeping the Browning Hi-Power in his belt, with the film depicting it carried in a tan suede IWB (inside-the-waistband) holster, first at the 5:00 position toward his back before he moves it toward the front, carried AIWB-style for the bust.

Serpico draws his target-sighted Browning Hi-Power during the attempted bust.

“I went into a gun store behind headquarters. Jovino’s, I think it was called, and I bought a fourteen-round Browning 9mm semi-automatic pistol,” Serpico shared with Poppa. “I was the first cop in the New York City Police Department to carry a Browning 9mm. You couldn’t carry 9mms back then. They weren’t what you would call an authorized firearm. All we had was the .38 Special.”

The John Jovino Gun Shop opened in 1911 and became a New York City landmark, recognizable for its large wooden exterior sign in the shape of a service revolver. After selling $1 million worth of firearms and accessories annually at its peak, the venerated shop was forced to close during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic after 109 years in business. You can read more about the last days of the John Jovino Gun Shop and its final owner, Charlie Hu, at Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York.

How to Get the Look

Al Pacino in Serpico (1973)

On that consequential early February day in 1971, Frank Serpico dressed for the job, the weather, and his own offbeat personality in an Army field jacket, high-necked black wool sweater, blue jeans, and boots—a functional blend of military garb and classic workwear that Serpico further distinguished with his own unique jewelry.

• Olive-green (OD-107) cotton sateen M-1965 U.S. Army-issue field jacket with rounded collar (with integrated zip-in hood), zip/snap front closure, four flapped pockets (with covered snaps), epaulets/shoulder straps, back shoulder pleats, and drawstring-cinched waist
• Black ribbed wool zip-up funnel-neck cardigan sweater
• White embroidered voile long-sleeved popover shirt with deep three-button placket
• Dark-blue denim dungaree-style jeans with belt loops, patch front pockets, and patch back pockets
• Dark-brown leather belt
• Tan suede IWB holster (for Browning Hi-Power pistol)
• Dark-brown leather moc-toe 7-eyelet derby-laced work boots
• Black socks
• Dark-brown ribbed-knit beanie cap
• Gold cable-link necklace with animal-shaped pendant
• Silver box-chain necklace with star-inside-crescent moon pendant
• Silver overlapping ring with gem-set ends, right index finger

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Al Pacino’s Field Jacket as Serpico appeared first on BAMF Style.

Bernard Horsfall as Shaun Campbell in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Vitals

Bernard Horsfall as Shaun Campbell, doomed MI6 agent

Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, December 1969

Film: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Release Date: December 18, 1969
Director: Peter R. Hunt
Costume Designer: Marjory Cornelius

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

On the 00-7th of December, let’s return to the Alps in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the 1969 James Bond movie that distinguishes itself both as 007’s only adventure to date that’s decidedly set during the Christmas holidays and the only time Australian actor George Lazenby starred as the sophisticated secret agent.

Lazenby’s Bond arrives by train in Bern, where he’s observed from behind the latest issue of the Daily Express by a mysterious fellow agent, listed in the credits as “Campbell” though I don’t believe he’s ever referred to by name on screen.

Campbell closely surveils 007’s movements, to the point where he’s turned away by the gruff SPECTRE henchman Grunther (Yuri Borienko) when he hopes to ride the ski-lift up to Piz Gloria, stating that he’s seen a restaurant advertised up there. Campbell must be quite hungry as he thus takes it upon himself to climb “the whole bloody Alp!”, a feat which I can’t imagine any meal would be worth even if Nathan Fielder had arranged for a substantial rebate by the end.

Campbell’s attempt to climb the mountain on Christmas Eve results in his unfortunate capture, when it’s implied that he blew Bond’s cover as geneologist “Sir Hilary Bray” and subsequently ended up dead. As Telly Savalas’ urbane Blofeld smoothly observes to Bond:

Your colleague! Such a keen climber, and a brilliant conversationalist… before he left us.

What’d He Wear?

Campbell dresses in smart, understated layers appropriate for the snowy Alpine winter. His outer layer is a thigh-length lightweight ski parka, made from a microfiber-finished nylon or polyester in a military-like shade of sage-green.

The front closes with a straight-zip as well as an additional flap with six silver-toned snaps, spaced from the top of the funnel-neck down to the bottom edge of the hem. A voluminous hood extends from the back of the neck, cinched with a white drawstring. The jacket also cinches around the waist through a hidden draw-cord that runs around the inside of the waist. The bellows-style pockets over the hips each close with a single-snap flap.

Grunther foils Campbell’s plans for a simple passage up to Piz Gloria.

Campbell layers his jacket and sweater over a brown-and-tan-on-white shadow-plaid cotton flannel shirt, worn on both days but with the sporty spread collar pulled out and over the sweater’s crew neck on Christmas Eve.

Campbell’s creamy white wool sweater follows the design of a traditional Norwegian fisherman sweater, as identified by @thelandlessgentry on Instagram. The sweater is patterned with short dark-navy “lice” lines, each angled diagonally (down toward the left) across four rows of the shaker-stitched body. These lines are echoed by the double dark-navy bands around the reinforced ribbed crew-neck and around the ribbed waist hem. The set-in sleeves continue the pattern present on the body of the sweater, except for the ribbed cuffs that are only cream.

Blofeld: “You perverse British, how you love your exercise. Every year, dozens of amateur climbers—they wind up in the same predicament. A kind of waxworks show for morbid tourists.”

Campbell’s charcoal-gray ski breeches may be made from a stretchy wool blend that was popular on elevated skiwear through the 1960s. Some ski trousers are designed to extend the entire length of the legs, with stirrups under each foot holding them in place (as both Bond and Blofeld would later wear), but Campbell’s ski pants have sliding buckles to secure the bottoms just below his knees. These flat-front breeches appear to have squared patch-style side pockets, possibly covered with flaps.

EINTRITT VERBOTEN means EINTRITT VERBOTEN, but you can’t blame Campbell for trying.

Campbell trudges through the snow in hardy brown leather winter boots, with a heavy-duty oxford-style lacing system and black soft leather collars around the ankle-high openings. The black lugged rubbed outsoles inform us that they’re likely not ski boots, which typically feature stiff soles specifically designed to latch into ski bindings.

Visible between the knee-length ski breeches and his ankle-high boots, Campbell wears mottled light-taupe ribbed wool-blended knee socks.

Campbell spies Bond—er, Sir Hilary Bray—arriving in Bern, instantly met by Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) and grumpy Grunther.

When Campbell takes it upon himself to climb the Alp in an attempt to contact Bond at Piz Gloria, he adds a pair of hefty black rubber galoshes and dons a set of black leather gloves with quilted backs.

The Car

MI6 evidently reserves the bulk of its automotive budget for double-o agents, as Campbell motors through the Alps in a plain white 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, technically a Type 1 model.

The “1300” badging spied under his skis (appropriately with only the “00” visible) on the rear-mounted engine lid informs us that Campbell’s Type 1 is powered by the 50-horsepower 1300cc flat-four engine that was introduced in 1966 as a slightly more powerful alternative to the 36-horsepower 1200cc which had been the only available engine since 1954.

If only Campbell’s Type 1 had a mind of its own, it may have been able to save its owner like a certain other white VW Bug that appeared on big screens in ’69.

How to Get the Look

Bernard Horsfall as Shaun Campbell in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

If only Campbell had been patient, he could have easily blended in among the Christmas tourists in the Bernese Oberland with his ski-ready layers of a water-resistant lightweight parka over an acrylic sweater, sport shirt, and ski breeches, a timeless combination that would still work for hitting the slopes today—and warming up with an après-ski toddy.

• Sage-green microfiber polyester thigh-length ski parka with drawstring-corded hood, straight-zip/snap-up front, bellows hip pockets (with snap-down flaps), and drawstring-corded waist
• Brown-and-tan-on-white shadow-plaid cotton flannel collared button-up sport shirt
• Cream-white wool Norwegian fisherman’s sweater with dark-navy diagonal-stripe rows and dark-navy double-banded crew-neck and hem
• Charcoal-gray stretch wool ski breeches with flapped patch-style hip pockets and sliding-buckle straps below the knees
• Brown leather ankle-high winter boots with oxford-style lacing, black soft leather collar, and black lugged rubber outsoles
• Light-taupe mottled wool-blend knee socks
• Black leather winter gloves with quilted backs

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: Bernard Horsfall as Shaun Campbell appeared first on BAMF Style.

Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham in Christine (1983)

Vitals

Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham, high school senior

Rockbridge, California, Fall/Winter 1978

Film: Christine
Release Date: December 9, 1983
Director: John Carpenter
Costume Designer: Darryl Levine

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

No shitter ever came between me and Christine!

Christine drove into theaters 40 years ago today, directed by the great John Carpenter and adapted by Bill Phillips from Stephen King’s supernatural horror novel of the same name that had been published just months earlier. The titular Christine is a white-over-red 1958 Plymouth Fury, high-schooler Arnie Cunningham’s prized possession… and possibly also possessed by a homicidal demon.

The more he dedicates himself to restoring Christine, the more Arnie’s attitude shifts from awkward to arrogant, though his newfound confidence helps him land a date with the popular Leigh Cabot (Alexandra Paul), a situation that drives Christine to such jealousy that she refuses to start until Arnie insists that Leigh will never come between him and his car.

Arnie’s statements are soon put to the test when he and Leigh walk into the garage and find that Christine has been vandalized by a gang of bullies that have been targeting Arnie. Arnie’s fury—and, well his Fury—continues to alienate him from his family and friends, including his one-time best friend Dennis Guilder (John Stockwell), whom he frightens during a New Year’s Eve joyride that turns into a nightmare fueled by Christine’s violent desire for revenge.

What’d He Wear?

Christine delves into the dark side of “fabulous fifties” nostalgia, sartorially represented by Arnie restyling himself in the fashions of Christine’s heyday as he grows increasingly influenced by the ’58 Fury. He chooses the obvious touchpoint of ultimate ’50s bad boy James Dean, frequently dressing in a red windbreaker and blue jeans that recall Dean’s iconic costume in Rebel Without a Cause, though Arnie—despite cursing at his mom (“well, fuck you!”) and choking his dad (“take your mitts off me, motherfucker!”)—ain’t Jim Stark.

Trouble at the Cunningham home.

Arnie’s soft red jacket also recalls another major Stephen King adaptation of the early ’80s, as Jack Nicholson dressed for the final act of The Shining in a burgundy corduroy blouson-style jacket while stalking the Overlook Hotel in a mad rage.

Arnie’s jacket has a soft burgundy shell with a suede-like, velveteen finish. When the screen-worn jacket was auctioned in May 2010, the listing described it as “dark red corduroy”, though even in close-ups of the film I can’t see the tufted fabric that would suggest even a pinwale or needlecord cloth, so I suspect it’s just a velveteen cotton or similarly treated synthetic fabric.

Arnie’s red jacket presents a soft napped finish more aligned with velvet or suede than the corduroy mentioned in the 2010 auction listing.

The design resembles the familiar “Harrington jacket” with its standing collar, straight-zip front, and blouson-style waistband, though several characteristics differentiate it from the defining Baracuta G9 and the G4-style jacket that Arnie had previously worn during his “nerdy” era.

The front zipper is covered by a shot storm fly that fastens with a single black-covered snap at the waist and another on the neck of the rounded standing collar. The jacket boasts a set-in chest pocket over the left side and two lower-positioned hand pockets. The set-in sleeves are finished with burgundy ribbed-knit cuffs that match the ribbed knitting around the waist hem. Behind each armhole is a “bi-swing” pleat for greater range of movement.

Arnie debuts the jacket on screen during the traumatic incident in the garage when his relationship with Leigh immediately fizzles upon his seeing what Buddy Repperton (William Ostrander) and his friends did to Christine. Underneath the jacket, he wears a dark-navy jersey-knit cotton turtleneck.

When Arnie visits Dennis in the hospital on Thanksgiving with a six-pack, he wears the red jacket again, now partially zipped over a black polyester long-sleeved shirt that has a spread collar and button-up front placket.

Finally, Arnie dresses for the fateful New Year’s Eve joyride in his favorite red jacket, now zipped over a slate-gray jersey-knit cotton turtleneck that echoes the style of his earlier dark-navy jumper.

Arnie knocks back a fictional Southern Cross beer on New Year’s Eve: “A toast! Death to the shitters of the world in 1979.”

Arnie’s dark indigo denim jeans are Wrangler, informed by the sharp “W”-shaped stitching across the back pockets. Wrangler jeans are also characterized by a brown leather branded patch positioned on the back-right pocket, just a few inches above the “W”, though it either remains covered by the hem of Arnie’s jacket or was removed prior to the production.

These straight-cut, zip-fly jeans follow the regular five-pocket arrangement of two patch-style back pockets, two curved-entry front pockets, and a watch/coin pocket inset on the front right side. The stiffness and appearance of the cloth suggests the 65% cotton/35% polyester 14-oz. “Super Denim” that Wrangler offered through the late ’70s into the ’80s.

We get a fine close-up of Arnie’s shoes as he puts the pedal to the medal, though the clearest details I can discern are the black calf leather uppers with a straight toe-cap. They appear to lack laces and extend at least as high as Arnie’s ankles, suggesting Chelsea boots, which would be a more sophisticated alternative to the buckle-laden engineer boots that Dean wore in Rebel Without a Cause.

The Car

Oh, man, there is nothing finer than being behind the wheel of your own car! Except maybe for pussy!

One of the most famous fictional cars of all time, Christine is a red-and-white 1958 Plymouth Fury two-door hardtop coupe. The Fury is shown purchased secondhand and in considerable disrepair for only $250 by Arnie, who restores it to the original shining glory as Christine would have looked when she was brand-new, two decades earlier.

Detroit, 1958: a legend is born.

Stephen King intentionally chose the 1958 Plymouth Fury both for its angry-sounding name and the fact that he considered the model a “forgotten car”. Her name reportedly came from George Romero’s wife Christine, as King was filming Creepshow (1982) in Pittsburgh with the Romeros when he conceptualized the novel. (For what it’s worth, the novel Christine was actually set in Pittsburgh, but the film shifted the setting to a small town outside L.A.)

Written before the Internet made such research easier, King’s novel included a few inaccuracies, specifying a four-door Fury with an automatic transmission controlled by a shift lever, when—in fact—the only Fury models available in 1957 or 1958 were two-door hardtops. Manual and TorqueFlite automatic transmissions were available, but the latter was only controlled by a push-button transmission. (The film remedies the body style and transmission errors present in the novel.)

To depict Christine on screen, John Carpenter’s crew placed ads throughout southern California. Only 5,303 Fury models had been produced by Plymouth in 1958—and all produced in “buckskin beige” rather than Christine’s custom red-and-white exterior—so transportation coordinator Eddie Lee Voelker’s team widened their scope to contemporary Belevedere and Savoy models.

After the two-year search that exhausted 15% of the film’s budget, at least 24 two-door Plymouth hardtops from the late ’50s were purchased in various states of repair and used to construct a total of 17 Christines, each serving a different function: some were pristine “showcase” cars, others were chopped to fit the cameras for driving sequences, and others were junked to depict Christine’s frequent damage. Using rubber molds and internally mounted hydraulics, special effects supervisor Roy Arbogast also met Carpenter’s challenge of developing a Christine that could “regenerate” herself on screen by running the film backwards.

The shots of Christine’s engine show a 350 cubic-inch V8, the top-of-the-line Chrysler “Super Commando” B-series offered as an upmarket alternative to the base 318 V8. Mated to the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission and carbureted by twin four-barrel Carters, this ’58 Fury could generate up to 305 gross horsepower—a force to contend with when ramming her 3,850-pound mass into a victim. (According to Fraser Engine Co., the mean engine sounds we hear on screen aren’t of a Chrysler 350 V8 but rather a 1970 Mustang 428 Super Cobra Jet.)

1958 Plymouth Fury

1958 Plymouth Fury

Body Style: 2-door hardtop coupe

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

Engine: 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) Chrysler “Golden Commando” B-series V8 with dual Carter 4-barrel carburetors

Power: 305 hp (227.4 kW; 309 PS) @ 5000 RPM

Torque: 370 lb·ft (502 N·m) @ 3600 RPM

Transmission: 3-speed TorqueFlite automatic

Wheelbase: 118 inches (2997 mm)

Length: 206 inches (5232 mm)

Width: 79.4 inches (2017 mm)

Height: 53.5 inches (1359 mm)

Two Christines survived the production undamaged, with Ed Vickroy purchasing most of the cars and parts for $1,500, shipping them to Bill and Ed’s Auto Dismantling in Fontana, California, from where he sold everything to automotive enthusiasts, restorers, and film fans within two years. One of these collectors is Bill Gibson of Pensacola, Florida, who maintains the Christine Movie Car website and books out his fine-looking Fury for many fan events across the country.

The white-over-red Plymouth Fury shows up several times across Stephen King’s other works, including driven by the bullying Butch Bowers in the 1986 novel It and by the abusive Johnny Clayton in his 2012 novel 11/22/63. Evidently, King is fascinated by these cars but think very highly of the sort of people who drive them.

How to Get the Look

Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham in Christine (1983)

Arnie himself is trying to cop a classic cinematic costume by appropriating James Dean’s red windbreaker and jeans in Rebel Without a Cause, but with a degree more sophistication with his jacket’s soft suede-like shell, swapping the plain undershirt for jersey-knit turtlenecks, and dressier black boots.

• Burgundy velveteen cotton windbreaker with single-snap standing collar, straight-zip front, set-in breast pocket, open hand pockets, bi-swing back pleats, and ribbed-knit cuffs and hem
• Dark-navy jersey-knit cotton turtleneck
• Dark indigo denim Wrangler five-pocket straight-cut jeans
• Black leather cap-toe Chelsea boots

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Let me tell you a little something about love, Dennis. It has a voracious appetite. It eats everything. Friendship. Family. It kills me how much it eats. But I’ll tell you something else. You feed it right, and it can be a beautiful thing, and that’s what we have. You know, when someone believes in you, man, you can do anything—any fucking thing in the entire universe. And when you believe right back in that someone, then watch out world, because nobody can stop you then, nobody! Ever!

The post Christine: Arnie’s Red Jacket and Famous ’58 Fury appeared first on BAMF Style.

Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas (1990)

Vitals

Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway, feared mob associate

Queens, New York, December 1978

Film: Goodfellas
Release Date: September 19, 1990
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Nobody knows for sure just how much was taken in a daring pre-dawn raid at the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy airport. The FBI says two million dollars, Port Authority Police say four million dollars… it looks like a big one, maybe the biggest this town has ever seen!

Forty-five years ago today on Monday, December 11, 1978, more than $5.8 million in cash and jewelry was stolen from a cargo building at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Considered the most lucrative cash robbery on American soil to date, the heist was orchestrated by James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, a ruthless associate of the Lucchese crime family, one of the New York City Mafia’s infamous “Five Families”.

The Lufthansa heist and its violent aftermath drive much of the final act of Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s chronicle of street-level mob life across three decades from the perspective of Burke’s associate, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), who relayed much of the background information essential to the heist’s execution. The robbery itself isn’t depicted on screen, but a radio announcement assures a showering Henry—and the audience—that the job was a success for the mobsters, celebrated that evening with a Christmas party where Jimmy (Robert De Niro)—renamed “Jimmy Conway” for the movie—welcomes Henry with open arms.

Despite the festive sounds of The Ronettes and Darlene Love singing holiday classics from A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, the celebratory mood is soon dampened as Jimmy’s criminal cohorts arrive. The mooks clearly ignored Jimmy’s advice to lay low as they show off the opulent gifts they purchased for their wives and goomars, from Johnny Roastbeef’s flashy pink Cadillac to the expensive mink coat that Frankie Carbone’s date wears to the party.

If such insubordination wasn’t already grounds for Jimmy’s murderous ire, the incorrigible Morrie Kessler (Chuck Low) continues pressuring Jimmy to pay him his share for brokering the heist and the popular “Stacks” Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson) accidentally tipped the police to the Burke gang’s involvement by failing to dispose of their getaway van. Given Jimmy’s hair-trigger temper, it’s no surprise that “months after the robbery, they were finding bodies all over.”

What’d He Wear?

Jimmy Conway presents a sartorial testament to his philosophy of avoiding flashiness that might attract the attention of law enforcement. Despite the scene being set in 1978, right in the midst of disco-era excess, “Jimmy the Gent” opts for the most tasteful restraint among the men celebrating with him at the party. This serves as a smart contrast to Henry’s red velvet jacket and Tommy’s signature spearpoint collar.

The sheen of Jimmy’s tobacco-brown suiting suggests silk, incorporating a degree of festive elegance without overtly resembling a gangster. The suit was tastefully tailored, adhering to classic proportions and details.

The single-breasted jacket features notch lapels of moderate width that roll down to a two-button stance, cleverly positioned at Robert De Niro’s natural waistline to meet the top of his flat-front trousers. The straight shoulders are sufficiently padded to ensure Jimmy maintains an imposing silhouette. The sleeves are roped at the heads and finished with four-button cuffs. The jacket also boasts straight flapped hip pockets and a welted breast pocket that he wears undecorated.

“Come here, you!”

Maintaining his subdued profile, Jimmy wears a plain white cotton twill shirt designed with a spread collar, front placket, and squared double (French) cuffs that he fastens with a set of circular gold-toned links that each have a large raised black stone in the center. This may have been among the shirts made for Goodfellas by New York-based shirtmaker Geneva Custom Shirts.

Jimmy’s Sulka tie features a pattern of multi-striped ovals against a navy-and-charcoal geometric zig-zag woven silk tie, with the ovals striped in shades of brown that coordinate with his suit.

Fashionable ties and shirt collars were at their most excessive in 1978, but Jimmy’s restrained shirt and tie keep his look more timeless than trendy.

Jimmy wears a gold pinky ring and gold wristwatch, both on his left hand. The rectangular-cased watch is likely the Hamilton watch described among De Niro’s screen-worn inventory at the Harry Ransom Center as an “eighteen carat yellow-gold vintage watch [with] a black tonneau-style face, gold Arabic numerals, and a fourteen carat yellow gold band with a panther link and a fold over clasp.” Shining from his left pinky, his 14-carat yellow gold ring has three full-cut diamonds set against a black-filled center.

Gold jewelry flashes from Henry and Jimmy’s hands as they greet each other after the Lufthansa heist.

The final scene only focuses on Jimmy from the waist up, but the suit’s matching trousers likely follow the same design at his other pants at this point in the narrative: darted-front trousers with buckle-tab side adjusters (rather than a belt), curved “frogmouth”-style front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. His shoes may be the same dark brown leather cap-toe oxfords that we see him wearing around the same time with his brown windowpane sports coat.

What to Imbibe

This drink here is better than sex, babe.

Stacks Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson) is briefly shown pouring shots of green liqueur into glasses full of white wine to impress his date. This is almost definitely a reference to the drink that Nicholas Pileggi mentions Henry’s crew enjoying before Henry was sent off to prison six years earlier: “At eleven o’clock, Henry and his pals were at the bar at Maxwell’s drinking Screaming Eagles—shot glasses of white Chartreuse dropped into large goblets of chilled champagne.”

I have yet to take Stacks up on his dubiously bold claim about this drink, but I’d say it’s at least worth a try.

Other than the context, the only major difference from page-to-screen is Stacks’ choice of using the stronger (110 proof) and more colorful green Chartreuse rather than yellow, which is milder and sweeter at 80 proof. (Pileggi refers to “white” Chartreuse when he likely means the yellow version; production of White Chartreuse ended in 1900, more than seven decades before any of these scenes are set.)

The Car

Jimmy’s temper flares during the Christmas party when Johnny Roastbeef (Johnny Williams) makes the fatal mistake of insisting upon showing Jimmy the bright-pink 1979 Cadillac Coupe de Ville he purchased for Mrs. Roastbeef (Fran McGee). Nothing for Jimmy to get excited about—it’s a wedding gift. It’s in his mother’s name!

“Isn’t she gorgeous? I bought it for my wife, it’s a coupe. I love that car.”

For all his faults, Jimmy Conway is no hypocrite as he’s currently driving a far more modest gray ’77 Buick. Even Henry drives the exact same model as Johnny bought for his wife, but with a [slightly] more understated saddle-brown exterior.

Cadillac manufactured 121,890 Coupe de Villes for the 1979 model year, powered by either the large 7.0L V8 or a 5.7L diesel V8. Jimmy likely purchased the former, available with either a Rochester 4-barrel carburetor that produced 180 horsepower or electronic fuel injection (EFI), producing 195 horsepower. Regardless of the engine or model, all 1979 Cadillacs were mated to a three-speed automatic transmission.

As Jimmy takes drastic measures to avoid paying out after Lufthansa—and also remove any ties between himself and the robbery—Johnny and his wife meet their gruesome fate in the front seats of their Cadillac, her blood spattered on the dealership sticker still stuck to the passenger-side window…

…and cue the “Layla” piano exit.

The real-life “Johnny Roastbeef” was Louis Cafora, who bought a brand-new white Cadillac Fleetwood—not a pink de Ville—for his wife, Joanne. As Jimmy Burke grew angrily concerned with Cafora’s high-profile lifestyle and decision to involve his wife in Mafia matters, he ordered both of them murdered in March 1979, though their bodies were never found. In real life, it was Lufthansa suspects Joe Manri and “Frenchy” McMahon who were found shot to death in a car, but Goodfellas relegated those two men into the back of a garbage truck while finding a more symbolic representation of the mobbed-up newlyweds’ demise.

How to Get the Look

Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas (1990)

In his smartly tailored brown silk suit, white shirt, and coordinated tie, Jimmy Conway’s style would fit in beyond just a mobbed-up Christmas party deep in the disco era… only the shine of his diamond-laden gold pinky ring suggests something more sinister.

• Tobacco-brown silk suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and double vents
  • Darted-front trousers with curved “frogmouth”-style front pockets, buckle-tab side adjusters, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton twill shirt with semi-spread collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
• Navy zig-zag silk tie with repeating pattern of brown multi-striped ovals
• Dark brown leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Triple diamond-set gold pinky ring
• Hamilton vintage wristwatch with 18-carat yellow-gold rectangular case, black rectangular dial, and 14-carat yellow-gold panther-link bracelet

Footnote

The locale is almost certainly meant to be Robert’s Lounge, a real-life mob hangout in South Ozone Park, though the sequence was filmed at Neir’s Tavern, which opened in 1829 as “The Blue Pump Room” and remains the oldest operating bar in New York City.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. And, if you’re throwing your own Goodfellas style holiday bash, make sure to spin the festive A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector.

The Quote

Are you bein’ a fuckin’ wiseguy with me?

The post A Goodfellas Christmas: Jimmy’s Brown Party Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.

Roy Scheider as Buddy Manucci in The Seven-Ups (1973)

Vitals

Roy Scheider as Buddy Manucci, renegade NYPD detective

New York City, Winter 1972

Film: The Seven-Ups
Release Date: December 14, 1973
Director: Philip D’Antoni
Costume Designer: Joseph G. Aulisi

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Philip D’Antoni’s sole directorial effort The Seven-Ups was released 50 years ago today, starring Roy Scheider in his first major leading role as the lead of a group of renegade NYPD detectives who specialize in securing arrests for crooks who will serve sentences of at least seven years… hence being known as “the seven-ups.”

The Seven-Ups could be argued as a spiritual continuation of The French Connection, which D’Antoni had accepted the Academy Award for producing two years earlier. Both movies were filmed and set during a gritty winter in early 1970s New York City, focused on crusading cops unafraid to break a few rules—including Scheider as an Italian-American detective named Buddy, inspired by the real-life Sonny Grosso.

Both The French Connection and The Seven-Ups also featured a thrilling car chase centered around our protagonist behind the wheel of an ordinary Pontiac, pushed to perform extraordinary stunts thanks to the late, great Bill Hickman.

If you liked seeing one Pontiac at the heart of The French Connection‘s famous chase, you’ll love seeing two Pontiacs duking it out in The Seven-Ups!

But before that…

While Buddy Manucci and his seven-ups have built up a reputation as “the dirty-tricks squad that even the regular cops are afraid of” according to the film’s promotional material, the New York City underworld has been shaken by a series of kidnappings of high-profile figures like mob shylock Max Kalish (Larry Haines). At the same time, Manucci makes his neighborhood rounds, meeting with everyone from his barber to boyhood pal-turned-mobster Vito Lucia (Tony Lo Bianco).

Manucci’s team stakes out a gangland funeral in the Bronx where one of his seven-ups, Ansel (Ken Kercheval), poses undercover as a mob chauffeur. After Ansel’s cover gets blown and mobster Carmine Coltello (Lou Polan) tosses him in the trunk of his Cadillac, Manucci and Barilli (Victor Arnold) follow the Cadillac to a garage where Coltello meets with Moon (Richard Lynch) and Bo (Bill Hickman)—the duo that has been conducting the kidnappings. After a high-caliber misunderstanding, Ansel is literally caught in the crossfire and mortally wounded, springing Manucci into action behind the wheel of his 1973 Pontiac Ventura in hot pursuit of Bo’s dark-blue Pontiac Grand Ville sedan.

“Car 8-6, he shot a cop, I’m on the job! He’s goin’ for the bridge, close it off!” Manucci calls into his car radio as the Grand Ville approaches the George Washington Bridge, where it crashes through a police barricade and leaves Buddy’s Ventura the sole pursuer in a high-speed chase reminiscent of Bullitt (which is understandable, given Hickman’s involvement in both.)

Manucci seems to be closing in on the two kidnappers until he takes a hard turn and suddenly slams his Ventura into the back of a parked tractor-trailer, a potentially devastating crash that instantly converts his hardtop coupe into a makeshift convertible—a dangerous stunt inspired by the tragic circumstances of Jayne Mansfield’s death six years prior.

After learning of Ansel’s death at the hospital, Manucci is confronted by his superiors—the strict Lieutenant Hanes (Robert Burr) and more pragmatic Inspectorr Gilson (Rex Everhart)—who share that the seven-ups unit is indefinitely suspended.

Hanes: A squad from the chief detective’s office is investigating stories about undercover police—alleged police—going around, kidnapping wiseguys for ransom.
Manucci: And they think it’s us?
Gilson: Buddy… what would you think?

Suspension isn’t enough to stop the determined seven-ups, especially now that they’re out for revenge.

What’d He Wear?

Buddy Manucci’s regular street clothes through The Seven-Ups consist a belted brown leather jacket over hardy layers and jeans.

The thigh-length car coat follows some design queues associated with military field jackets, including: overall cut, four-pocket arrangement, and the martial shoulder straps (epaulets) that are sewn to each shoulder and button to the coat’s body closer to the neck. All four inverted box-pleated pockets have a pointed flap that closes through a single button, through the two chest pockets are plain patch-style pockets while those over the hips are the extended bellows-style pockets. The jacket has a shirt-style collar that Manucci often wears turned up.

In addition to the four buttons up the front from waist to neck, Manucci’s leather jacket has a full belt around the waist, with two silver-toned D-ring buckles to fasten it. The set-in sleeves have single-button squared cuffs, and a long single vent extends up the back to the belt.

Up through the car chase and its immediate aftermath, Manucci wears a stone-colored work shirt, likely made from polyester or a poly/cotton blend. The shirt has a large, slightly curved semi-spread collar and—like his jacket—military-style shoulder epaulets that button down at the neck. These buttons match the six dark plastic buttons up the front placket, fastening the cuffs, and which close the pointed flaps over both chest pockets.

For his first on-screen meeting with Vito, Manucci layers the shirt over a mid-blue cotton T-shirt with a high crew-neck, likely the same short-sleeved shirt we had just seen him wearing under his gray “RAIDERS”-stenciled cutoff training shirt. Between his shirt and jacket, Manucci wears a dark navy cardigan sweater with just the bottom two of its five brown buttons fastened.

Buddy dresses smart for the streets, but his boyhood friend Vito Lucia is no sartorial slouch himself—opting for more of a dandy gangster aesthetic.

Beginning with the stakeout and subsequent car chase, Manucci wears a black merino wool mock-neck sweater with raglan sleeves. At first, he wears it as a base layer under his stone work shirt before he wears it on its own under his leather jacket.

Buddy’s Bullitt moment.

As Manucci’s rogue investigation continues, he wears both knits together, pulling the navy cardigan over his black mock-neck.

Buddy briefly adopts a somewhat clerical look with his dark cardigan layered over his black mock-neck sweater.

For the final act of The Seven-Ups, Manucci continues to wear the navy cardigan, now layered over a beige turtleneck with a tall ribbed roll-neck.

Manucci’s boot-cut jeans are made from a light-blue lightweight denim, following the typical arrangement with belt loops around the waist and five pockets—two patch-style back pockets and two curved front pockets with a watch/coin pocket inset on the right side. He keeps a set of keys in his right-hand pocket, connected to a thin gold chain secured to the right-front belt loop. His wide dark brown leather belt closes through a squared brass-toned single-prong buckle.

At least Buddy’s boot-cut jeans lack the dramatic bell-bottomed flare of his fellow “seven-up” Barilli (Victor Arnold).

Whether dressed in a suit or a leather jacket and jeans, Manucci always wears black leather cap-toe boots, which have raised heels and brass-toned zippers along the inside of each boot upper.

Buddy slams the gas in his black side-zip boots.

Manucci wears a stainless steel watch with a plain round white dial, detailed with Arabic numeral hour indices, on a scaled black leather strap.

Manucci meets with Max Kalish.

To keep his hands warm in the winter climate, Manucci often pulls on a pair of dark brown leather three-point gloves.

The Gun

Buddy Manucci’s regular sidearm is a blued Smith & Wesson Model 36 snub-nosed revolver, holstered butt-down under his left armpit.

This model was a law enforcement favorite since its debut at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) convention in 1950, when those in attendance voted on its original “Chiefs Special” nomenclature. Built on its newly developed compact J-frame platform, this double-action revolver carried up to five rounds of .38 Special ammunition in its cylinder—one less than most earlier revolvers, though this gave it a more concealable edge over competitors like the Colt Detective Special (more on that specific weapon later.)

In 1957, Smith & Wesson implemented a numerical nomenclature for its handguns, and the Chiefs Special was officially designated the Model 36. By the 1970s, these reliable revolvers typically cost around $110 new. IMFDB suggests that the handsome squared walnut grips on Manucci’s Model 36 are the Herrett “Shooting Star” model favored by target shooters.

Buddy Manucci gives Max Kalish a .38-caliber wake-up call.

Manucci’s snub-nose shows all the classic signatures of a Smith & Wesson revolver, including the ramped front sight, ejector rod underlug, flat cylinder-release latch, and the brand’s logo etched on the left side of the frame ahead of the grips.

However, there’s a brief continuity error during Manucci’s climactic gunfight against Moon when his Smith & Wesson has been swapped out for a Colt Detective Special. These two double-action blued snub-nosed .38-caliber revolvers may appear similar enough for the error to go unnoticed by most, but firearms enthusiasts—specifically those with an interest in 20th century American revolvers—would spot the Detective Special’s rounded front sight and exposed ejector rod. (The Detective Special also holds one more round in the cylinder for a total of six shots.)

A continuity error briefly transforms Buddy’s Smith & Wesson snub-nose into a generally similar Colt Detective Special.

While it could be argued that this was meant to be a secondary or backup gun that Buddy pulled from his jacket, it again appears to be the Smith & Wesson during subsequent shots. This isn’t meant to disparage The Seven-Ups as errors were like this were common in movies, particularly before the advent of home video when nitpickers like me could pause, rewatch, and take screenshots.

And back to the Smith & Wesson in the next shot!

Manucci carries his issued snub-nosed revolver in a black leather shoulder holster that positions his weapon vertically with the grips down for a quicker draw, similar to the “upside-down” rig Steve McQueen wore in Bullitt that had been inspired by Dave Toschi—a real-life San Francisco PD inspector who would be portrayed by Mark Ruffalo in Zodiac (2007).

Either the support straps or the entire holsters were rotated out on screen, as Scheider’s rig cycles between one that has cartridge loops over the left shoulder (as seen at the hospital) and one sans cartridge loops (as seen at the police station here.)

The Car

Buddy Manucci patrols New York in a nondescript but sleeper badass 1973 Pontiac Ventura Custom, described as one of the “11 best movie cars of the ’70s” in Brett Berk’s 2014 article for Vanity Fair. Only a year old but looking considerably older based the dings and patina on that “ascot silver” exterior paint, the Ventura gets the opportunity to prove its mettle when Manucci puts its pedal to the metal in pursuit of two killers in a Pontiac Grand Ville.

The chase is on!

Pontiac introduced the “Ventura” name in 1960 as a trim package for its full-size Catalina model. After a decade, the marque shifted the model name to its own more compact series, initially known as the Ventura II for the 1971 model only. This new Pontiac Ventura series was built on GM’s X-body shared with the Chevy Nova, available as a two-door coupe, hatchback, and four-door sedan.

The ’73 Ventura engine options included a 250 cubic-inch straight six and a 350 V8, the latter available with either a single or dual exhaust. The presence of two exhaust pipes on Buddy Manucci’s 350-badged Ventura Custom suggests he’s driving the latter, which increased the output from 150 to 175 horsepower.

Despite the manual-shifting sound effects, the looks we get at the interior of Manucci’s Ventura—specifically the brake and gas pedals—inform us that it’s mated to the optional three-speed Turbo Hydra-matic transmission.

1973 Pontiac Ventura Sprint

1973 Pontiac Ventura Custom

Body Style: 2-door coupe

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

Engine: 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) Pontiac OHV V8 with dual exhaust 2-barrel carburetor

Power: 175 hp (130.5 kW; 177 PS) @ 4400 RPM

Torque: 280 lb·ft (380 N·m) @ 2400 RPM

Transmission: 3-speed Turbo Hydra-matic automatic

Wheelbase: 111 inches (2819 mm)

Length: 197.5 inches (5016 mm)

Width: 72.4 inches (1839 mm)

Height: 52.6 inches (1336 mm)

Stunt coordinator Bill Hickman designed The Seven-Ups‘ famous 10-minute car chase, including its dramatic conclusion as Manucci’s Ventura plows into the back of a semi-truck, shearing off the entire windshield and roof… ducking just in time to literally keep his head.

Though Scheider performed an admirable amount of driving throughout The Seven-Ups, it was the prolific stunt performer Jerry Summers who was at the wheel for this dangerous and memorable conclusion to the chase. “He got a little hurt, the stuntman, he was a little damaged, he got a lot of glass damage,” actor Richard Lynch recalled, as reported by Hagerty.

If Buddy wasn’t more careful, his capa would’ve been detated from his head.

Hickman had designed the finish as a dark homage to the death of Jayne Mansfield, who died under similar circumstances during the early morning hours of June 29, 1967.

Mansfield’s 20-year-old driver Ronnie Harrison was piloting a 1966 Buick with Mansfield and her attorney Sam Brody joining Harrison in the front seat while three of her children (including Mariska Hargitay) slept in the back. Around 2:25 a.m. on U.S. Highway 90 driving west from Biloxi to New Orleans, the Buick sped into the back of decelerating tractor-trailer. The three adults in the front seat were instantly killed, though—despite persisting rumors—Mansfield’s death certificate indicates that she was not decapitated by the crash.

How to Get the Look

Roy Scheider as Buddy Manucci in The Seven-Ups (1973)

Aside from a few dated details like those flared boot-cut bottoms, Buddy Manucci’s street wardrobe of a functional leather jacket, hardy layers, jeans, and boots could translate to an effective casual outfit a half-century later.

• Brown leather belted thigh-length car coat with four-button front, shirt-style collar, shoulder epaulets, four inverted box-pleated pockets (with button-down pointed flaps), single-button cuffs, and long single vent
• Stone-colored polyester work shirt with large semi-spread collar, 6-button front placket, two chest pockets (with button-down pointed flaps), and single-button cuffs
• Black merino wool mock-neck raglan-sleeved sweater
• Light-blue lightweight denim boot-cut jeans
• Black calf leather cap-toe inside-zip boots
• Black leather “upside-down” shoulder holster with beige woven straps
• Stainless steel wristwatch with white round dial (with Arabic numeral hour indices) on black scaled leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie… which you could certainly argue as a Christmas movie if you needed to make the case to watch it in mid-December.

Happy holidays from Manucci and Borelli.

The Quote

One of our guys gets murdered and we get investigated!

The post The Seven-Ups: Roy Scheider’s Leather Jacket and Pontiac Ventura appeared first on BAMF Style.

James Stewart in The FBI Story (1959)

Vitals

James Stewart as John “Chip” Hardesty, earnest FBI agent

Chicago, Christmas 1933

Film: The FBI Story
Release Date: October 1959
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Costume Designer: Adele Palmer

Background

While Jimmy Stewart’s cinematic Christmas creds are primarily as the troubled protagonist of It’s a Wonderful Life, more than a decade later we’re treated to a brief holiday sequence in The FBI Story.

Essentially a feature-length dramatization propagating the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s role in quelling all American lawlessness across the first half of the 20th century, the once-obscure The FBI Story has been the subject of some renewed interest as it had been the first major production to depict the Osage murders of the 1920s that were recently at the center of Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon.

Given The FBI Story‘s subject matter, J. Edgar Hoover kept his iron fist heavily clenched as he oversaw the production with at least two agents on set at all times, insisted that he get a file full of “dirt” on Mervyn LeRoy before approving him to direct, and even demanding that one scene be reshot after the famously irascible FBI director disapproved of how one specific extra looked.

But if J. Edgar disapproved of the extras, he certainly approved of Jimmy Stewart, reportedly having handpicked the actor and war hero to portray the fictional role of James “Chip” Hardesty, the all-American agent who defies the odds to face all ranks of criminals from the KKK and the KGB to Depression-era desperadoes including John Dillinger, “Machine Gun” Kelly, and “Baby Face” Nelson.

It was these latter desperadoes who were directly responsible for the decision to authorizing arming federal agents in the early 1930s, specifically as a response to the Kansas City Massacre on June 17, 1933, when Special Agent Raymond Caffrey, Kansas City detectives William J. Grooms and Frank E. Hermanson, and McAlester, Oklahoma police chief Otto Reed were killed by a small group of gunmen reportedly trying to free bank robber Frank Nash from custody, though Nash was also killed during the melee. (Evidence has suggested that some of the lawmen may have fallen to friendly fire during the chaos.)

Special Agent Caffrey was the fourth agent of Hoover’s fledgling Bureau of Investigation to be killed in the line of duty, and his death and the circumstances surrounding it set off a wave of protest around the country as law enforcement and citizens were tired of the rampant crime seemingly going unchecked as armed robbers and killers like Bonnie and Clyde, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and the Barker-Karpis Gang were seemingly running wild. By June 1934, Congress had passed the anti-crime legislation that empowered the FBI to not only carry firearms but to make arrests, an expansion of their powers as they were previously reduced to “citizen’s arrests” that required calling on local law enforcement to capture their targets and bring them into custody.

The fictional Chip Hardesty is overjoyed when he hears the news that Congress will soon be arming him. With “Jingle Bells” on the record player, the lanky agent is taking a break from trimming his Christmas tree, frustrated as the extinguished lights are “around back… never out front!” Chip’s frustration is compounded when he learns that his young—and evidently quite resourceful—daughter appropriately some of his recently purchased tissue paper to craft the wings she needed to play an angel in her school’s Christmas play. Luckily, Chip’s friend and fellow agent Sam Crandall (Murray Hamilton) stops by to lift Chip’s spirits with the yuletide greeting that, with the imminent passing of the Weyburn Bill, agents will be authorized to carry firearms and make arrests. “A real Christmas present!” exclaims Chip, though his concerned wife Lucy Ann (Vera Miles) does not like the idea at all.

What’d He Wear?

Home for the holidays, Chip prefers an understated neutral cardigan to the “ugly Christmas sweaters” that have maintained their cultural chokehold for more than a decade now. His beige woolen cardigan has five smoke-colored flat buttons, patch pockets, and set-in sleeves that he folds back over each cuff.

Chip wears the cardigan over a cream poplin shirt, styled with a point collar, front placket, and two-button cuffs. He wears the top button undone for a more relaxed style than his usual buttoned-up shirts and ties at the office.

Chip’s dark gray flannel pleated trousers have side pockets and the bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs), possibly orphaned from one of his gray flannel suits.

Chip completes the look with dark burgundy leather loafers with navy socks. While not as widespread as they would be by the time The FBI Story was produced in the late 1950s, slip-on shoes indeed existed by the early ’30s and would have been available to Chip, though a professional like him would reserve them for home or only the most informal occasions.

James Stewart as John “Chip” Hardesty in The FBI Story (1959)

How to Get the Look

Though this scene from The FBI Story was set in 1933 and filmed in 1958, Jimmy Stewart’s smart neutral cardigan, open-neck shirt, flannel slacks, and loafers remains dependably stylish today, providing a timeless base for incorporating personality—whether that’s opting for a shawl-collar cardigan, more ornamental shoes, or a dash of holiday color.

• Beige woolen five-button cardigan sweater with patch pockets
• Cream poplin shirt with point collar, front placket, 2-button cuffs
• Dark-gray woolen flannel pleated trousers with side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• Burgundy leather loafers
• Navy socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

If you’re looking to set a ’30s-style Christmas mood to your celebrations, you could start with this rendition of “Jingle Bells” by Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra, recorded in 1934—one year after this scene was set:

The post Jimmy Stewart’s Christmas Cardigan in The FBI Story appeared first on BAMF Style.