David Duchovny and Natascha McElhone in New York City while filming “In Utero”, the tenth episode of Californication‘s second season.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, aspiring novelist

New York City, April 1994

Series: Californication
Episode: “In Utero” (Episode 2.10)
Air Date: November 30, 2008
Director: David Von Ancken
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

“In Utero” (2.10) is often cited as a favorite episode among Californication fans. It serves as an origins episode for Hank and Karen, popular in this era of reboots including Batman Begins and Casino Royale. Here, we see Hank as a young, struggling writer, having just met – and subsequently knocked up – Karen. The two are anything but ready for an unexpected pregnancy, as they’re both middling in their respective careers and dating other people. Adding to the couple’s problems, news has just broken that Kurt Cobain committed suicide, thus dating the episode’s setting to April 8, 1994.

Of course, the baby in question turns out to be Becca, the center of Hank’s life as we know it. Given that this is the artistic center of New York City in 1994, Hank and Karen are both younger, grungier versions of themselves. Hank hasn’t established his black shirt and jeans uniform, and Karen is much less mainstream than her 2000s-era self.

What’d He Wear?

While not as grunge-defining as Cobain himself, Hank’s 1994 look makes sense in context.

As always, Hank’s staple is a pair of jeans, although these are a lighter wash and baggier than we’re used to seeing. Luckily, they avoid the acid-washed trend of the era, although they are very distressed with frayed edges, a rip or tear here and there, and a faded seat area. They fasten with a button fly. All buttons and studs are silver in color.

Hank’s jeans

For the first and last time in the show’s timeline, Hank wears a belt with his jeans. Naturally, it’s not a traditional leather belt, but is a black canvas belt with a red accent repeating around the belt. I can’t tell exactly what pattern the red shape is, but it looks like it could be a golfer, a horse, or a lobster, so some further look may be required. The belt is worn through a silver-colored loop in the front.

Any idea what’s on his belt?

Hank’s boxers are also more in line with the flannel trend of early ’90s grunge. They are a dark red steward plaid in what looks like a lightweight flannel.

Even Hank’s boots are different. While he would eventually develop a taste for Timberland slip-on Chelsea boots, he wears a more typical pair of hiking boots here with laces and heavy black rubber soles. They are also brown suede, but in a darker tone than the boots we’ve come to expect. We don’t see much of these boots in the episode, but the photo above proves that they are a different pair than the Timberland Chelseas.

Naturally, Hank sports an array of t-shirts. His standard in these New York scenes is a charcoal short-sleeve t-shirt in his apartment and a dark olive green short-sleeve shirt on the street.

Hank’s charcoal shirt in his apartment isn’t unlike some of the t-shirts he would sport in the more recent scenes on the show.

Once things are good with Karen, he graduates to lighter t-shirts, like a light gray or light blue, sometimes topped with a very light blue chambray button-down with button-fastened patch pockets.

While not as fashionable as his later black t-shirts, Hank looks just as home in these rumpled shirts.

The biggest difference, as all the other stuff is negligible, is Hank’s accessories. No ring or leather wrist straps, just a hat. A black short-brimmed pork pie hat, to be specific, more “Popeye” Doyle than Heisenberg. Being part of the subculture, Hank would certainly utilize the hat that’d been associated with anti-authoritarians dating back to “rude boy” culture in 1960s Jamaica through De Niro’s early turn in Mean Streets. According to Wikipedia:

The porkpie is the mark of the determined hipster, the kind of cat you might see hanging around a jazz club or a pool hall, maybe wearing a button-front leather jacket and pointy shoes. It’s a Tom Waits, Johnny Thunderbird kind of hat. It has a narrower brim than a Fedora and a flat top with a circular indent. Usually the brim is worn up. It is often worn with a goatee, soul patch, and/or toothpick.

Hank channels The French Connection on the streets of New York.

Indeed, Hank does have a faded goatee in these scenes and wears the brim up with a feather stuck in the left side of the band. The hat shows a major difference between 1994 Hank and 2007 Hank. Back then, he was trying to be somebody with a look that wasn’t true to him. Once he and Karen are together, he becomes happy and comfortable with who he is and ditches the hat, instead sporting a pair of black-lensed Oliver Peoples sunglasses that appear to be David Duchovny’s personal pair.

Hank and Karen in New York as Duchovny wears his personal pair of OPs.
Note that there’s now a braided leather bracelet on his wrist, very similar to the one he wears through the rest of the show. Does it signify some sort of unbreakable tie with Karen? Just a guess.

Unlike the button-front leather jacket stated in the quote above, Hank opts for a warmer canvas jacket. It’s April in New York, which can be anywhere from winter to summer climates. This is the only time we see Hank in such a heavy coat as he spends the rest of his time in southern California, where it’s obviously warmer.

Hank where he belongs.

Hank’s coat is a black canvas jacket that zips and/or buttons down the front with a silver zipper and five black buttons, respectively. Hank, however, wears it open. The jacket has many flaps and zips all over the place, with a button-down epaulette on each shoulder, held down by a thin stationery flap. There are also large flapped hip pockets and button-tab cuffs. Interestingly, the hat and the coat are the only parts of Hank’s major attire that are black.

Go Big or Go Home

This was the era of grunge bands like Nirvana, which the show doesn’t let you easily forget. In fact, the episode’s title is Nirvana’s third and final album (for those of you who didn’t already know), a great album which lent the song “Heart-Shaped Box” to this episode’s soundtrack.

Pearl Jam also makes an appearance, with “Nothingman” playing over the end of the episode as Hank and Karen grow together in New York.

One of the reasons people love this episode so much, despite its lack of both California and on-screen fornication, is seeing the origins of the genuine love between Hank and Karen. He’s a struggling writer and she’s a music groupie, both far from the eventual success they would find across the country. Hank even notes, “We get along really well for a couple of virtual strangers.”

And for anyone on brand alert, Hank’s studio is filled with booze: Absolut, Ketel One (kept by the bed), Bombay Sapphire (surprisingly nice for a struggling artist), and – of course – his whiskey, including Jameson, Chivas Regal, and a re-labelled bottle of what appears to have once been Johnnie Walker Red Label.

How to Get the Look

Since this is a flashback to the ’90s – a decade I wouldn’t put in the fashion hall of fame – take Heisenberg’s advice and “tread lightly.”

• Dark green lightweight crew neck short-sleeve t-shirt
• Light blue wash distressed denim jeans
• Black canvas belt with a red repeating pattern, fastened through a silver loop
• Black canvas zip-up jacket with a 5-button front, 1-button standing collar, button-down epaulettes, large flapped hip pockets, and 1-button tab cuffs
• Dark brown suede laced boots with heavy black rubber soles
• Black short-brimmed pork pie hat
• Dark red Stewart plaid boxers

Do Yourself A Favor And…

Buy the second season.

The Quote

Hank pens a letter to Karen when he worries that she’ll be walking out of his life. She reads it on the sly and, when she sees he works up the courage to actually mail it, she decides he may be worth something.

Dear Karen,

If you’re reading this, it means I actually worked up the courage to mail it, so good for me. You don’t know me very well but if you get me started, I have a tendency to go on and on about how hard the writing is for me. This, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. There’s no easy way to say this so I’ll just say it. I met someone. It was an accident, I wasn’t looking for it, I wasn’t on the make. It was a perfect storm. She said one thing, I said another. Next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation. Now there’s this feeling in my gut: she might be The One. She’s completely nuts in a way that makes me smile, highly neurotic, a great deal of maintenance required. She is you, Karen. That’s the good news. The bad is that I don’t know how to be with you right now. And it scares the shit out of me. Because if I’m not with you right now, I have this feeling we’ll get lost out there. It’s a big, bad world full of twists and turns and people have a way of blinking and missing the moment, the moment that could have changed everything. I don’t know what’s going on with us, and I can’t tell you why you should waste a leap of faith on the likes of me. But damn you smell good. Like home. And you make excellent coffee… that’s got to count for something, right? Call me.

Unfaithfully yours,

Hank Moody

David Duchovny as Hank Moody at LAX in “Filthy Lucre”, the ninth episode of Californication.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, womanizing novelist with substance abuse issues

Venice Beach, Fall 2007

Series: Californication
Episodes: “California Son” (Episode 1.08) & “Filthy Lucre” (Episode 1.09)
Air Dates: October 1, 2007; October 8, 2007
Directors: Scott Winant; Scott Burns
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

It’s been almost three months since BAMF Style has checked in with Hank Moody, the hero of Californication. In “California Son”, Hank had just come to terms with the death of his father with the help of a roll in the sack with ex-girlfriend Karen. He departs LAX for a brief exodus home to JFK, returning a few weeks later. Upon his return in the next episode, Hank is pleasantly surprised to find Karen waiting outside LAX but soon discovers that she is there to meet boring dial tone Bill – her fiance – rather than Hank. Hank makes the best of this uncomfortable situation.

If you’re heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday, take a few style nods from Hank Moody to travel comfortably and fashionably.

What’d He Wear?

Hank’s flying attire (in season 1, at least) consists of his staples: his brown smoking jacket, a black shirt, and dark jeans, all paired with Hank’s usual slip-on boots. With modern security regulations calling for the removal of jackets and shoes, Hank’s attire is smart and reasonable. He can toss all of his belongings into his jacket, move it through security, and slip his shoes on and off. In the meantime, the octogenarian in the other line is pulling his keys and coins out of various pants pockets and holding up the line trying to untie his ancient white tennis shoes.

Hank’s smoking jacket is his tried-and-true chocolate brown sueded thin wale corduroy sport coat from Yves St. Laurent with a single-breasted 2-button front and notch lapels. There is a breast pocket, but the inside pockets and flapped hip pockets would be best for Hank to store his accessories – including cigarettes, a lighter, sunglasses, and keys – to avoid setting off the metal detectors and to make security check-in a breeze. The jacket also has a single rear vent and 3-button cuffs.

Hank looks none too enthused about the prospect of flying.

His denim jeans are very dark blue with a boot cut to allow a comfortable fit on the plane and to be worn with boots. Hank never wears a belt with his jeans, making these a practical choice for walking through security.

Hank’s shirts are both black – a plain t-shirt for the trip to New York and a rumpled button-down for the return to L.A. The button-down shirt has long sleeves with squared cuffs – that are worn unbuttoned – and a placket-less front.

If you want to look a little dressier as you emerge from your flight, opt for a button-down rather than a t-shirt.

On his feet, Hank wisely wears his loyal pair of brown Timberland “Mt. Washington” sueded leather Chelsea boots. As a pair of comfortable but sturdy slip-on boots, the Timberlands are ideal for air travel, both casual enough to work with dressed-down travel attire and dressy enough to be worn with a sport coat or suit if traveling to a more formal occasion. A pair of all-purpose shoes like these are wise to give you more space when packing for a trip, since footwear is a very heavy and space-consuming item to include in your baggage. Hank wears black socks with his boots.

Hank’s other accessories are his sunglasses, his ring, and his studded wrist strap. The sunglasses are Izod 725, a compact and fashionable pair that folds down to fit into a pocket without creating a bulge or breaking easily.

His ring is a silver spinner, worn on his right index finger and a good choice for the borderline-ADD Hank who needs something to play with. Since cell phones and electronics have to be off during takeoff, at least he would have his ring to distract him.

You may really want to show off that spinner ring, but make sure you’re off the plane and out of the airport before lighting up a smoke.

He also wears his black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal studs, strapped to his left wrist and paired with his usual black braided leather bracelet.

Go Big or Go Home

Hank travels lightly, with just one nondescript black duffel bag that he’s able to check onto a plane. Personally, I prefer to just carry one medium-sized bag as well, fitting it either under the seat or into the overhead bin; the cost and worry of checking luggage is hardly worth it, especially for shorter trips that don’t require excessive clothing changes. Of course, even for a longer trip you can pack lightly by keeping everything to one major color motif.

Before you leave, make sure you take care of a few things around the house. Dump any cups that aren’t full, especially glasses of Scotch used for depositing cigarette ashes. If you’re prone to a Cezanne-like setting with fruit on your table, toss any exposed fruit to prevent mold. These seem like obvious tips, but they weren’t too obvious for Hank.

Nobody wants to come home to this.

Once on the plane, you don’t want your entertainment to be at the mercy of the flight crew. Sure, you might be able to fit three seasons of Breaking Bad on your iPhone not to mention hours of music, but a) You could run out of battery, and 2) Flights are pretty tough on people with electronics, making you wait until after takeoff and turning it off before you land. The best tip – and one Hank would agree with – is to take a book or two and read. Or, of course, you could sleep. Either way, Hank would say to do it with a cocktail in hand. Although unseen in the finished episode, the script for “Filthy Lucre” called for Hank to step off the plane and down a mini bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

How to Get the Look

Hank’s look is a fine option for comfortable and easy air travel. Take hints and make it your own.

• Dark brown sueded corduroy single-breasted smoking jacket with notch lapels, 2-button front, 3-button cuffs, welted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets, and a single rear vent
• Black long-sleeve button-down shirt with a placket-less front and rolled-up sleeves
• Black short-sleeve James Perse cotton t-shirt
• Dark blue denim bootcut jeans
• Brown suede Timberland “Torrance” Chelsea boots
• Black socks
• Izod 725 sunglasses with brown lenses
• Silver ring with two ridged bands, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, worn on the left wrist
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist

Do Yourself A Favor And…

Buy the first season.

The Quote

Hank: And this is where I think we should part company. I think I see a cab with my name on it.
Bill: Don’t be ridiculous.
Hank: No, uh, Bill, it’s just a figure of speech. There’s not really a cab with my name on it.

Footnotes

As usual, you can find Hank’s bracelets at Urban Wrist.

David Duchovny as Hank Moody on Californication (left) and a slightly more ’90s version of a similar character, Brian Kessler in Kalifornia (right).
(The Californication screenshot is from Episode 2.01, “Slip of the Tongue”.)

Californication returned to Showtime last week, beginning its seventh and final season. Around the same time, David Duchovny finally joined Twitter, immediately racking up thousands of followers.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, womanizing and borderline alcoholic novelist
Venice Beach, Spring 2008

Series: Californication
Episodes:
– “Slip of the Tongue” (Episode 2.01, Director: David Duchovny, Air Date: September 28, 2008)
– “The Raw and the Cooked” (Episode 2.04, Director: David Von Ancken, Air Date: October 19, 2008)
– “Vaginatown” (Episode 2.05, Director: Ken Whittingham, Air Date: October 26, 2008)
– “Going Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (Episode 2.08, Director: Danny Ducovny, Air Date: November 16, 2008)
– “In Utero” (Episode 2.10, Director: David Von Ancken, Air Date: November 30, 2008)
– “La Petite Mort” (Episode 2.12, Director: Bart Freundlich, Air Date: December 14, 2008)
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

and

David Duchovny as Brian Kessler, aspiring crime writer and grad student
Pittsburgh to California, Summer 1993

Film: Kalifornia
Release Date: September 3, 1993
Director: Dominic Sena
Costume Designer: Kelle Kutsugeras

Background

Ask someone about what to watch if you want to see David Duchovny playing a carefree writer who journeys out to California in search of paradise and finds the result to be the total opposite. Chances are, you’ll be told to either:

a) watch Californication, or
b) check IMDB, you lazy bastard

Despite the role of Hank Moody on Californication cementing Duchovny’s post-X-Files stardom, many forget about a similar role he had played the same year that The X-Files debuted. In 1993’s Kalifornia, Duchovny played Brian Kessler, an ultra-liberal psychology grad student hell-bent on writing the ultimate serial killer book. Without the drinking and womanizing that would be Moody staples, Brian could be considered an early version of Hank with his devotion to an artistic girlfriend and the attire – mostly black shirts, jeans, and a leather jacket. Additional parallels are in the timing; Hank supposedly went out to California in the mid-1990s, just around the same time as Brian’s road trip.

Of course, the content of both are wildly different. Californication is a dramedy about Hank’s struggle with his addictions and his writing, while Kalifornia is a brilliantly warped thriller about Brian and his girlfriend unwittingly taking a cross-country road trip with a redneck serial killer Early Grayce (Brad Pitt, before he was someone) and his childlike girlfriend Adele (Juliette Lewis).

As a Californication fan, it was fun to revisit Kalifornia and see some of the subtle Hank-isms present. For this post, I’ll break down a standard Hank Moody look – black T-shirt and jeans – from season 2 of Californication and compare it to Brian Kessler in Kalifornia.

What’d He Wear?

Hank Moody

Throughout season 2 of Californication, Hank adds a few new pieces to his wardrobe, but on the whole it stays the same. In episodes 1, 4, 5, 8, and 10, Hank wears his standard black cotton short-sleeve t-shirt and dark blue zip-fly jeans.

Hank understandably takes it easy after his vasectomy.

In season 1, he had often paired his brown smoking jacket with this look, but he keeps it pretty minimal in season 2, only whipping out the smoking jacket with button-down shirts.

His accessories remain the same with the silver ring on his right index finger and the black leather studded bracelet and accompanying thinner black braided leather bracelet on his left wrist. Both are available from Urban Wrist in both black and brown leather.

Hank’s ring and studded cuff bracelet.

Hank also wears his same sunglasses as usual, a pair of brown-tinted Izod 725 shades that fold easily into a jacket or jeans pocket.

Hank’s shoes are the returning pair of brown sueded leather Timberland “Mt. Washington” Chelsea boots, but he also wears a pair of black Puma Whirlwinds with white piping while interviewing Janie Jones by her pool in “Going Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (Episode 2.08).

Hank’s footwear is best seen in these screenshots, each featuring very different-looking co-stars.

His socks and underwear are also black, just as they were when the show started.

You just had to be there to get it.

We’ve already seen how Californication portrayed Hank in 1994, preferring a grungier look than we’re used to seeing on our hero.

Brian Kessler

In 1993’s Kalifornia, Duchovny’s Brian Kessler dresses more like the contemporary Hank, with the exception of baggier clothes and black jeans as the fashions of the mid-1990s would dictate.

The staple of Brian’s wardrobe is a well-worn black leather motorcycle jacket with epaulettes, a zip front, flapped hip pockets, and ribbed waistband and cuffs.

Brian, like Hank, wears his leather jacket with either a button-down shirt and/or a t-shirt.

Brian’s jeans are traditional Levi’s denim jeans in a light blue wash, although he also concedes to the ’90s trends with a pair of black jeans. Unlike Hank, Brian prefers a belt, wearing a black leather belt with a square silver clasp in the front.

Although denim is generally timeless, this overall look is very indicative of ’90s style (without the dangerous foray into Saved by the Bell territory.)

His shoes are a pair of plain gray sneakers with white laces and soles.

Brian has a rolling collection of plain crew neck t-shirts in various shades of gray, blue, and – of course – black. He wears all of his t-shirts tucked into his jeans.

Brian occasionally layers over his gray t-shirt with a solid black long-sleeve button-down shirt with two flapped chest pockets. In the pilot episode of Californication, Hank wore a similar shirt, except with a black t-shirt underneath it.

For the finale, Brian sports a proto-Moody look with a baggy black v-neck t-shirt with short sleeves down to his elbows, paired with the blue jeans.

The shirt’s fit and style are remarkably different than anything we ever see Hank Moody wearing on Californication, but it is interesting to compare the difference in what sounds like a simple look – a black T-shirt and jeans – over the course of just 15 years.

Brian has a pair of dark tinted sunglasses with metal rims. Much like Hank, he wears them both when it’s sunny out and when he is too hungover to deal with life.

This is what depression looks like.

Brian doesn’t have the standard Moody-issue brown smoking jacket, but he does wear a boxy black sport coat at a party when he is first seen, with padded shoulders, long notch lapels that roll down to the 2-button front, and 3-button cuffs. He looks more like Chandler Bing than Hank Moody.

One of the major differences of the two characters: Brian is fine mixing up some margaritas, but Hank would just go for some straight Scotch.

Perhaps the most Moody-like of all – and definitely the accessory that urged me to make this comparison – is a black leather cuff bracelet with dulled metal snaps. Worn on his right wrist, the bracelet is very similar to the flashier studded bracelet that Duchovny would wear throughout Californication as Hank.

Brian’s cuff bracelet, a dulled-down version of the usual Moody cuff.

Brian wears the bracelet on his right wrist since a plain white-faced analog watch is on the left.

Brian consoles Carrie after her weird proto-porn photos weren’t accepted into an exhibit. Her choice of Absolut marks her as more of a yuppie than the artiste she aspires to be.

Go Big or Go Home

Comparing the similarities between Hank Moody and Brian Kessler reveals just how much of Duchovny is in each character. Both are charming, practical, and quick-witted with a tendency toward strong, passionate romances. As Brian is younger, he is more optimistic, but his plight in the Mojave Desert against a serial-killing redneck Brad Pitt reveals a potential for the cynicism that Moody is known for.

Both writers also drive classic black convertibles; Hank has his Porsche and Brian drives a beautiful 1963 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible with a big 430 cubic inch V8 engine and three-speed Turbo Drive automatic transmission.

Interestingly, although both men skew liberal on the political spectrum, they show a guilty interest in their reckless new acquaintances’ firearms. Rock producer Lew Ashby allows Hank to fire a round from his Ithaca 37 shotgun to end a catfight at his party, and Early lets Brian pop off a few .45 rounds from his Colt Mk IV Series 70 pistol.

Hank’s blind warning shot takes out a vintage chandelier, but Brian just manages to pop a few holes into an old barn… for now.

Early even goes so far as to offer Brian his gun while Hank just helps himself to the soon-departed Lew’s t-shirts.

On the contrast side, Brian abstains from exhibiting Hank’s major vices. He displays little penchant for drug use, he actually tries to curb his girlfriend’s smoking habits, and the only time he really drinks to excess is when Early takes him out for Lucky Lagers. Hank, in his infinite wisdom and liver abuse, would probably drink Early under the table… although Early would probably kill him for it.

Technology-wise, Brian uses a Realistic brand tape recorder throughout his adventure with Carrie, Early, and Adele. Hank has updated since; this being 2008, Hank’s Motorola RAZR cell phone and Apple MacBook laptop with a 13″ screen follow the trends of the day. He isn’t as cutting-edge as possible, but he doesn’t want to be either. As Surfer Girl told him, he’s an analog guy in a digital world.

Hank learns to embrace both modern technology and the women who use it.

Naturally, though, Hank only uses technology if it comes in black.

But while the cutting-edge technology changes, both writers prefer to commit to their hobby using old-fashioned methods like a pen and pencil in the field and a typewriter in the home office.

Although Hank’s “field work” is infinitely more inviting than Brian’s morbid tours of murder sites.

How to Get the Look

The Hank Moody/Brian Kessler look sounds similar, but the details of each era and each character set them apart.

• Black short-sleeve cotton T-shirts
  • Hank Moody wore slim-fitting crew neck t-shirts, but Brian Kessler preferred baggier v-neck shirts
• Blue denim jeans
  • Hank preferred dark wash jeans, but Brian wore the standard light blue Levi’s jeans
• Dark sneakers
  • Hank wore black Puma Whirlwind sneakers (when he wasn’t wearing his brown Timberland suede Chelsea boots), but Brian wore a lighter pair of gray sneakers
• Black socks
• Black boxer briefs
• Izod 725 sunglasses with brown lenses
• Silver ring with two ridged bands, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, worn on the left wrist (or the right wrist, if you’re channeling Brian)
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the second season of Californication and the film Kalifornia for two different takes of Duchovny as a troubled black-shirted writer reluctantly headed to California.

For reference’s sake, Hank sports a black t-shirt and jeans in the following second season episodes: 2.01, 2.04, 2.08, 2.10, and 2.12. It’s his staple “uniform” throughout the show, but this particular post has a second season focus because why not.

The Quote

Brian’s thoughts about California reflect what Hank was probably thinking before he and Karen made their move:

What the hell did I know about California? For some people it was still a place of hopes and dreams, a chance to start over. The idea was if you could get there everything would be okay, and if it wasn’t okay there, well, it probably wasn’t going to be okay anywhere.

Say cheese!

David Duchovny as Hank Moody in “The Raw and the Cooked”, Episode 2.04 of Californication.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, recently engaged novelist

Venice Beach, Spring 2008

Series: Californication
Episode: “The Raw and the Cooked” (Episode 2.04)
Air Date: October 19, 2008
Director: David Von Ancken
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, Hallmark’s kind way of reminding everyone that your mothers deserve the $4.99 that goes along with sending a greeting card. You might spend hundreds of dollars on a gift, but if you didn’t spring for that card, you may as well have never been born.

In part due to the feminine focus of the day and partly due to the springtime setting, bright colors like pink and purple are often associated with the “holiday”. If Mother’s Day is a dressy occasion for your family, check out the masculine ways that Steve McQueen (as Thomas Crown) and Boardwalk Empire‘s “Nucky” Thompson incorporated pink and purple into their three-piece suits. If your Mother’s Day celebration is a more casual affair, you can turn your attention to Mr. Casual himself, Hank Moody.

In “The Raw and the Cooked”, the fourth episode of Californication‘s second season, Hank has just been informed by his recently re-engaged fiancée Karen that they are hosting a dinner party, clearly Karen’s way of incorporating new groups of friends (i.e. the season’s guest stars) into their combined social life.

Karen: We’re having a dinner party…
Hank: God, when you say it out loud like that, it sounds awful. Is it too late to call it off?
Karen: Stop it. It’s gonna be fun, right?
Hank: Really? ‘Cause I think it’s gonna be like having a q-tip jammed up my urethra. For three hours. Without lube.

Many people approach dinner parties with the same lack of enthusiasm that Hank clearly displays, especially when hosting. Hank provides a fine blueprint for spending the majority of the party drinking, eating, playing games, and still managing to be the center of attention, all while sporting a very masculine shade of purple.

What’d He Wear?

Having evidently retired his traditional black or blue for the evening, Hank sports a soft eggplant purple button-down shirt. It has a spread collar, which he wears unbuttoned, and black buttons down a plain, placket-less front. The shirt appears to be either a soft cotton or possibly even a microfiber suede, although the latter seems too “dandified” for a guy like Moody.

Don’t let the purple shirt fool you. Hank is still very intimidating when it comes to meeting Becca’s new boyfriend.

The shirt has long sleeves that close with a button, but Hank rolls the sleeves up nearly to his elbows. The rear of the shirt has a plain yoke across the top and no darts. Darts, which usually help fit a shirt and reduce the “billowy” effect, are unnecessary here as the shirt is nicely fitted to Duchovny’s frame. This is clearly an example of a button-down shirt that was meant to be worn untucked, rather than the dress shirts that some men poorly wear untucked and look all the sloppier for it.

As usual, Hank wears a pair of bootcut jeans without a belt. This denim wash is a darker, deeper blue than usual. Like most of his jeans, these have a zip fly.

Hank also wears a pair of suede Chelsea boots, although they are not as dark as his usual dark brown pair. While still being the Timberland “Mt. Washington” style of boot, the suede on this pair is light brown.

The boots each have a loop in the front and a loop in the rear to assist slipping them on. They are still available at some retailers including Amazon. Hank wears his boots with black tube socks.

There is a slight continuity/revealing error when Hank is walking Lew Ashby to the door after the failed party. In this shot, Hank is wearing a pair of blue and white Puma sneakers with orange laces.

I highly doubt there’s a scene on the cutting room floor of Hank constantly changing his shoes during the party.

These are evidently David Duchovny’s personal shoes, which are spied a couple times in the second season, usually when they’re not supposed to be seen. Duchovny himself is a Puma fan, and the show’s costumers began placing Hank in Pumas more and more throughout the season. In this case, it is clearly an error since Hank had his boots on previously and has them on in the next shot when he joins Karen outside for a breakup cigarette.

Hank’s accessories are the same as usual, starting with the silver spinner ring on his right index finger.

Once the coke gets you jittery, you’ll be glad to have a spinner on your finger to play with.

Hank also wears his usual black leather bracelets on his left wrist, which you should know damn well by now are available at Urban Wrist. The main bracelet is black leather with silver hexagonal studs, backed up by a thin braided leather bracelet. The studded bracelet closes with a snap, while the leather bracelet is tied on permanently.

Hank receives some potentially horrible news… news which becomes especially strange after the balldropper in the season 7 premiere six years later.

Four episodes later, in “Going Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (Episode 2.08), Hank surprises Karen and Becca with some takeout dinner. For his quick episode-ending visit, he wears a purple shirt that is clearly different from the one worn in the earlier episode.

The second shirt is slightly baggier and more lightweight, showing more proneness to wrinkling. The color is also iridescent, appearing blue in certain lights. It is further marked as a different shirt by the front placket.

The second shirt, as usual, is accompanied by dark jeans, brown slip-on boots, and Hank’s ring and bracelets.

Go Big or Go Home

Hank’s sole preparation for the party is exactly what you’d expect: cocktail preparation. Partly because he’s a booze-hound and partly to drown out Mia’s whining, Hank mixes up a batch of frozen margaritas (although I don’t believe we ever actually see anyone drinking any.) Since Hank is so often seen with whiskey, it’s an interesting look at what else is in his bar. Besides the obvious margarita mix, Hank uses Grand Marnier and Cointreau in the blender as well as an unidentified bottle of tequila between them.

Hank himself prefers his usual Scotch, drinking the fictional single malt brand Glen Deville that has been spotted both in this show and the 2001 film Blow. Mia tries to steal the bottle on her way out, but Hank wisely snatches it from her bag. He also serves up some Heineken Light at the party, as per the show’s product placement agreement.

The evening’s meal is sashimi, a Japanese dish of fresh raw fish cut into slivers. Meat is also an option for sashimi, but it appears that the Moody family is serving the fish variety since Lew later has a violent reaction to kissing his sashimi-eating date.

Once all of the guests are sufficiently high (Runkle) or sick (Lew), it’s a good idea to have a plan B. In-N-Out Burger is the most logical choice for Californians, and anyone who hasn’t enjoyed an In-N-Out Burger is truly missing out.

Nothing against the Moody-prepared sashimi, of course.

The episode is very Guitar Hero-heavy, and I am unsure if this was product placement or just the show’s way of honoring the one video game that Hank Moody would be most likely to play. Hank is very proud of his skills on Guitar Hero II:

I’m rocking Medium now. 86th percentile. Don’t shut the “Free Bird” down.

Often cited as the “most requested song in rock history”, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ten-minute jam from their 1973 debut album is a reasonable choice for Hank. The song reappears at the end of the episode when Becca is trying her own hand at it (and likely on a higher level than Medium).

However, during the party, Becca and her boyfriend Damien are playing “Metal Heavy Lady” by Lions, indicating that they are also playing Guitar Hero III. Can you.

Once all has horribly failed – as dinner parties inevitably do – head outside for a post-prandial cigarette… presumably your first since trying to quit.

Hank finds Karen outside, indulging from one of his pack of Morley cigarettes with his green Bic Classic lighter. “Morley” is a fictional brand that, with its red and white box, is naturally supposed to emulate Marlboro’s full flavor cigarettes without actually advertising the brand itself. While some stations, notably HBO, tend not to shy away from using real brands, Showtime and other cable stations are more careful, especially with tobacco.

The appearance of Morley on Californication is likely also an inside joke to refer to Duchovny’s previous show, The X-Files, where the shadowy Cigarette Smoking Man preferred Morleys, with Duchovny’s Fox Mulder even visiting the Morley Tobacco headquarters.

The Morley fictional brand has been around for more than 50 years, with its first known appearance on a second season episode of The Naked City. In “Tombstone for a Derelict”, which aired on April 5, 1961, Robert Redford played a vigilante murderer who tossed a pack of Morleys onto a corpse. The pack had a different appearance then as Marlboro wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous or well-known as it is now, but it was the first appearance of “brand” in a work of fiction. Morley cigarettes gained even more exposure two years later in the legendary “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode of The Twilight Zone that featured a Morley-smoking William Shatner facing off against a gremlin.

How to Get the Look

Hank interestingly wears the most color – a purple shirt – during the more depressing episodes of his life. He was wearing a purple shirt when he received the news that his father had died, and he picks out a purple shirt for the dinner party he is dreading. Hide your own anger with color!

• Eggplant purple button-down shirt with spread collar, black buttons down a placket-less front, and rolled-up long sleeves
• Dark blue bootcut denim jeans
• Light brown suede Timberland “Mt. Washington” Chelsea boots
• Black tube socks
• Silver ring with two ridged bands, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, worn on the left wrist
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the second season. The featured episode here, “The Raw and the Cooked”, is one of my favorites with memorable moments from both main and supporting characters. Callum Keith Rennie’s Lew Ashby is especially on point, and it’s fun watching Hank meet Becca’s new boyfriend Damien (Ezra Miller from The Perks of Being a Wallflower).

You may as well pick up Guitar Hero II and Guitar Hero III while you’re at it.

The Quote

Hey, you know what? The fucking “artist within” left us a turd within our toilet. Can you believe that shit? Literally? It’s like he’s taking a dump on top of my head. I’m reading him loud and clear. I mean, it’s a thing between him and me, and I think it involves you… you’ve inflamed him in some way. Now it’s like Jaws 3. It’s personal.

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp in The Rum Diary (2011).

Vitals

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp, expatriate American journalist and borderline alcoholic

Puerto Rico, Summer 1960

Film: The Rum Diary
Release Date: October 28, 2011
Director: Bruce Robinson
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood

Background

Car week continues with a story by an American icon involving an iconic American car.

More than a decade before becoming the face and beautifully twisted mind of Gonzo journalism, Hunter S. Thompson was a struggling writer who had recently been discharged (honorably, but with prejudice) from the U.S. Air Force and had a few legal issues to his credit, not the least of all being the sinking of nearly every boat in a Kentucky harbor by shooting holes into the boats’ hulls just below the waterline.

He began his professional writing career while in the Air Force, writing anonymous sports columns for The Command Courier and The Playground News.

Thompson was discharged after two years, and his CO reported “…this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy… Sometimes his rebel and superior attitude seems to rub off on other airmen staff members.” After a few disappointing stints across New York and Pennsylvania, he ended up in San Juan. Not even 23 years old, he had a criminal record, a dismal military record, and a string of failed writing jobs; he had even been fired by Time magazine for insubordination.

Thompson’s poor luck (if you want to blame it on luck) followed him to Puerto Rico when his employer – the sporting magazine El Sportivo – folded soon after he arrived. He applied for a job with William J. Kennedy’s San Juan Star, but Kennedy turned him down. However, after losing his first gig, Thompson worked as a freelancer for a few American papers with his new friend Kennedy editing. He continued writing for himself, submitting a few unpublished short stories and completing his second novel, The Rum Diary, fictionalizing his experiences in Puerto Rico.

Flash forward nearly forty years to 1998. Thompson is now a legend and is working on the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Johnny Depp. Depp befriends Thompson and becomes a firm friend in the years leading up to Thompson’s suicide in 2005. While going through Thompson’s papers to research his role as Raoul Duke, Depp finds an unpublished manuscript for The Rum Diary, and the “lost” book was published. The Rum Diary is the oldest of Thompson’s books to actually be published as his earliest effort, Prince Jellyfish, remains unpublished.

The Rum Diary, which Depp also campaigned to be turned into a film, finds Thompson guised as “Paul Kemp”, an aspiring writer with a penchant for drinking plenty and not being published. The jaded Kemp travels to Puerto Rico to take a job with an ill-fated newspaper, and his life soon spirals out of control thanks to a shady real estate consultant, his femme fatale girlfriend, and a team of maniacs at the newspaper – all fueled by high-proof rum.

After the novel was finally published in 1998, Thompson told Charlie Rose that he had grown cynical about the novel’s chances and gave up after it was rejected seven times, but that he finally couldn’t resist revisiting it:

It’s got a romantic notion…that and money…and I was faced with the fact of having to dig out my 40-year old story…I can’t change it, like, “Ye gods, this is me. This is the world I lived in”…so I approached it as a writer…it’s a good story.

Depp finally managed to produce the film in 2011, six years after Thompson’s death, playing a slightly less frantic Thompson than he had played in Fear and Loathing thirteen years earlier. One of the most memorable scenes in the film finds Kemp entertaining the girlfriend of his new employer, the shady consultant Hal Sanderson, by taking her for a spin in a beautiful red ’59 Corvette loaned to him by Sanderson. The car alone doesn’t impress her, so she ups the stakes, all to the driving beat of Dick Dale’s classic surf rock sound.

What’d He Wear?

The Rum Diary‘s costume designer Colleen Atwood was reportedly excited about working with Johnny Depp in the context of the early 1960s:

For menswear, it’s a really great period. The suits fit all kinds of body types and, without being too fitted at the waist, still have a shape. A narrow lapel has always been a favorite of mine. In Johnny’s case, we kept it very simple. His character has a slightly Midwestern meets southern style that is very American and not at all European. His clothes are fairly stiff, but they kind of wilt in the heat, so it feels more relaxed. His stuff was all made out of this ’60s cotton. I found enough of it to make all of his trousers and suits. I was able to find some authentic fabrics for his clothes which helped him get into the feeling of the period.

Any verdict on the suit fabric, given Atwood’s mention of the era-specific cotton she used?

Paul Kemp’s suit in the film is a dark blue lightweight suit that evidently uses some of the “’60s cotton” referenced by Atwood, although the climate and the look implies that the suit may be a cotton-linen blend.

For more relaxed evenings – at least evenings that begin relaxed – Kemp ditches the suit trousers and pairs the suit coat with a polo and a pair of cream-colored chinos. The look is very refreshed and clean, very practical for an American guest at a Caribbean seaside house party.

Although that coolness will soon flutter away once he begins spying on his host and hostess mid-coitus.

The single-breasted suit coat has narrow lapels with a low, short-gorged notches. The shoulders are slightly padded with roped sleeveheads. The double rear vents keep Kemp cool in the warm summer climate, although the blue silk lining of the suit coat is visible when the vents flap in the wind.

The jacket buttons in the front with 2 dark blue buttons, and the 2-button cuffs – a very early ’60s fad – match. The breast pocket has a slimmer welt than usual, and the hip pockets are jetted for an extra period detail.

Kemp’s trousers are a pair of cream self-striped flat front cotton chinos. The striping is very thin, but it is best seen when Chenault “encourages” him to drive the Corvette to its full potential.

Kemp is given incentive to push the car toward its top speed of 114 mph.

The chinos have an extended waistband tab, a straight fly, slanted side pockets, and jetted rear pockets with no buttons.

Kemp interestingly wears his slim light brown leather belt with the squared brass clasp on his left hip. Nothing about the trousers, which appear to have standard belt loops, indicates that the belt needs to be worn in this fashion, so it is likely a personal choice of his.

Why is his belt always worn with the clasp on his left hip?

The trousers look instantly baggier once the belt is taken away following a horrible night battling the Puerto Rican court system.

Despite how they look, Kemp’s jacket, polo, and slacks will all be cleaned and in pristine condition for a business meeting with Hal Sanderson the next day!

The chinos have very short cuffs/turn-ups on the bottom and a medium break over his shoes, a pair of light brown suede Chukka boots worn with cream socks. The boots correctly match the belt, and the socks nicely continue the leg line from the trousers into the shoes.

Brown suede chukka boots were also Steve McQueen’s preferred footwear, while we’re on the subject of classic cars.

Kemp typically pairs the coat and trousers with one of two lightweight polos. The most often seen polo shirt is white cotton with short but wide sleeves down to his elbows. The entire fit of the shirt is rather voluminous, swaying loosely without darts to direct the fit. While the shirt is likely quite comfortable, the outfit looks much better with the jacket.

Adding a jacket keeps Kemp from looking like an awkward out-of-place dad, although his facial expression in that photo probably isn’t helping much either.

Kemp’s white polo also has a 3-button placket, but he only fastens the bottom button. The patch breast pocket has a pointed bottom.

Kemp wisely gets acquainted with Hal’s girlfriend Chenault.

A few days later, Kemp again wears his blazer and chinos, this time paired with a light blue polo in a similar style to the white shirt with a large fit, 3-button placket, and breast pocket.

One of the most distinctive parts of Kemp’s costuming is his pair of vintage Sol Amor wraparound sunglasses with their gold frame across the front and brown bubble lenses. According to Atwood:

He really feels clothes more than he looks at them. You know, we had these great sunglasses for him and his hair was kind of squished back and the guy came to life! It usually happens pretty quickly with Johnny. He has this feeling for who his character is.

The “futuristic” look of the sunglasses nicely ties into the space age craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s which was all over pop culture at the time from songs like The Tornadoes’ “Telstar” (which is used earlier in the film) to TV shows like The Jetsons.

Kemp’s watch is a plain military-style watch with a round silver case, dark face, and light brown strap. It is possibly made by Hamilton, which supplied plenty of military watches to the U.S. during this era. This would also make sense as Hunter S. Thompson had served in the Air Force for two years very shortly before he traveled to Puerto Rico.

Kemp’s watch stays with him in good times and bad.

His other accessory is a dated straw fedora with a high crown, short brim, and light brown triple-pleated ribbon (like Gatsby’s!) with a dark brown paisley pattern. It is not the same straw hat as he wore earlier in the film and in some promotional artwork.

Update: Thanks to Hal, a terrific commenter on this blog, I now know that this sort of pleated ribbon is known as a “puggaree”.

The only place to really get away with wearing a hat like this is in the Caribbean.

Go Big or Go Home

This point in the film marks Kemp’s major involvement with Sanderson’s real estate scam. He shows up at Sanderson’s in the blue suit coat, slacks, and polo, where he spies Sanderson and Chenault in the midst of a coital embrace on the stern of Sanderson’s yacht.

Kemp, unable to keep cool at the sight of naked people.

Once everyone is clothed and back at the house for a party, Kemp is introduced to two of Sanderson’s crooked partners and given the rundown of the scam. He is picked up by his friend, Sala, who takes him to a restaurant and demands food even though the kitchen is closed. Kemp spies a native who has reason to dislike him, and Kemp and Sala are forced on the run in Sala’s diminutive Fiat. Unfortunately, in his drunken effort to scare off the aggressive pursuers, Kemp accidentally blows a fiery breath of rum into the face of some local policemen, and they’re tossed into the clink.

Sanderson bails Kemp and Sala out, and the next day – wearing the exact same clothes that are now spotless and clean – Kemp shows up at Sanderson’s office to discuss the deal. After signing himself away, Kemp is given a “Chevy” to avoid another embarrassingly bumpy ride in Sala’s dilapidated Fiat. Little does Kemp know what the “Chevy” actually is.

More offices should conduct business like this.

After giving him the “Chevy”, Sanderson asks Kemp to pick up Chenault from her house, evidently not realizing that Kemp has already seen Chenault naked – twice. Needless to say, Kemp jumps at the opportunity.

And it absolutely makes sense why Johnny Depp would have started dating Amber Heard immediately after this film wrapped.

As a Hunter S. Thompson surrogate, Paul Kemp is naturally a heavy drinker. He shows restraint (compared to Raoul Duke), but he manages to consume a hell of a lot of straight rum over the course of the film. Even Bruce Robinson, the film’s director and screenwriter who had spent nearly seven years sober, found himself drinking a bottle of wine every day to overcome his writer’s block and finish the script. After another sober year filming, Robinson recalls that he again indulged one night when the crew was filming in Fajardo:

It was 100 degrees at two in the morning and very humid. Everyone’s drenched in sweat. One of the prop guys goes by with a barrow-load of ice and Coronas. I said, “Johnny, this doesn’t mean anything,” and reached for a Corona… Some savage drinking took place. When I was no longer in Johnny’s environment I went back to sobriety.

Kemp’s cruise in the Corvette with Chenault is already an aesthetic delight with the striking red sports car against the vivid blue Caribbean Sea, but it is enhanced even more by Robinson’s choice of music. The song is “Surfing Drums” from surf rock king Dick Dale’s first album, Surfers’ Choice.

The album, which Dale recorded with his Del-Tones in 1962, was recorded live at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach. It is the epitome of the early surf rock sound, and it is the perfect choice for a coastal drive with a gorgeous broad lighting up a smoke in the passenger seat of your Corvette.

How to Get the Look

Kemp mixes elements of his daily suit and his casual attire to develop a cool and clean summer outfit. Remember to only include a straw fedora if you’ll be somewhere tropical. Go somewhere tropical anyway.

• Dark blue cotton-linen blend single-breasted suit coat with narrow notch lapels, 2-button front, welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and double rear vents
• White lightweight cotton short-sleeve polo shirt with 3-button placket and breast pocket
• Cream self-striped flat front chinos with belt loops, extended waistband tab, slanted side pockets, jetted rear pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Light brown leather belt with a squared brass clasp
• Light brown suede Chukka boots
• Cream socks
• Gold-framed Sol Amor wraparound sunglasses with brown bubble lenses
• Hamilton Automatic wristwatch with round silver case, black face, and light brown strap
• Straw fedora with light brown patterned triple-pleated “puggaree” ribbon

The Car

After signing his unholy alliance with Hal Sanderson, Kemp is given a car from Sanderson’s fleet. It is referred to throughout the film simply as a “Chevy”, when it is, in fact, a striking 1959 Chevrolet Corvette C1 convertible in “Roman Red”.

The Corvette is one of the most famous cars in the world, having been made continuously by General Motors for more than sixty years. It has always been the apex of American sports cars, associated simultaneously with class, power, and mid-life crises. Although it is clearly now aesthetically influenced by American muscle, its origins began when GM’s long-time designer Harley Earl was inspired by the Nash-Healey. The Nash-Healey was an expensive two-seat American sports car manufactured in partnership with Italian designer Pinin Farina and British engineer Donald Healey. Earl used the Nash example to convince GM that they needed a two-seat sports car to offer to the public, and – on January 17, 1953 – the first Corvette prototype, hand-built under the code name “Project Opel”, was revealed at the 1953 GM Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Although the car was designed by Earl, the name Corvette came from Myron Scott, based on the small and easily maneuverable warship known as a corvette; the word is now synonymous with the sports car before the warship.

Kemp and Chenault speed towards the sea in Hal’s Corvette.

The first year of the Corvette’s commercial production saw 300 hand-built models, all in “polo white”, with a short 102 inch wheelbase, a 235 cubic inch six-cylinder engine rated at 150 horsepower, and the two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission since no Chevy manual was yet available to handle the intensity of the car’s horsepower. The six-cylinder engine remained the only option for 1954, but three additional colors (Pennant Blue, Sportsman Red, and Black) were added. Sales crawled along at 3,640.

After the slow 1954 sales year of only 3,640 models, GM limited 1955 Corvette production to only 700, but it also offered a 265 cubic inch V8 engine that improved the 0-60 mph time from 11.5 to 8.5 seconds. 1955 was the last year of the “bubble”-shaped Corvettes as a sleeker body was designed for ’56. The six-cylinder engine was removed, with only Chevy’s small-block V8 available as an engine; an RPO 449 special camshaft was offered to increase the car’s power to 240 horsepower. The 3-speed manual transmission introduced the year earlier became standard, and the Corvette was transformed from looking like a sports car to actually being a sports car.

By 1959, the Corvette was well-established as a chrome-embossed badass in a small package. The wheelbase remained at the short 102 inches from the original prototype, but under the hood sat a powerful 283 cubic inch (4.6 L) small-block Chevrolet V8 engine that could offer 230, 245, or 270 horsepower (depending on the carburetor), as well as a fuel-injected option that pushed out a beastly 290 horsepower.

The top speed of a base ’59 Corvette was 114 mph, now hitting 0-60 mph in 8.4 seconds and reaching 100 mph in 25.3 seconds. The Corvette’s half-mile time was 84 mph in 16.9 seconds. The base price of a 1959 Corvette was $3,875, nearly a $300 increase from the previous year and more than $1,000 higher than the slow 1954 model year. Total production in 1959 was 9,670, and it was the last year ever for less than five-digit production (except for the anomaly production year 1997, when only 9,752 were produced.)

The popular 283 V8 was produced through 1961, until it was replaced by the 327 cubic inch V8 for 1962. This engine could make up to 340 horsepower, or 360 with fuel injection, and continued to be offered on Corvettes through 1965.

1962 marked the last year of the classic first generation of convertible-only C1 Corvettes, which are now as much a part of 1950s nostalgia as a juke box full of doo wop and Leave It to Beaver (which actually featured a Corvette in a fifth season episode). After the last C1 rolled out of production in 1962, the Sting Ray took over as the new Corvette style. The Corvette Sting Ray was a fast, powerful, and impressive successor to the first generation of Corvettes, but it is hard to beat the classic C1 Corvette with its European-influenced styling right down to the wrap-around windshield, exposed headlamps, and open body.

1959 Chevrolet Corvette C1

Do people who say there was no such thing as the “good old days” forget about these ones?

Body Style: 2-door convertible

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

Engine: 283 cu. in. (4.6 L) small-block V8 with a Carter 4-barrel carburetor

Power: 230 hp (170 kW; 233 PS) @ 4800 RPM

Torque: 300 lb·ft (407 N·m) @ 3000 RPM

Transmission: 3-speed manual

Wheelbase: 102 inches (2591 mm)

Length: 177.2 in. (4501 mm)

Width: 72.8 in. (1849 mm)

Height: 52.4 in. (1331 mm)

The particular Corvette driven in The Rum Diary was fitted with vintage Puerto Rican license plates #864-093. The only engine option was the 283 cubic inch V8, although there were five variants of the engine:

• a single Carter 4-barrel carburetor, making 230 hp
• two models with twin Carter 4-barrel carburetors, making 245 hp or 270 hp
• two fuel injected models, making 250 hp or 290 hp

Since there is no “fuel injection” crest on the side of the car, it’s reasonable to assume that this is a carbureted model. Further more, a shot of the gear shift reveals a white ball shifter. For the 1959 models, all 4-speed manual transmissions were fitted with a positive reverse lockout shifter with a “T” handle; thus, this likely has a 3-speed rather than the 4-speed.

In an interesting coincidence, the Corvette has been named the official sports car of Kentucky… Johnny Depp’s birth state. Graham King, a fellow producer of The Rum Diary, gave the ’59 Corvette used in the film to Depp after he grew attached to it during filming.

Depp behind-the-scenes in the ’59 Corvette that would eventually become his in real life.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the movie. Reading the book first will help, as well as put you in that necessary Hunter S. Thompson frame of mind.

The Quote

Do you smell it? It’s the smell of bastards. It’s also the smell of truth.

David Duchovny as Hank Moody on Californication in the episode “La Petite Mort” (Ep. 2.12).

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, alcoholic novelist and dad

Venice Beach, Summer 2008

Series: Californication
Episode: “La Petite Mort” (Episode 2.12)
Air Date: December 14, 2008
Director: Bart Freundlich
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

The penultimate scene of “La Petite Mort”, Californication‘s second season finale, wrapped up the show’s last truly great season as Hank gave up the chance to accompany Karen back to New York, choosing instead to stay behind with their daughter Becca to avoid unfairly transplanting the poor girl yet again.

Becca had recently started dating Damien (played by Ezra Miller from The Perks of Being a Wallflower), and Karen felt bad splitting them up. Hank chooses to stay to help Becca nurture her relationship and allow Karen to explore her career opportunities in New York. Yet, at the start of the third season, Becca is evidently single with no mention ever made again of Damien. It’s a shame because:

a) Ezra Miller was very good as Hank’s mini-foil.
b) It marked the beginning of the show’s decline by throwing continuity out the window in favor of just giving Hank opportunities to have more sex.

The show is coming to a conclusion next weekend with the end of its seventh season. Californication seems to be another victim of the Showtime curse that plagued other shows like Dexter and Weeds, starting off incredibly strong with an original premise. After a few great seasons, the writing stalled out and each show – once an innovative and creative experience for viewers – became a slow race to the finish, supported only by loyal viewers who pledge to watch their favorite shows to the end, hoping for one last flash of genius reminiscent of the show’s early years. Keep your fingers crossed for Californication‘s finale.

Whether a finale can ruin your mood or not, there’s no denying that we deserve a pleasant summer after the polar vortex that killed everyone’s morale this winter. Get a t-shirt like Hank’s and keep projecting positivity out into the universe, whether it’s genuine or not.

What’d He Wear?

Hank’s smiley face t-shirt makes its one and only appearance in this episode. Either he doesn’t put it into his rotation that often, or it was one of the shirts he inherited from Lew Ashby (although we never saw Ashby wearing it either.)

Hank musters up as much of a smiley has he can given the new situation. Luckily, his shirt is happy enough for the both of them.

It is a cobalt blue short-sleeve t-shirt of soft cotton. The smiley face in question is the standard yellow circle with a black border, black eyes, and a black mouth. It’s either a vintage shirt or it has been printed to resemble one as the screen-printed smiley face is beginning to wear away toward the top.

Hank wears his usual dark wash denim jeans with bootcut legs. His shoes are a pair of indigo blue Puma Whirlwind sneakers with white side trim. White laces are standard for indigo Whirlwinds, so the bright orange laces on Hank’s pair must have been laced himself to give them a little more pop.

These are the same Pumas that showed up eight episodes earlier in “The Raw and the Cooked” as a continuity error, but they are clearly intended to be Hank’s shoes in this scene. Duchovny is a Puma fan in real life, so I’m sticking by my theory that these are his personal pair. (I personally own an indigo pair – with the original white laces – and they are some of my favorite shoes.)

You can still pick up a pair of new Whirlwinds from Puma, although it looks like the indigo and white combination has been discontinued.

The rest of Hank’s accessories are the same, including his silver index finger ring, the black leather studded bracelet, and its thinner braided leather accomplice. The two bracelets are available from Urban Wrist.

Hank and Becca watch Karen’s flight take off from LAX from the back of his Porsche, presumably parked near the Vista Del Mar Park. Hank wears his brown Izod 725 sunglasses and his dark brown corduroy smoking jacket.

How to Get the Look

Somehow Hank is able to pull off a smiley face t-shirt without looking tacky. See if you can do the same.

• Cobalt blue short-sleeve cotton t-shirt with a fading yellow “smiley face”
• Dark blue bootcut denim jeans with zip fly
• Dark brown single-breasted corded suede smoking jacket with a 2-button front, jetted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single rear vent
• Puma Whirlwind sneakers with indigo uppers, white trim, and orange laces
• Silver ring with two ridged bands, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, worn on the left wrist
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist
• Izod 725 sunglasses with dark brown lenses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the second season.

The Quote

At the end of the day, it’s all about her. It’s always been about her. What happens between us, I can’t fucking control. Lord knows I’ve tried every which way. But what I can do is be the absolute best I can be for her. If I followed you to New York, I’d just be hoping against hope that we lived happily ever after. Maybe we do. Maybe we don’t. But you got some shit you got to do, lady. I think you should do it. I’ll hold down the fort… keep her off the pole.

David Duchovny as Hank Moody on Californication, out for a run in Venice Beach in “So Here’s the Thing…” (Ep. 3.07).

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, borderline alcoholic novelist and womanizing college professor

Venice Beach, Late Spring 2009

Series: Californication
Episode: “So Here’s the Thing…” (Episode 3.07)
Air Date: November 8, 2009
Director: John Dahl
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

For all of the drinking, smoking, drug abuse, and generally self-destructive hedonism that makes up his self-loathing lifestyle, Hank Moody is still in pretty good shape. He manages to avoid the flab that any of the rest of us – including Charles Bukowski, the inspiration for his character – would have obtained. His only trip to the gym, in the first season, was spent lounging in jeans and puffing away on a cigarette until an old “girlfriend” called him into the ring. Perhaps all the bed-hopping counts as exercise?

By the middle of the third season, newly-ordained college professor Hank has naturally lined up the dean’s wife, his T.A., and a voluptuous student who – because this is Californication – is also a stripper. Of course, he still pines for his Karen and determines to clean up his act. In the well-titled “So Here’s the Thing…” (Ep. 3.07), Hank begins the episode by going out on a run with Charlie. Neither man looks right; Hank looks a bit too cool to be comfortable running, and Charlie just looks like Charlie. He’s decided to break up with each of his side dishes (hence “Here’s the thing”, which is how most of us men begin an attempt to weasel out of an undesired relationship) and stay healthy for his family.

What’d He Wear?

The episode presents a rare glimpse of Hank Moody wearing shorts rather than his trademark jeans (The only other occasion will be in season four when he goes golfing with this lawyers.) Of course, since this is Hank, he’s not just going to wear gym shorts, sneakers, and an old t-shirt he got for free a few years ago…. which is what I do.

Hank layers his shirts, wearing a stone gray short-sleeve cotton t-shirt over a lighter gray long-sleeve thermal shirt. The darker short-sleeve shirt is likely one of his James Perse “Standard” shirts, and it appears almost purple in some lighting. The thermal shirt has long, elasticized cuffs and the usual waffle pattern seen on shirts like this.

Hank’s shorts are a little more questionable. Though not the traditional and unfortunate jorts (or Never Nude-esque cutoffs), they do look like Hank took a pair of scissors to a pair of very old and very dark jeans. Although they are lightweight, I still can’t imagine that it would be comfortable running in any sort of denim. The wash is a dark charcoal blue.

Hanks and Runks, mid-workout.

The shorts extend to just above his knees, leaving the kneecaps exposed then covering up the calves with a pair of high socks. Hank’s socks are light gray with three white bands around the top of the calf.

Returning after going nearly an entire season unseen, Hank wears a pair of brown leather Puma sneakers with white soles, taupe “formstrip” stripes, and brown laces. The Pumas may be the most athletic-appropriate part of the whole outfit, although leather shoes like this are not typically worn for running.

Hank accessorizes with both of his usual bracelets on his left wrist; the black leather studded strap that closes with a silver snap (ew, that rhymes) and a thinner black leather braid, kept permanently tied. Hank’s silver ring remains on his right index finger as well.

In lieu of sunglasses, Hank also wears a dark blue short-brimmed straw summer trilby with a blue abstract-printed ribbon. It looks like the same hat he wore in “California Son” during the flashbacks.

The resurgence of hats, especially among fellows who consider themselves “men’s rights activists” (vomit), is dangerous. While a well-worn fedora can add immeasurable class to an outfit and situation, it must be stressed that hats aren’t for everyone.

I found this somewhere online a few months ago but didn’t think to get the source as I didn’t realize I would ever use it on the blog. If anyone knows who made it or where it came from, let me know.

The pinstripe hats with short brims and self-attached bands are not Bogie-style fedoras, they are cheap trilbies. What Hank wears is a slightly better version of one of these, but that doesn’t mean it works for everyone. Hank has carved out his own style based on comfort and stylistic indifference. Trying to wear a hat because you want to look like someone else defeats the tenets that guys like Hank Moody and Humphrey Bogart stood for, and you just look like an asshole.

Go Big or Go Home

Hank’s workout is very simple. It consists of running, then stopping for a cigarette. Some may say neither is worth the effort.

How to Get the Look

This is a little more efficient for working out than Hank’s usual t-shirt and jeans, but it still would clash for someone looking for a heavy workout. This sort of attire would probably be better for the sort of person who wants to be seen running before hopping into an Arby’s “because I earned it”.

Hank and Charlie. Based on attire and general appearance, guess which one of these two dudes gets laid more.

• Stone gray short-sleeve cotton t-shirt
• Light gray thermal long-sleeve t-shirt
• Dark charcoal blue cut-off shorts with jeans-style seams and side pockets
• Dark brown leather Puma sneakers with taupe side trim, brown laces, and white soles
• Light gray calf socks with three white bands
• Silver spinner ring, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, snapped on the left wrist
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, tied on the left wrist
• Dark blue short-brimmed straw trilby with blue printed ribbon

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the third season, but keep in mind that the first two seasons were the best (in my opinion, of course). The third season finale was also pretty spot-on, but quality declined by degrees each subsequent season. I still haven’t even seen the last one.

The Quote

Shit, I can get this done in one day – Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Then home for some cybersex with the soul mate.

Footnotes

Hank’s bracelets are available through Urban Wrist. Hank and Charlie’s dialogue can also be watched on YouTube.

If you’re curious about what sort of climate a running outfit like this would be comfortable in, this scene was filmed in Venice Beach on June 2, 2009. This is late spring/early summer throughout most of the U.S., and L.A.’s recorded temperature for that day was an average of 76 °F with a dew point of 56 °F and little wind. I think it suffices to say that Dave was probably sweating quite a bit after filming a few takes running in such dark and relatively heavy clothing.

David Duchovny as Hank Moody outside LAX on Californication (Episode 5.01, “JFK to LAX”, 2012).

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, womanizing novelist and screenwriter

New York City, Spring 2012

Series: Californication
Episode: “JFK to LAX” (Ep. 5.01)
Air Date: January 8, 2012
Director: John Dahl
Costume Designer: Alison Cole

Background

I don’t often find myself traveling for work; my first business trip for this job was in March 2012 to Phoenix, Arizona, and I just returned from my second, a weekend in D.C. hosting a client conference. With the news of new episodes of The X-Files coming, this was as good a time as any to check back in with BAMF Style hero Hank Moody. Since I’ve been hopping on and off of planes, I also figured we could take an updated look at Moody’s airborne style. (My first post about Hank Moody on a plane focused on his travel to and from New York in the first season episodes “California Son” and “Filthy Lucre”.)

For a third twist of relevance, the first time I actually saw Californication‘s fifth season premiere was in my Phoenix hotel room three years ago. I’d been too busy to catch it during the first two months, but I managed to snag some downtime while idling away the hours in my room at the Courtyard Phoenix Chandler.

The fifth season premiere first finds Hank on a date… or technically avoiding a date, as he nervously smokes in the bathroom of a hip-looking NYC bistro. Having settled on a solid break-up speech, he heads out to end things with the lovely Carrie (Natalie Zea) before she ends up calling him out in front of the whole restaurant:

This man’s a monster! He likes to fuck women in the ass and then tell them that he just wants to keep it casual.

Needless to say, she dumps her martini in his face and takes to heels while he takes one on the chin. On his way elsewhere – my best guess is a bar – he receives a call from Runkle “with the prospect of a significant payday”. He takes the job, sight unseen, to avoid “a bunny boiler situation” with Carrie. This leads him onto a plane where he has a chance encounter with a voluptuous R&B singer, not yet knowing that his new gig is writing a shitty action movie for the singer’s volatile rapper boyfriend… and certainly not knowing that he just made his prospects a little cloudier by making out with her in the plane’s bathroom. Only Hank.

Of course, Hank and Carrie’s “bunny boiler situation” literally heats up as she burns down his apartment, likely ruining an impressive collection of both books and black t-shirts and once again leaving Hank stranded on his least favorite coast.

What’d He Wear?

Getting to see Hank in his native environment – New York City – for the first time since the second season flashback shows us just how little his style changed from coast to coast. In this case, though, his preference for all black fits in much more with the city’s slick atmosphere.

The most notable change in his wardrobe, which sticks for the rest of the show, is a cool black leather jacket that seems to have taken the place of the familiar brown smoking jacket as his outerwear of choice. The jacket is constructed of soft leather with a shirt-style collar, silver zip front, and slanted slash hand pockets. Each cuff closes with a silver-toned snap, and the waistband is free of any adjusters, tabs, or additional snaps. Stitching is present on all seams and down each of the front panels and down the rear to create a tri-panel back.

Hank fits in perfectly in the streets of the Big Apple.

A stunt version of the jacket was auctioned by ScreenBid in July 2014 with “2 SIZES TOO BIG FOR DAVE” written inside. Considering that the jacket was a size 44, we can reasonably deduce that the jacket sported by Duchovny on the show is a size 40. Also considering that the stunt jacket was made by Dolce & Gabbana, we can again reasonably deduce that Duchovny wore a D&G as there’s no viable reason why the show would spring for a similar-looking D&G jacket for stunts but not for its lead character!

The stunt-used D&G jacket (left) and the Amazon-sold replica (right).

Amazon is currently selling a replica of Hank’s leather jacket. Marketed by BlingSoul as simply the “Hank Moody Leather Jacket”, the $189 real leather jacket appears to be a pretty accurate replica of the one Duchovny wore from seasons five through seven on the show with all favorable reviews from buyers, at least as of April 2015. The only noticeable external difference is that the Amazon jacket features a “T”-style three-panel back; Moody’s jacket on the show has a three-panel back, but it is divided down each shoulder blade.

The rest of the outfit is all Hank’s signature look. He wears a black short-sleeve James Perse crew neck t-shirt the whole time.

The three men’s attire say volumes about their characters: Runkle is a businessman, Stu is sleazy, and Hank is casual. (Note the reversed jewelry for Hank… I’m coming to that.)

You can get your own from the James Perse website for $50, which is – admittedly – a lot of money for a plain black cotton t-shirt. Based on auctioned versions, we know Duchovny wears a size 2, JP’s equivalent to a ‘medium’. The site describes the shirt, style #MLJ3311, as:

Short sleeve crew with binded neck. Lightweight Jersey is an extremely soft knit made by specially treating the cotton fibers before they are spun into a yarn. This fabric breathes well and has a nice drape.

In New York City, he adds a layer with a “slightly darker black” (thank you, Archer) long-sleeve crew neck t-shirt over the short-sleeve shirt. The layering is reasonable given NYC’s naturally chillier climate than L.A. Once he arrives in L.A., he drops the outer layer and wears only the short-sleeve t.

Hank mulls over his non-future with Carrie.

Always an advocate of denim (“the people’s fabric”, as he earlier told a snooty country club attendant), Hank wears a pair of jeans in a very dark blue wash. The stitching on the pockets and seams appears to be rust brown-colored thread. I can’t tell if this is one of his Earnest Sewn pairs or not, but the brand has certainly been positively identified with Californication.

Hank meets Sam.

Hank’s shoes are his usual Timberland “Torrance” sueded leather Chelsea boots, colored in medium brown. We don’t see his socks in this episode, but he wears black socks 99% of the time so we can assume the same here.

Hank also wears his usual accessories in the usual places, at least for the New York scenes. His silver spinner ring is present on his right index finger, and the left wrist sports both black leather bracelets that we’ve come to know and love – the larger one studded with silver hexagons and circles and the thinner one consisting of a tied black woven braid. (As you’ve also doubtlessly come to know, you can find Hank’s bracelets at Urban Wrist.)

However, something strange happens after Hank returns to L.A. The silver ring is now on his left index finger, the black studded bracelet is now on his right wrist, and the thin leather braided bracelet is nowhere to be seen.

What the hell? A ring on his left finger and the bracelet on his right wrist? And WHERE is the braided leather bracelet? Let’s discuss.

At first, I assumed this was the result of an image reversal, but background evidence and Hank’s own finger tattoo prove that he’s simply wearing these objects on the wrong hands. Is it possible that both Duchovny and the wardrobe folks forgot how Hank wears his famous jewelry? The show had been on a year-long hiatus, after all? Or was the plan to eventually reverse the L.A. scenes to make up for something else? Either way, it’s mystifying to anyone who notices.

An additional mystery is the appearance of a pair of tortoise wayfarer-style sunglasses that Hank wears in – I believe – this episode only. He had worn his dark Izod 725 shades in the first four seasons, occasionally sporting a pair of thicker-framed Oliver Peoples in some episodes of seasons 3 and 4 (Duchovny’s own, I understand). After this episode, he wore black-framed Ray-Ban aviators for the rest of the show’s run.

Based on the temple logos and the distinctive 21mm folding bridge, I believe Hank’s sunglasses in this episode are a pair of classic Persol PO 0714 sunglasses in color code 24/57 with tortoise “Havana” plastic frames and large, 54mm wide crystal brown polarized lenses. Whether I’m right or not, you can pick up your own pair of these Persols here. It was a pair of these sunglasses, with smaller blue 52mm lenses, that Steve McQueen made popular in The Thomas Crown Affair.

Gotta be Persol, right?

If I’m wrong about Hank’s sunglasses, or if someone has more information about them, do us all a favor and let me know!

Go Big or Go Home

The first frame of the episode sets up both Hank and Californication as entities that don’t care about social norms. With a flick of his red Bic, Hank lights up a cigarette while nervously constructing the perfect break-up speech… of course, it turns out to be inside the bathroom of a New York City restaurant, and New York was one of the first states to implement a statewide smoking ban (in 2003, if you’re curious) that would certainly include restaurant bathrooms. (Although, of course, California’s 1995 act made it the first state to pass a statewide smoking ban.)

Smoke ’em if you got ’em… even if it could mean a $2,000 fine.

Hank stays true to his drink of choice – Scotch, neat – whether in the New York eatery or on his mile-high journey to L.A.

All wet.

The most surprising change is Hank’s telecommunication technology. For the first three seasons, he’d stuck with his Motorola RAZR before upgrading to a BlackBerry Bold for the fourth season. Interestingly, season four premiered six months after I switched from a flip phone to a BlackBerry Bold…

Now, in season five, he’s got an iPhone 4S. Again, an eerie coincidence for me as I had just switched from the BlackBerry to an iPhone 4S the day before the business trip where I first saw this episode. Hank and I even use the same case, a hard plastic black SPECK with dark gray rubber edges and buttons. While I’d like to think it’s Hank mimicking me, I will shamelessly admit to borrowing his “Who callin’ my phone?!” greeting.

Even Hank isn’t above a selfie.

The show’s use of music has always been impressive, and one of my favorite tracks featured on the show was Paul Oakenfold’s remix of The Doors’ “L.A. Woman” in the second episode. Another Doors remix is used to kick off “JFK to LAX”; this time, it’s a remix of “Love Me Two Times” by Infected Mushroom.

While a badass song in its own right, it’s also a cheeky implication of the “two times” – or two ways – that Hank has been “loving” Carrie.

The episode also introduces two of the better recurring characters from the show’s later seasons: RZA as Samurai Apocalypse, an absurd but talented rapper who pushes Hank into writing Santa Monica Cop for him, and the stunning Meagan Good as Kali, Samurai’s girlfriend and – naturally – an eventual love interest for Hank.

Hank manages to avoid his John Candy prophecy and how!

How to Get the Look

Hank’s updated look for 2012 is admittedly more versatile – and accessible – than the smoking jacket that had defined his style for four seasons.

• Black soft leather Dolce & Gabbana jacket with shirt-style collar, silver zip-front, slanted side pockets, and snap cuffs
• Black cotton long-sleeve crew neck t-shirt
• Black cotton short-sleeve crew neck James Perse t-shirt
• Dark blue denim bootcut jeans
• Brown sueded leather Timberland “Torrance” Chelsea boots
• Black socks
• Black boxer briefs
• Persol PO 0714 folding-bridge sunglasses with “Havana” tortoise plastic frames and brown polarized lenses (color code 24/57)
• Silver spinner ring, worn on right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, worn on the left wrist
• Thin black braided woven leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Watch the series, and – if you want to see this episode – pick up the fifth season.

The Quote

Usually, I get on the plane, and I’m seated next to John Candy or Ruth Gordon… if I’m lucky. But I end up next to the most beautiful woman in the tri-state area, and I go and spill a drink in her lap. Nice work, huh?

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp in The Rum Diary (2011).

Vitals

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp, expatriate American journalist and borderline alcoholic

St. Thomas, Summer 1960

Film: The Rum Diary
Release Date: October 28, 2011
Director: Bruce Robinson
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood

Background

All the balls that Paul Kemp was juggling at this point have begun to fall. His grasp on his job, his shady dealings with PR whiz Sanderson, and his flirtation with Sanderson’s girlfriend. The bottom falls out when Kemp and photographer pal head to Carnival at Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands after visiting island property for Sanderson’s budding real estate scam.

Bruce Robinson’s script perfectly nails the feeling of the scene as Chenault leads Kemp by the hand to Sanderson’s yacht:

Like walking the plank in reverse, they invade a small drinks party.

Other than the glamorous Chenault, none of the new visitors fit in with Sanderson’s cosmopolitan set.

Zimburger takes Kemp and Sala to see the island property, then they head to St. Thomas for Carnival. Kemp finds Chenault, and they wind up on Sanderson’s boat. Sanderson berates Kemp for involving Sala in the deal. At night, they go to a club, and a drunk Chenault dances with local men to provoke Sanderson, with whom she has been fighting. The black owners of the bar beat up Sanderson and throw Kemp out of the club. Chenault is left behind at the bar, but where she ends up is not known. The next day, Chenault is gone, and Sanderson tells Kemp that their business arrangement is over.

Unfortunately for our cheeky protagonist, venturing to Carnival at Saint Thomas is exactly the rum-soaked revelry he should have expected.

What’d He Wear?

Kemp goes out to party in a colorfully striped linen long-sleeve shirt and jeans. Based on his look (and his behavior), he isn’t dressed for fashion so much as he is for comfortably getting drunk.

Kemp’s linen shirt is a nice enough garment, but the way he wears it is intentionally sloppy. The button-down collar is left unfastened – as are the rounded cuffs – and he wears it untucked, allowing the long hem in the front and back to blow around freely.

Kemp checks out the local scene in St. Thomas.

The shirt’s stripes alternate between light green, tan, baby blue, navy blue, sky blue, and a light blue-gray. The boldness of the alternating stripes is somewhat muted by the linen; from a distance, the navy stripes are most prominently seen with the remaining stripes having a “shadow” effect across the rest of the shirt.

Kemp’s shirt fastens down a front placket with seven mother-of-pearl buttons, with the top few gradually unbuttoning over the course of the party to continue his devil-may-care approach to dress. The back of the shirt has a center box pleat under a hang loop. The center box pleat gives the shirt more fullness; linen is comfortable in hot weather, and a full shirt keeps the fabric from clinging and unfulfilling its purpose.

Linen is always a smart choice for warm weather wear, although Kemp counters that bit of sartorial shrewdness by coupling it with a pair of jeans. Jeans are not typically recommended for warm summer days in the Caribbean, but Kemp’s life tends to be an unpredictable one and he likely realizes the value of a durable pair of pants for a day-long boozing bonanza.

Kemp also wisely wears a pair of slightly distressed 100% cotton jeans with a loose fit throughout the legs, allowing a breezy airflow without the restrictions of non-cotton synthetic fibers that trap sweat and heat against the skin. The denim wash is a rich medium blue, and the baggy fit continues through the legs down to the full break bottoms.

Kemp’s footwear of choice is a pair of tan suede 2-eyelet desert boots that don’t receive much screen time in this sequence under the full break of his heavy jeans. He wears them with several casual outfits throughout The Rum Diary, often with cream cotton socks.

No party should end this way.

Kemp’s watch is a plain military-styled watch with a round steel case and black dial on a light brown strap. Hunter S. Thompson had indeed served in the U.S. Air Force shortly before he traveled to Puerto Rico and penned The Rum Diary, so it’s very possible that Kemp’s watch is an Elgin, Hamilton, or other brand approved for service.

Kemp’s sunglasses are much less military-inspired and much more space age, appropriate for 1960. The vintage Sol Amor wraparound sunglasses have a futuristic gold frame curving around the two large brown bubble lenses in the front.

Go Big or Go Home

Kemp knows how to party, kicking off his night by reading Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner… for some reason.

“It was written in 1797 by a junkie called Coleridge,” explains Kemp.

Of course, Kemp is able to shift easily into party mode and takes off the albatross from around his neck to chug some beer and – of course – rum.

Tengo ron y cerveza!

The party music is anachronistic for 1960, but Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers provide a perfect backbeat for the raucous bacchanal with “Kitchen Sink Boogie” and “Let’s Get Funky”.

Despite the anachronism, the music is exactly what Robinson wanted, as he wrote in the script:

Once again I refer to HOUND DOG TAYLOR. His is the kind of music I want. A real friendly face with a Strat and a grin, hits a slug from his on/stage bottle. "You alright?" "You alright?" Sure they're alright. Two hundred faces alright.

Adrenaline out of a raw guitar. Caribbean turned into black rock and roll. Walls of black muscle put eyes on the little white girls. CHENAULT and her GIRLFRIEND are riding cloud 9.

"Kitchen Sink Boogie," or something similar. Rock like it's coming out of the floor.

How to Get the Look

Kemp dresses for a party, but he wisely doesn’t dress to impress given the kind of party.

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp as Chenault and Paul Kemp.

• Blue/green/tan multicolor striped linen long-sleeve shirt with button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Blue denim jeans with baggy fit and full break
• Tan suede 2-eyelet desert boots
• Cream cotton socks
• Sol Amor vintage wraparound sunglasses with gold front frame across brown “space age” bubble lenses
• Steel military-style wristwatch with round case, black dial, and light brown strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Read the book first, and the movie will make a lot more sense! Of course, Hunter S. Thompson fans are already well familiar with the gonzo mindset.

The Quote

I don’t know how to write like me.

Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra in Limitless (2011).

Vitals

Bradley Cooper as Eddie Morra, performance-enhanced investment broker and former struggling author

New York City, Spring 2010

Film: Limitless
Release Date: March 18, 2011
Director: Neil Burger
Costume Designer: Jenny Gering

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

It’s been a long time since I watched a truly suspenseful and entertaining thriller that combined drama, action, romance, comedy, and – of course – thrills all into one efficient package. I worried that the genre had died somewhere between the greatness of Notorious, North by Northwest and Chinatown, leaving only a few mind-numbing attempts in its wake. Then, I saw Limitless.

Limitless kicks off with a timeless fight or flight scenario: will our obvious protagonist leap to his inevitable death or turn to face his angry, violent interlopers? It’s a dangerous decision that pulsates through the rest of this fast but smart ride of a movie. After learning about Eddie’s quick, unapproved-performance-enhancing-drug-assisted leap from ragged author to hotshot investor, we find him back where our ride started… standing back on that ledge. All of our basic questions have been answered with aplomb – Who is this guy? Where is he? Why are people banging on his door and leaving him with this sole option out? The only question remains – how will he get out of it?

What’d He Wear?

“As soon as he takes NZT, he’s an assassin. He’s stealth,” is how Bradley Cooper explained his desired look for Eddie Morra to costume designer Jenny Gering. Gering explains that his look “goes from night to day” after he starts taking the drug. Director Neil Burger adds that “everything kind of gets cleaner, sharper. Suddenly, he has a really good eye for style.”

Viewers of the film have no choice but to agree. Our first look at Eddie Morra finds him on that apartment building ledge, resplendent in a navy blue Tom Ford suit. It’s hard to look bad in a Tom Ford suit, and Cooper’s enthusiasm for the costume choices would have something to do with Eddie’s special brand of cool. “He starts to dress differently when he changes is really because it allows him to get where he wants,” explained Cooper, showing fine appreciation for the role of sartorial art in cinema. “And I love to wear suits, so that was actually fantastic.”

I’d be hearing Cream in my head during a moment like this.

The dark navy Tom Ford suit in this scene is constructed from a lightweight wool and was custom-fit for Bradley Cooper. It appears to be the Regency model (or possibly a bespoke version based on the Regency) that Daniel Craig wore as James Bond in Quantum of Solace, which featured Craig’s arguably best-fitting suits of his 007 tenure to date.

The single-breasted jacket has large notch lapels that roll over the top button to the second of three, which is the only one he ever wears fastened. The pagoda shoulders sweep down to roped sleeveheads. Each sleeve ends with five functioning buttons. The outside of the jacket has a welted breast pocket and straight hip pockets with wide flaps. The ticket pocket above the right hip pocket also has a wide flap.

Eddie consults with his lawyer (left). A behind-the-scenes shot of Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro (right).

Cooper’s strong physique is emphasized with the suit’s fit. The jacket’s long double vents, flared skirt, and clean chest suppress the waist and show the audience that Eddie has physically transformed into a more athletic man after taking NZT.

In addition to the secret pockets stitched into the dark blue silk lining of his suit, this jacket has the standard inner pockets on each side of the chest. Below the inner left pocket, the familiar black “TOM FORD” label patch can be glimpsed as Eddie looks for his purloined stash.

Tom Ford’s “cameo”.

Eddie’s matching flat front suit trousers have a medium-low rise on his waist. They are likely fitted since neither belt loops nor side adjusters are seen, although the Regency trousers sported by Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace had adjusters with buckle straps. Eddie’s trousers have on-seam side pockets and double jetted rear pockets that close with a button. The bottoms are plain-hemmed.

As costume designer Gering noted in a featurette: “Most of his shirts have a blue-ish cast to them. Very crisp-looking. That helps contribute to the fact that he’s healthy and in shape…”

Eddie’s primary shirt with this suit is a pale blue Thomas Pink “Keaton Plain” Slim Fit shirt in cotton twill with diagonal ribbing. The shirt has mitred 2-button cuffs and a front placket with stitched edges and blue buttons.

Eddie puts his shirt through the ringer.

Thomas Pink is a wise choice for Eddie, who never wears ties with his suits. Pink’s site describes: “Inspired by non-tie wearers, Thomas Pink has designed a shirt that sits perfectly under a jacket. A tie performs several functions, one of which is that it handily keeps the shirt collar in place, especially when worn under the weight of a jacket. Take away the tie and the collar will collapse. Enter the Independent shirt with a collar specifically engineered to be worn independent of a tie. More robust than traditional collars, the Independent shirt collar is shaped to support itself.”

Even after a rough day, Eddie keeps a good-looking collar thanks to his Pink shirt.

Multiple sources, including Nate D. Sanders’ auction photos and The Take, have confirmed Eddie’s shirt to be the Keaton model, which is still available from Pink’s site for $180 as of August 2015. Sanders’ auction, which ended in April 2014, describes the shirt as: “blue and white diagonal stripe long-sleeved shirt buttons up the front. Pink brand shirt in a slim fit is a size 16 1/2.” The “diagonal stripe” is an effect from the diagonal ribbing.

See the diagonal ribbing? (Also check out the bloodied version of the screen-used shirt, photographed and auctioned by Nate D. Sanders.)

In an earlier scene when he goes to Van Loon’s office flanked by his bodyguards and gives a presentation, he wears a different shirt consisting of thin blue and white vertical stripes. This shirt is similarly styled with its strong collar, front placket, and button cuffs, but it appears to have a breast pocket.

Bradley Cooper is buttoned into a striped Pink shirt on the set.

Eddie’s black leather cap toe shoes are best seen when he is standing on the ledge of his apartment, in control of his own potential demise. They are clearly oxfords (or balmorals) with 5-eyelet closed lacing, although the manufacturer has been tough to track down. I heard an unsubstantiated rumor that Cooper wore mostly Cole Haan shoes in Limitless, so I checked their site even though it’s been five years since the production. Cole Haan does produce a “Cambridge” cap oxford in soft black leather that would look fine in any gentleman’s closet if he’s okay to part with $258.

Eddie on the edge.

Eddie’s dark socks appear to be blue, appropriately continuing the leg line from his trousers into his black shoes.

Eddie actually wears two solid dark blue suits; the other is easily differentiated by the slimmer jacket lapels and the trouser belt loops. It is only briefly seen when he initially hires his bodyguards and when he meets the detective in a restaurant about the murder.

Go Big or Go Home

…especially if that home is at a classic place like The Link, Eddie’s luxury high rise in Hell’s Kitchen. The address is 310 West 52nd Street, if you’re looking. The Link was developed by Elad Properties and opened in 2005 with 215 condos throughout its 44-story structure. According to Streeteasy.com, the sales price for these condos can range anywhere between $1 million and more than $5 million… so start saving.

Don’t worry, Eddie. If I’d spent a few million on a fortified apartment that a few Russian gangsters can still break into, I’d probably run out of options also.

How to Get the Look

Eddie’s simple look shows us how variations of a single color can look smart. It also speaks volumes about the power of good clothing without the need for frills like cuff links, belts, eyewear, or even a tie. All Eddie needs is a suit, a shirt, and a pair of shoes to be the best-dressed guy in the room.*

• Dark navy blue lightweight wool Tom Ford suit, consisting of:
  • Single-breasted jacket with notch lapels, 3-roll-2 button front, welted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets, ticket pocket, 5-button functioning “surgeon’s cuffs”, and long double rear vents
  • Flat front trousers with fitted waistband, on-seam side pockets, button-through jetted rear pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Pale blue diagonally-ribbed cotton twill Thomas Pink “Keaton Plain” slim fit shirt with large “independent” collar, front placket, no rear darts, and mitred 2-button cuffs
• Black leather 5-eyelet cap-toe oxford balmorals
• Dark blue dress socks

*Although we can assume he has underwear and socks on as well. Still… does he really need them?

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the movie and check out Alan Glynn’s 2003 novel The Dark Fields, which served as the basis for Limitless and lent its title to the book Eddie publishes by the end. I haven’t yet read the book, but I purchased Limitless on a whim based on a suggestion from one of you fine commenters, and I’m certainly glad I did!

The Quote

For a guy with a four digit IQ, I must have missed something. And I hadn’t missed much. I’d come this close to having an impact on the world. And now the only thing I’d have an impact on was the sidewalk.

David Duchovny and Natascha McElhone filming “Love Song”, Episode 5.06 of Californication, in June 2011.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, rising novelist and family man

Venice Beach, circa summer 2003

Series: Californication
Episode: “Love Song” (Epiosde 5.06)
Air Date: February 12, 2012
Director: Eric Stoltz
Costumer: Alison Cole Godachy

Background

“Love Song” was a welcome break during Californication‘s relatively uneven fifth season, providing a bright spot in a season that arguably marked the end of what had once been a reliably mature Showtime dramedy.

Many fans’ hopes were answered as we finally got to see Hank and Karen when they were a strong couple, both eagerly facing the prospect of their new life in L.A. Based on context clues like Becca’s implied young age and the fact that the film in question had wrapped about a year before the first season began, we can assume that we’re seeing the couple about four years prior to the pilot episode. Both are still basking in the warm promise, and it’s heartbreaking to know what’s ahead of them.

Karen: L.A. changes people.
Hank: Cities don’t change people, people don’t even change people. We are who we are.

Luckily, we’re treated to this glimpse into the past as part of Hank’s songwriting process with Kali, an alluring singer he first encountered on a red-eye from JFK to LAX. The flashback gives us some cool weekend looks to channel a dressed-down Hank Moody without always resorting to the usual black t-shirt and jeans.

What’d He Wear?

Hank has always been an anachronism – “an analog guy in a digital world” he is called in the first season – so it makes sense that he would still be sporting some grunge-inspired duds by the early 2000s when he and Karen finally make their fateful move to the left coast.

(Due to much of the actual on-screen action being black and white, behind-the-scenes photos provided much needed help in nailing down the details.)

Arriving in Venice

Our first look at Hank and Karen at their happiest shows us that he hasn’t strayed far from his original style by the time the show’s storyline begins. Hank strolls with Karen into Venice Beach wearing a brown corduroy jacket, t-shirt, and jeans.

The t-shirt is the most un-Moody part of the outfit, as we’re pretty used to seeing solid dark shirts after multiple seasons of the show. In the “Love Song” flashback, Hank wears a cream yellow short-sleeve cotton crew neck t-shirt with the ornate logo for “PETER TAT-2 ASSOC.” printed in black on the front.

Hank wears his finest dinner duds for a double date with Charlie and Marcy. (Inset: Duchovny behind the scenes, wearing his own pair of sunglasses.)

A Google search reveals that this is most likely from a tattoo parlor in Denver. I had initially run a search in 2011 to find out more, and I was able to secure the art for the logo actually used on the shirt. Four years later, however, it appears that the shop has changed its own art and the logo found on Hank’s t-shirt is no more.

Over the shirt, Hank wears a brown corduroy trucker jacket that appears to be one size too large. The jacket has two patch pockets on the chest that button through pointed flaps as well as two lower welted hand pockets. Hank keeps all six brass-finished metal buttons down the front unbuttoned as well as the single button on each cuff, further emphasizing the length of the oversized jacket’s sleeves. The back is split into three panels, and there is a single 2-button tab on each side of the jacket’s waistline to adjust the fit. The corduroy trucker jacket is likely an original Levi’s model, as the tag on the left pocket would imply.

A production photo of Hank and Karen in “Love Song”.

An ardent advocate of denim, it’s no surprise to see Hank wearing a pair of medium-blue wash jeans, worn low around his waist, as he walks the streets. Hank’s jeans have a standard five-pocket layout and a tan back patch above the right rear pocket.

Hank’s accessories are all his usuals. He wears a pair of tan suede Timberland Torrance slip-on Chelsea boots with black elastic side gussets. His sunglasses are the oft-seen Izod 725 with slim frames and brown lenses. The same simple black leather braid adorns his left wrist… sans the black studded leather bracelet and his silver ring, interestingly enough.

Hank’s reliable old Izods in action. Also note the tag on the left pocket of his jacket… possibly Levi’s?

On the Beach

Hank channels his inner grunge fandom as he hits the beach with Karen, wearing yet another surprisingly vibrant shirt (although the grayscale-filmed flashback doesn’t quite make this evident at first). The red lightweight cotton shirt has a large white double-stripe grid check, accented by a navy shadow check. Hank buttons a few of the 7 white plastic buttons down the front. The roomy shirt has a large collar, two patch pockets on the chest, and unbuttoned cuffs that Hank wears rolled up to his elbow.

Hank and Karen, on and off camera.

T.C.B.

For a business meeting to discuss the eventual production of God Hates Us All Crazy Little Thing Called Love, the show nicely nods to Hank’s earlier style by returning the familiar olive brown thin-waled corduroy smoking jacket from the early seasons. This single-breasted 2-button jacket has padded shoulders with roped sleeveheads, single vent, welted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets, and 3-button cuffs. The left lapel of the edge-swollen notch lapels has a buttonhole stitched into it.

A behind-the-scenes shot of Dave and Natascha filming on the beach.

While the jacket makes a familiar return, the rest of the outfit is all new… and very off-brand for our hero. Hank wears a blue chambray cotton shirt, a fine choice for a newly-ordained beach-dweller, with large white plastic buttons down the edge-stitched front placket and on the square button cuffs. The shirt also has two open patch pockets on the chest.

Hank wearing… khakis? The inset photo helps nail down the color, proving that maybe he wasn’t always so obsessed with his jeans…

To save the most surprising part of Hank’s attire for last, he actually abstains from wearing his beloved jeans in favor of a pair of flat front khaki chinos!

How to Get the Look

My favorite look from the “Love Song” flashbacks includes the distinctive “PETER TAT-2” shirt under the corded trucker jacket. It is very true to Hank’s character without being as obvious as just another solid t-shirt.

• Brown corduroy Levi’s trucker jacket with 6 brass-finished buttons, 2 chest pockets with button-down pointed flaps, 2 welted hand pockets, unbuttoned cuffs, and double side 2-button adjuster tabs
• Yellow cream cotton “PETER TAT-2 ASSOC.” graphic t-shirt with crew neck and short sleeves
• Medium blue low-rise denim jeans
• Light brown sueded leather Timberland “Torrance” slip-on Chelsea boots with black elastic side gussets
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, worn alone on the left wrist
• Izod 725 sunglasses with dark brown lenses

It’s also interesting which accessories (the ring, bracelet, etc.) were left out for the “earlier” scenes.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Catch up with Hank and the gang by watching the full series of Californication. Many fans (myself included) will argue that the show’s first few years were its best, but this episode was a solid entry from the polarizing fifth season.

The Quote

Come on back to bed. Let’s californicate.

Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris (2011).

Vitals

Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway, macho expatriate American novelist

Paris, 1920s

Film: Midnight in Paris
Release Date: May 20, 2011
Director: Woody Allen
Costume Designer: Sonia Grande

Background

Today is my 27th birthday, a day that I proudly share with brilliant artists like Ernest Hemingway, Robin Williams, Hart Crane, and even a few non-suicidal ones like Don Knotts, Cat Stevens, and Kay Starr.

Hemingway is arguably the most world-famous of my shared birthday buddies, and – at the time that he turned 27 – he was a war-haunted expatriate living the Parisian high life with a promising new novel just months shy of its publication. In fact, Hemingway had begun scribing The Sun Also Rises exactly a year earlier on his 26th birthday, July 21, 1925.

The Sun Also Rises is my favorite of Hemingway’s works and one of my favorites in general, partly due to his colloquial, in-the-moment depiction of American and British expatriates in Europe. Unrequited romance, Parisian café life, and the excitement of the Pamplona bullfights round out Papa’s roman à clef to what has been since deemed “the lost generation,” despite Hemingway’s own optimistic insistence that these characters are merely “battered” but not lost. As a wiser man than I might say, Jake Barnes abides.

Reading The Sun Also Rises always inspires a nostalgic sense for me to join Hemingway and his contemporaries like Gertrude Stein, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound hopping from one bistro to the next while discussing each other’s unwritten great American novels. It’s a shared sense of many, and Woody Allen ably tapped into both that romantic concept and the flaws of nostalgia in Midnight in Paris, which starred Owen Wilson as Woody’s surrogate Gil Pender, a disillusioned but optimistic screenwriter who wants nothing more than to be transported back to Paris during the postwar decade… a dream that comes alive as Gil is flown headfirst into the scenes captured in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s definitive chronicle of the era.

Appropriately enough, it is a tolling bell that signifies Gil’s time travel back into the age of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein rubbing elbows with fellow artists Dalí and Picasso… all the perfect people to evaluate Gil’s own artistic endeavors.

Gil: Would you read it?
Hemingway: Your novel?
Gil: Yeah, it’s about 400 pages long, and I’m just looking for an opinion.
Hemingway: My opinion is I hate it.
Gil: Well you haven’t even read it yet.
Hemingway: If it’s bad, I’ll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it’s good, I’ll be envious and hate it all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.

Despite this wink at the inherent jealousy between the lost generation’s writers, Hemingway still offers a line of advice to Gil: “No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.” Gil, in turn, quips to Hemingway that he believes all modern American literature can be traced back to Huck Finn, a declaration that has often been attributed to Hemingway.

What’d He Wear?

Few of the literary set that Gil Pender meets are necessarily adherent to the expected fashions of the era, partly due to the movie’s seemingly fluid timeline and also due to the self-described individualism that found its extremes in absurdists like Dalí. These were the hipsters of yesteryear, but Malcolm Cowley observed in Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s that “‘They’ tried to be individual, but there is a moment when individualism becomes a uniform in spite of itself.”

Midnight in Paris chronicles the popular image of Hemingway as a swaggering writer who could be expected to leap into succinct diatribes about manliness and his experiences in the war without a moment’s notice. This Papa rejects the pressed dinner jackets and stylish tailored suits of romantic contemporaries like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cole Porter, instead embracing a more “alpha male” image in a rugged brown jacket and trousers with no tie.

Hemingway enjoys a glass of wine at Polidor when meeting Gil and the Fitzgeralds.

Hemingway’s brown suede single-breasted sports jacket evokes popular hunting attire of the era, almost certainly a nod to the writer’s reputation as a sportsman. All of the jacket’s many buttons, including the three on the front, are brown woven leather. The front is darted and the back is split with a single vent.

The jacket has notch lapels with a throat latch that closes under the right lapel with a single button through a pointed tab. The sleeves also end with a pointed tab on each cuff that closes with a single button. There are three external patch pockets, all box-pleated with a squared flap closing on a single button: one pocket is over the left chest, and the other two slightly larger pockets are on the jacket hips.

It is a jacket that one at the time would more expect to see out on a hunt rather than in an urban café. In fact, the outfit recalls the popular brown Barbour sport jacket that Daniel Craig wore as James Bond in Skyfall‘s climactic battle scenes in Scotland. While photographs prove that the real Hemingway was certainly not above donning a tie (or even a beret!) for his life with the rest of his “moveable feast”, Stoll’s Hemingway is a reflection of the macho image that the author portrayed to both his readers and his contemporaries.

With each appearance, Hemingway wears a difference light-colored shirt with a large point collar, no pocket, and French cuffs. When he first meets Gil at Polidor (which was known to be one of Hemingway’s haunts), he wears a plain white shirt with the first few buttons undone on the front placket. His round cuff links are gold with a raised black finish.

More wine!

On Gil’s next visit to the ’20s where he meets the alluring Adriana, Hemingway accompanies him to visit Gertrude Stein. This time, he wears a pale blue shirt with a maroon and white overcheck and plain front. Again, he wears no tie.

Hemingway and Adriana (Marion Cotillard) at Gertrude Stein’s.

Finally, Gil runs into Hemingway and the bullfighter Juan Belmonte at a Charleston dance. Papa’s white shirt is styled similar to his first with a front placket and double cuffs, but this one has thin, subtle gray striping.

A production image from Midnight in Paris clearly shows Hemingway’s striped shirt and vintage Moët bottle.

Hemingway sticks to earth tones with the rest of his outfits, typically wearing a pair of dark brown high-rise trousers with double forward pleats and a full cut down to the cuffed bottoms. His slim leather belt is slightly lighter brown with a gunmetal single-claw buckle.

Hemingway knew how to enjoy himself… it just too often meant that those around him wouldn’t enjoy themselves.

During the stop at Gertrude Stein’s apartment, Hemingway wears an olive shade of brown trousers, similarly styled but worn without a belt, revealing the squared extended tab on the waistband. Like the other trousers, these are finished at the bottom with turn-ups.

Hemingway introduces Gil to Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, and Pablo Picasso all in one evening.

Since Hemingway spends the bulk of his time drunkenly pontificating from behind a café table, his shoes don’t get much exposure. At Stein’s, he appears to be wearing a pair of tan leather apron-toe bluchers.

A plain gold wedding band is seen on the third finger of Hemingway’s left hand, symbolic either of his marriage to Hadley (which lasted until January 1927) or to Pauline (which began in May 1927).

With The Sun Also Rises fresh off the press, Hemingway lays down some sage advice for Gil, the aspiring novelist.

Go Big or Go Home

Midnight in Paris glamorizes the expatriate lifestyle of the 1920s, an era that inspired Hemingway’s first novel The Sun Also Rises as well as A Moveable Feast, recounted decades later from his notebooks recovered from the basement of the Hôtel Ritz Paris.

Keep in mind that Hemingway was the type of guy who would go fishing with a Thompson submachine gun, as seen here in 1935.

In fact, the grand Hôtel Ritz, which reopened last month in the 1st arrondissement after a major three-year renovation, could be considered a first stop on a tour of Hemingway’s Paris. Ground was broken in 1705, appropriately during the reign of Louis XIV, although the palatial hotel itself didn’t open until nearly 200 years later with a “glittering reception” on June 1, 1898. The hotel became an instant legend with a reputation for luxury as everyone from artists and entertainers to politicians and royalty – Edward VII and a lover were once reportedly stuck in one of its bathtubs – over the decades. Hemingway featured the hotel in The Sun Also Rises and lived there for many years, with his tenure now honored by the hotel’s Bar Hemingway where head bartender Colin Field’s concoctions have taken legendary proportions of their own. Indeed, the hotel is one of the few places that would honor a guest who reacted to his wife’s request for a divorce by firing a pistol into a toilet where he had thrown her photo. Perhaps it was Hemingway’s endorsement of “the only reason not to stay at the Ritz [in Paris] is if you can’t afford it” that the hotel appreciates.

Before he could afford the Ritz himself, Hemingway and his first wife Hadley spent their first night in Paris at the Hôtel Jacob – now the Hotel d’Angleterre – in the 6th arrondissement.

Ernest Hemingway’s nightlife behavior had become legendary in his own time. According to Malcolm Cowley in Exile’s Return:

I remember being taken to an unfamiliar saloon – it was in the winter of 1925-26 – and finding that the back room was full of young writers and their wives just home from Paris. They were all telling stories about Hemingway, whose first book had just appeared, and they were talking in what I afterward came to recognize as the Hemingway dialect – tough, matter-of-fact, and confidential. In the middle of the evening one of them rose, took off his jacket, and used it to show how he would dominate a bull.

Midnight in Paris depicts Gil accompanying Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to Crémerie-Restaurant Polidor on the Left Bank in the 6th arrondissement, where he first meets Hemingway brooding over a glass of burgundy. Polidor, originally founded in 1845, retains the spirit of turn-of-the-century Paris with its style of cooking, its decor, and even its bathrooms. Diners sit at long shared tables with communal saltcellars and pots of mustard. Once popular with Hemingway’s contemporaries and spiritual successors like Jack Kerouac, it remains a favored haunt of local college students. According to Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris, it also offers a “diamond” whiskey sour, if you’re so inclined.

This was surely a common sight in 1920s Paris.

Channeling the spirit of his idol, Gil (in the present day) visits Shakespeare & Company in the 5th arrondissement, the English-language bookstore opened in 1951 by George Whitman after Sylvia Beach’s original shop in the 6th – a favorite of 1920s ex-pats like Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, and James Joyce – had closed during the German occupation of Paris in 1940. Whitman’s new shop reflected the spirit of the original as a common meeting place for Bohemian writers, and Sylvia Beach publicly offered him the use of the Shakespeare & Company name while dining with him in 1958. Dwight Garner’s New York Times article in 2010 recalls an incident toward the end of World War II when a uniformed Hemingway, who had admired Beach, “would return to ‘liberate’ the bookstore, but it never reopened.”

As Time Out outlined in a great piece, most of Hemingway’s favorite haunts were on the Left Bank and many still remain almost a century later. His apartments at 39 rue Descartes and 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine are commemorated with plaques, and foodies can still enjoy the offerings of enthusiastic grocers  at the Marché Mouffetard, described in A Moveable Feast as a “wonderful, narrow crowded market street”.

It’s very understandable why Gil Pender is so nostalgic about the era and the lifestyle of its expatriates: plenty of coffee, cigarettes, and cocktails with hot jazz and the greatest artistic minds of the generation filling out the background.

Sidney Bechet’s “Si tu vois ma mère” serves as the de facto theme of Midnight in Paris, playing over the beginning and end credits with vignettes of Paris at its most romantic by day and night.

When I want to evoke this romanticized Parisian experience either to accompany some coffee or writing attempts, my go-to is always Django Reinhardt, the Gypsy jazz guitarist who developed his unique solo style after two fingers on his left hand were paralyzed in a fire. Born in 1910, Django was a bit too young to provide the soundtrack for the lost generation of the 1920s, but Woody has used plenty of his music in his films for decades to the point of writing Sweet and Lowdown as an homage.

The movie also includes my favorite “modern” re-interpretation of a ’20s-style arrangement of James P. Johnson’s “Charleston”, performed here by Enoch Light and his Charleston City All-Stars for one of several albums in the late 1950s that celebrated the music of the Roaring Twenties. (I previously celebrated this track when I posted about Jimmy Stewart’s Charleston dance in It’s a Wonderful Life.)

Gil dances the Charleston with Djuna Barnes, the celebrated modernist author who would eventually pen the groundbreaking novel Nightwood.

What to Imbibe

Reading Ernest Hemingway’s novels and memoirs will make your taste buds tingle for anything from a cold beer or neat whiskey to absinthe or – Hemingway’s favorite – a Daiquiri. Midnight in Paris depicts Papa drinking plenty of wine given his surroundings, including Château this-or-that claret and Moët & Chandon champagne.

The Sun Also Rises famously features protagonist Jake Barnes downing a Jack Rose cocktail at the Hôtel de Crillon bar while waiting for Lady Brett Ashley:

Hemingway might have called the drink unmanly if he saw someone drinking one, but he would have to admit that it is tasty if he placed one in his first protagonist’s hand.

At five o’clock I was in the Hotel Crillon, waiting for Brett. She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters. They were not very good letters, but I hoped their being on Crillon stationery would help them. Brett did not turn up, so about quarter to six I went down to the bar and had a Jack Rose with George the barman.

While its name may recall James Cameron more than Ernest Hemingway to modern drinkers, the Jack Rose was once so prolific that David Embury included it alongside mainstays like the Daiquiri, Manhattan, Martini, Old Fashioned, and Sidecar in his seminal The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks in 1948. The Jack Rose was likely developed in New Jersey, possibly by restaurateur Joseph P. Rose although the earliest mention of the cocktail appears to be a 1905 article in the National Police Gazette that credits Jersey bartender Frank J. May with its creation.

The Jack Rose consists of three ingredients; applejack brandy is the primary ingredient, and Laird’s has enjoyed increased sales of its applejack due to the resurgence of interest in the Jack Rose and classic cocktails of its ilk. In an ice-filled shaker, two parts of applejack are mixed with one part lemon juice and half a part grenadine syrup. After the fruity red concoction is strained into a chilled martini glass, it is typically garnished with a cherry and a lemon slice and served up. Lime juice and a lime slice may also be substituted for lemon.

How to Get the Look

Hemingway literally takes Juan Belmonte under his wing.

Midnight in Paris depicts a young Ernest Hemingway in his prime, newly published and dressing in the style of a macho adventurer comfortable at a Parisian café, a Spanish bullfight, or an African hunt.

• Dark brown suede single-breasted 3-button sport jacket with notch lapels (with pointed-tab buttoning throat latch), box-pleated left chest pocket with button-down flaps, box-pleated hip pockets with button-down flaps, single-button tab cuffs, and single vent
• Light-colored subtly-patterned dress shirt with large point collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
• Gold round cuff links with black finish
• Brown high-rise double forward-pleated trousers with belt loops, full cut, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Light brown leather belt with gunmetal single-claw buckle
• Tan leather apron-toe bluchers
• Brown socks
• Gold wedding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the movie (or borrow it from a friend if you’re not a Woody Allen supporter), but you should certainly read Hemingway.

His most famous works are arguably A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, and many high-schoolers were unfortunately turned off by having to read The Old Man and the Sea, but my personal favorite is The Sun Also Rises, as I’m sure you could tell by this point.

I also greatly enjoy A Moveable Feast, which likely inspired much of Midnight in Paris and practically serves as a posthumous “Making of” featurette of The Sun Also Rises as it recounts the 1920s expatriate scene and the colorful characters that lived it.

The Quote

If you’re a writer, declare yourself the best writer. But you’re not – as long as I’m around – unless you want to put the gloves on and settle it.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody on Californication. (Episode 3.02: “The Land of Rape and Honey”)

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, borderline alcoholic and womanizing college professor, née novelist

Venice Beach, Fall 2009

Series: Californication
Episode: “The Land of Rape and Honey” (Episode 3.02)
Air Date: October 4, 2009
Director: Bart Freundlich & David Von Ancken
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Midterms are in full swing for fall semester college students, so BAMF Style is taking a look at Californication‘s Hank Moody making his brief foray into the world of academia. Frankly, the show’s third season is where it started to lose my interest with broader humor that seemed more focused on being zany and raunchy than relatable. (For example, a brooding student’s suicide attempt is seemingly written in – and quickly written off – as an excuse for Hank to pontificate and spout a few one-liners and find out that one of his hot students is also a stripper.)

…but now I’m pontificating! “The Land of Rape and Honey” (eek, that episode title!) is the most we see of Professor Hank Moody in action – before using his job to get some action – and, of course, he kinda sucks at it.

What’d He Wear?

Hank Moody doesn’t dress any differently than usual when working his brief professorial shift, sporting dark button-up shirts and dark jeans typically accompanied by his trademark brown smoking jacket and Chelsea boots.

Hank looks up from his phone for a few minutes to deliver some sage advice to the young writers of America.

The olive brown smoking jacket re-emerges in this episode, having been briefly replaced by a darker and heavier version in the third season premiere. It is the same familiar thin-corded, single-breasted 2-button jacket that Hank’s been wearing since his introduction in the first episode. Edge swelling is present throughout from the notch lapels to the welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets. It has a single back vent and 3-button cuffs.

Hank wears this comfortable black lightweight cotton button-up shirt in many third season episodes (“Wish You Were Here”, “Zoso”, “Comings and Goings”, and the climactic finale in “Mia Culpa”), always with the button cuffs undone and rolled partially up his forearms. It has a plain front with no placket and no pocket. It is distinctive with its slim, soft collar, reinforced stitched seam across the horizontal back yoke, and the easily-wrinkled material that suggests the possibility of a cotton-linen blend.

Hank sits at attention in his office.

It takes a wedding, a funeral, or extreme physical activity to get Hank Moody in anything but jeans, so a few hours slumped behind a desk each day would hardly be enough to get him to wear anything but “the people’s fabric”. His dark blue denim jeans in this scene may or may not be from the New York designer Earnest Sewn, which definitely made some of Hank’s jeans as confirmed by the ScreenBid auction of Californication costumes and props in July 2014.

Hank takes a decidedly casual approach to teaching.

You may not realize it at first glance, but Hank actually wears a different pair of brown Chelsea boots than usual in this scene. These boots are dark brown oiled leather with lighter brown elastic side gussets, brown-stitched quarter seams, and black soles.

…a very casual approach

The Timberland Earthkeepers® Tremont Chelsea boot in dark brown oiled leather.

Hank’s usual Chelsea boots are sueded leather Timberland Torrance boots with black side gussets in various shades of brown. The boots in this episode more closely resemble the Timberland Earthkeepers® Tremont Chelsea – available here or from Amazon in the same dark brown oiled leather – although the Earthkeepers have distinctive Gripstick™ + Green Rubber™ soles for superior traction while Hank’s boots in this episode appear to have more typical black rubber soles.

Update! A reader named Mark contributed a very helpful comment below that identifies Hank’s boots as likely a pair of Blundstones, evident by the boot soles. Mark suggested either the 500 series or 550 series.

Though not clearly seen, Hank is probably wearing his usual black socks and black boxer briefs. During Hank’s tussle with Dean Koons in “Comings  and Goings” (Episode 3.11), the orange-lettered “Calvin Klein” logo can be seen on the black waistband of his boxer briefs.

Hank’s usual jewelry and accessories are also on full display as he gesticulates wildly, doling out unsolicited romantic advice and solicited (but unappreciated) career advice. On his right index finger, he wears his silver ring with two rows of silver “teeth” embedded in the ring’s black ridge.

Hank makes Jill one of many offers that she isn’t eager to accept.

The familiar faded black leather stud bracelet is snapped to Hank’s left wrist with its silver hexagonal studs and a single round stud over the snap. It is supplemented by a black woven leather braid, tied in a permanent knot on the same wrist. Replicas of both bracelets are available at Urban Wrist.

What to Imbibe

It makes sense that a metal fan like Hank Moody would idle his office hours time by enjoying Lemmy’s favorite cocktail, Jack and Coke… or, um, “Jake” and Coke since the show used the fictional lookalike: Jake Danzel’s Old No. 2 Kentucky Whiskey.

Those poor students…

The opportunistically transparent “Jake Danzel’s” is a label offered by Earl Hays Press, one of several prop houses that provides products for movies and TV shows that want to avoid product placement for legal or financial reasons. This can range from beverages, cigarettes, and food to newspapers, magazines, and medicines. Interestingly, although the show goes to these lengths to avoid the actual brand, Hank still refers to “killing that bottle of Jack” after Jackie – the aforementioned student/stripper – makes a late night visit with two friends and a bottle of Jake Danzel’s in “The Apartment” (Episode 3.08).

In this episode, however, Hank pours his whiskey straight into the cola can for himself and offers the bottle to his jaded student to wash down the disappointing news that the young man may not be such a great writer, after all.

How to Get the Look

Hank’s new boots offer a slight twist on his usual “uniform” and his trademark smoking jacket is less out-of-place in this mahogany-paneled university setting than his usual world of beaches and dive bars.

• Olive brown thin-corded single-breasted 2-button smoking jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• Black lightweight cotton shirt with soft collar, plain front, and rolled-up button cuffs
• Dark blue denim jeans with long, thin belt loops and five-pocket layout
• Dark brown oiled leather Blundstone slip-on Chelsea boots with brown side gussets and black rubber soles
• Black tube socks
• Black Calvin Klein boxer briefs
• Silver black-ridged ring, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, snapped on the left wrist
• Black woven leather braided bracelet, tied on the left wrist

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the show. I think the first two seasons are the best and variations of this look show up in basically every episode, but this particular outfit with the slightly different Chelsea boots only shows up in the third season.

The Quote

The world doesn’t need any more lame vampire fiction.

David Duchovny as Hank Moody in “The Ride-Along”, Episode 5.05 of Californication, with a Desert Eagle-wielding RZA.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, womanizing novelist and screenwriter

Santa Monica, Spring 2012

Series: Californication
Episode: “The Ride-Along” (Episode 5.05)
Air Date: February 5, 2012
Director: Millicent Shelton
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

Two years before Ice Cube and Kevin Hart took their seats in a police car, Hank Moody joined unstable rapper Samurai Apocalypse (RZA) for an Santa Monica PD ride-along to prep for Sam’s new movie, Santa Monica Cop.

Writing a movie called Santa Monica Cop (no, it’s not supposed to be a very original concept) is an unexpected scenario for Californication‘s cynical, hard-drinking protagonist, but even more unexpected is the setting for the episode’s cold open: an L.A. gun range.

Hank isn’t much of a gun guy, but Sam is loving every bit of firing his chrome Desert Eagle down range. The episode’s titular ride-along finds Charlie Runkle joining the crew for a series of debauched sexual hijinks that became a hallmark of the show’s later seasons. (Hank counters Charlie’s insistence on riding along by saying “I feel like crushing one of your testicles right now.”)

What’d He Wear?

Hank’s black leather jacket is the same cool Dolce & Gabbana jacket that Duchovny first wore in the fifth season premiere “JFK to LAX” (Episode 5.01). Given that he likely lost most of his clothes when his apartment was set on fire in that episode, it makes sense that he would stick with the same one through most of this season. The soft lambskin jacket has a silver zip front with a shirt-style collar, slanted hand pockets, and silver-toned snaps on each cuff. The back is stitch-divided into three panels.

Hank evaluates Charlie as a law enforcement partner.

Since Dolce & Gabbana isn’t exactly a cheap brand, Moody aficionados can explore a replica of the jacket sold on Amazon, marketed by JJacket as the “Hank Moody Leather Jacket” and currently retailing for $135 (as of January 2016).

Hank’s dark gray cotton t-shirt would be a much simpler item to track down. Like all of his t-shirts, it has a crew neck and short sleeves, and it’s likely James Perse – still available as the “carbon pigment” jersey t-shirt at Nordstrom.

Doing what he does best.

Hank never deviates from his denim bootcut jeans, and a day at the range followed by a night in a cop car would be no reason to change. His jeans in “The Ride-Along” are a dark blue wash with the usual five-pocket layout and unused belt loops.

Hank hikes up his jeans during an intense night out with Charlie and Sam.

Throughout the fifth season, Hank’s go-to footwear are his tan suede Chelsea boots with black elastic side gussets, likely the Timberland “Torrance” model that he’d worn steadily since the first episode. Although the Torrance has been discontinued, some examples always show up on retailers like eBay, and Amazon also carries the latest generation of Timberland Chelsea boots: the Chestnut Ridge in dark brown oiled leather.

Hank goes from one kind of crazy to the next: from the violently paranoid Samurai Apocalypse to the unstable immodesty of literary rival Richard Bates (Jason Beghe).

If Hank were doing any shooting, the silver double-ridged ring on his trigger finger might have gotten in the way of his accuracy, but he leaves the actual gunplay to Sam. He also wears his usual black leather bracelets – one studded with snaps and the other braided and tied – on his left wrist.

Oop!

UrbanWrist sells fine reproductions of Hank’s bracelets in a $40 bundle pack.

How to Get the Look

Officer Moody reports for duty.

Hank Moody’s outfit in “The Ride-Along” (Episode 5.05) serves as a prototype for his base look in the show’s later seasons – a black leather jacket, gray t-shirt (rather than his usual black or blue from earlier seasons), dark jeans, and brown Chelsea boots.

• Black soft leather Dolce & Gabbana jacket with shirt-style collar, silver zip-front, slanted side pockets, and snap cuffs
• Dark gray cotton short-sleeve t-shirt
• Dark blue bootcut denim jeans
• Brown sueded leather Timberland “Torrance” slip-on Chelsea boots with black elastic side gussets
• Black socks
• Silver ring with two ridged bands, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, snapped on the left wrist
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist

The Gun

Samurai Apocalypse (RZA) chooses an IMI Desert Eagle Mark XIX as his character’s sidearm in Santa Monica Cop, and thus his day at the range with Hank Moody finds him firing a brushed chrome model. As a Californian, Sam may be using a DE44CA, the only Model XIX approved for dealer sales to the public in the state. Chambered for .44 Magnum as its name implies, the DE44CA differs from standard Mark XIX models with a firing-pin block incorporated in its design.

Sam admires his Desert Eagle.

The Desert Eagle has attained iconic status over the decades for its use as a powerful and flashy manstopper in movies and video games. The first model, Mark I, appeared on the market in 1983, chambered for the .357 Magnum which is typically only found in revolvers. Additional variants over the years meant more available calibers (.44 Magnum and the formidable .50 Action Express are still available; .41 Magnum and .440 Cor-Bon have been discontinued), and the most recent model – Mark XIX – was introduced in 1995 with the ability to change calibers by swapping out barrels.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series. My favorites are the first and second seasons, but you’ll have to visit the fifth season to find this episode!

And do yourself the favor of always wearing proper eye and ear protection when you go shooting!

Safety first!

The Quote

So what’s the move here: good cop, bad cop, bald cop?

Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm (Episode 1.01: “The Pants Tent”)

Vitals

Larry David as himself, a neurotic comedy writer

Los Angeles, Fall 2000

Series: Curb Your Enthusiasm
Episode: “The Pants Tent” (Episode 1.01)
Air Date: October 15, 2000
Director: Robert B. Weide
Creator: Larry David
Costume Designer: Wendy Range Rao

Background

Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t a show often celebrated for its sartorial style, but the trouser-centric faux pas that drives the plot of its first episode makes Larry David the perfect subject for BAMF Style’s annual April Fool’s Day post this year.

What’d He Wear?

Is it a bad thing? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing, you know?

Larry David lets us know exactly the sort of show we’re in for as the opening shot of Curb Your Enthusiasm is a close-up of his crotch as he aggressively tests the bounds of the corduroy bunched up above his groin.

“I have never seen a bunch-up like this in my life… this is like a five-inch bunch-up I got here.”

Larry deems this trouser phenomenon his “pants tent”, though it’s surprising that this would only be the first occurrence for a man who makes such a habit of wearing baggy clothing. These particular light brown corduroys are even baggier due to their double reverse pleats, providing ample material to pitch a pants tent.

With their excess size, Larry’s pants are almost certainly held up with a belt that remains unseen under his shirt. The bottoms are plain-hemmed, but Larry wears them cuffed them up about an inch.

A Racked article from April 2016 that asked its readers “is Larry David the style icon we need?” (he isn’t) described “LD’s signature look, a mix of layers in desert mountain tones, all slate gray and brown and navy blues.”

Larry establishes this look from the outset, wearing a soft gray-blue long-sleeve polo shirt layered over a black cotton crew-neck t-shirt with his “pants tent” corduroys. Like all of his clothing, the polo shirt is a few sizes too big, and he has rolled back the elasticized cuffs over his wrists. He leaves the top of the three buttons undone.

The polo shirt is almost definitely Pima cotton, an ultra soft and durable fabric that would be a comfortable option for Larry’s days either in the office or on the golf course.

Although to suggest that Larry David is ever comfortable shows a fundamental lack of knowledge about his character.

Larry dons an extra layer for the movie theater, an extremely oversized dark olive suede jacket with wide notch lapels, a two-button single-breasted front, patch pockets on the left breast and hips, plain cuffs, and ventless back. It appears not to the be the 3-button jacket that he wears the next day, as this has no pocket on the right breast.

As Larry would later describe it: “I think your friend Nancy thinks she got me aroused in the movie… because of the tent in the pants, and, when she looked down… she thought that there was some garbage there.”

This episode was filmed and aired in 2000, evidently somewhere between the real Larry David’s preference for Nike Jordans while working on Seinfeld in the ’90s and before he adopted his now-trademark sustainable sneakers by Simple.

Larry’s white sneakers get some prominent screen time, as do their rubber outsoles with white toe caps and black accents on a wide gray center strip. What appears to be a black “B” is centered on the outsole, perhaps indicating the sneaker brand.

Do Larry’s outsoles look familiar?

Larry wears a pair of tight beige socks, possibly a cotton and elastane blend.

Larry’s signature gold-framed eyeglasses have been identified as Oliver Peoples MP-3, a style discontinued in the late ’80s but has remained on his face in the three decades since. The rounded lenses are rimmed with a thin tortoise eye wire. As Larry himself explained:

I can’t find another pair of glasses… I just like them. And now it’s too late to change, even if I didn’t like them. It would be like getting a tou­pee. It feels like a big step.

How to Get the Look

Larry David puts softness before style when dressing, although his soft cotton ensemble creates more problems than it’s worth…

• Dark olive suede single-breasted 2-button jacket with notch lapels, patch breast and hip pockets, plain cuffs, and ventless back
• Gray-blue soft Pima cotton long-sleeve polo shirt with 3-button collar and elasticized cuffs
• Black cotton crew-neck short-sleeve t-shirt
• Light brown double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and self-cuffed bottoms
• White sneakers with white toe caps and black-accented gray-striped rubber outsoles
• Beige cotton/elastane socks
• Gold-framed vintage eyeglasses with thin tortoise eye wires and round lenses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the series, and start with the first season.

The Quote

I got a tent.

Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker in a colorized photo from Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Vitals

Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker, powerful and domineering newspaper columnist

New York City, Fall 1956

Film: Sweet Smell of Success
Release Date: June 27, 1957
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Costume Designer: Mary Grant

Background

One of my favorite movies is Sweet Smell of Success, the atmospheric film noir starring Burt Lancaster as a Walter Winchell-like columnist and Tony Curtis as the opportunistic young PR flack desperate to get in good with him.

Ernest Lehman, who contributed to the screenplay based on his own novelette, declined to direct the film due to his fear of Lancaster, but the actor’s aggressive and volatile temperament paid off to create the needed aura of his intimidating character, the sort of man who could and would destroy an enemy’s career on a whim.

“Burt was really scary,” recalls Elmer Bernstein, who composed the film’s jazzy score, memorably performed by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. “He was a dangerous guy. He had a short fuse.”

Despite the fear that Lancaster imposed on the film’s cast and crew, director Alexander Mackendrick worked with cinematography master James Wong Howe to create a dazzling tribute to 1950s New York, Weegie’s dog-eat-dog world of hot jazz, seductive shadows, and poison-loaded pens, delivering a sense of isolation in even the most crowded scenes.

The snappy screenplay by Lehman, Mackendrick, and playwright Clifford Odets has been immortalized by lines like J.J.’s comment to Falco: “I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full or arsenic,” voted the 99th greatest movie line by Premiere magazine in 2007.

What’d He Wear?

J.J. Hunsecker wears two different suits over the course of the film, both double-breasted to create a sense of enveloping him in the trappings of his power while also projecting an intimidating image to the world.

For the taping of his ironically named radio broadcast It’s a Wonderful World, J.J. wears a medium-dark flannel suit with a ’50s full cut that gives the 6’2″ Lancaster an additionally hulking presence as he “greets” his sister and her beau.

J.J. makes quite an impression on his sister’s new suitor.

J.J.’s double-breasted suit has a four-on-one button “Kent”-style front that he leaves open, ignoring the convention of always wearing a double-breasted jacket closed. The second row of buttons is placed a few inches below the waist, indicative of the gradually falling button stance during the 1950s that would fall out of fashion in the following decade. The lower button stance also helps balance Lancaster’s height. The upper buttons are only slightly further outside the functioning lower buttons, creating a boxy look that emphasizes J.J.’s relentless machine-like personality.

The wide, padded shoulders with roped sleeveheads add an intimidating touch to this ensemble. There are four buttons on each cuff.

The pick-stitched peak lapels are wide but sleek with minimal belly as they roll to the waist line. Each lapel has a sloped gorge and, following conventions for a double-breasted jacket, a buttonhole.

Also per the usual for double-breasted jackets, the back is ventless and the hip pockets are jetted without visible flaps. J.J. wears a light-colored silk display kerchief in his welted breast pocket that likely matches his silk tie.

Press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is never far away if J.J. needs anything, be it reassurance or a match for his cigarette.

Although J.J. always wears his suit jacket open, the overlap of the double-breasted jacket is enough to mostly conceal (or shadow) his trousers. Still, it can be ascertained that his trousers have a high rise, rising above the lower row of buttons on his jacket to the hollow of his lapel at the natural waist line.

The flat front suit trousers have slim belt loops, where he wears a thin dark leather belt with a small square single-prong buckle. The trousers are fully cut through the leg to the bottoms, which are finished with cuffs (turn-ups).

J.J.’s dress shirt is light-colored, not white, and possibly the same pale blue-gray as it often appears in colorized photos. It has a large semi-spread collar, front placket, and double (French) cuffs worn with square diamond links.

“Some men just want to watch the world burn,” warned Michael Caine’s Alfred in The Dark Knight.

The Windsor knot was famously derided by Ian Fleming in 1957’s From Russia With Love, writing that “Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad.”

J.J. Hunsecker hit the screen that same year wearing a Windsor knot, and it’s fitting that this almost proudly untrustworthy character would knot his tie in a manner that makes even James Bond suspicious. J.J.’s light silk tie is so finely woven that the finished effect is shiny like satin. The tie, often colored to look silver, has only a slight contrast against his light-colored shirt. The blade perfectly meets the trouser waistband at the natural waist.

J.J.’s feet almost never appear on screen, but the shoes that he wears with this same outfit in the promotional artwork for It’s a Wonderful World appear to be brown leather cap-toe oxfords.

A lobby card with a promotional photo from this scene reveals a pair of light-colored socks, probably light gray, that would have otherwise been hidden under the full break of the trouser bottoms.

Steve Dallas (Martin Milner) and Frank D’Angelo (Sam Levene) can’t escape the powerful presence of J.J. Hunsecker, even before entering his studio.

J.J. wears a yellow gold dress watch, possibly Lancaster’s own. The watch has a rectangular case with a square white dial on a black leather strap.

J.J. prepares for a broadcast.

First manufactured by Shuron Ltd. under the “Ronsir” brand in 1947, browline glasses had been in fashion for nearly a decade by the time famously Lancaster donned his black-framed pair in Sweet Smell of Success. Mackendrick had requested that Lancaster wear his own browline glasses, giving him the presence of “a scholarly brute” and enhancing the effect by supposedly spearing a thin layer of Vaseline over the lenses to prevent Lancaster from focusing his eyes as he judges his world with a perpetually blank gaze, as described in James Naremore’s Sweet Smell of Success: A BFI Film Classic.

Like the watchful eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby, J.J.’s eyes are forever judging the characters in his orbit through his spectacles.

The bold upper frames of Lancaster’s browline glasses also gave Mackendrick the opportunity to shape the character, filming an overhead-lit Lancaster from a low angle with a wide lens, causing the frames to cast shadows over his eyes.

Go Big or Go Home

Fresh from duly intimidating his sister’s unworthy suitor, J.J. heads to 21 Club with Sidney Falco reliably in tow. Named for its address, 21 West 52nd Street, the 21 Club dates back to its speakeasy origins during the early days of Prohibition in the 1920s. The eatery quickly gained prominence as the favored hot spot for luminaries ranging from Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe to Ernest Hemingway, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Aristotle Onassis. Every U.S. president since FDR (except for W.) has dined at 21, and John F. Kennedy was such a frequent visitor that he had a private wine collection stored there.

.. in short, it’s the sort of place that’s perfect for a see-and-be-seen columnist like J.J. Hunsecker to hold court.

J.J. enjoys his usual 21 Club lunch of Gibson martinis and raw oysters.

J.J.’s preferred cigarette brand, English Ovals, dates back to 1854 as the first brand manufactured by London tobacconist Philip Morris.

More than a century later, the brand had been popularized as the cigarette-of-choice for Frank Costello, “the Prime Minister of the Underworld,” himself a regular patron of the 21 Club as Gay Talese recalls: “Even in jail, Costello baffled the law. He continued to smoke English Ovals, although nobody knew how he smuggled them in. He ate steak – ebony on the outside, claret on the inside – just as he’d ordered it at 21…”

How to Get the Look

J.J. Hunsecker unashamedly dresses to look powerful and intimidating, unafraid to appear untrustworthy and taking full advantage of using the contemporary fashions of the ’50s to flatter his strong physique.

• Medium-dark gray flannel full-cut suit:
  • Double-breasted 4-on-1-button jacket with peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Flat front high-rise trousers with slim belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale blue-gray dress shirt with large semi-spread collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Large square diamond cuff links
• Silver silk tie
• Slim brown leather belt with small square single-prong buckle
• Brown leather cap-toe oxfords/balmoral shoes
• Light gray socks
• Black plastic-framed “browline” eyeglasses
• Gold dress watch with square white dial and black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the movie.

The Quote

I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.

David Duchovny as Hank Moody in “Lights. Camera. Asshole”, Episode 4.08 of Californication.

Vitals

David Duchovny as Hank Moody, womanizing novelist and screenwriter

Los Angeles, Spring 2010

Series: Californication
Episode: “Lights. Camera. Asshole.” (Episode 4.08)
Air Date: February 27, 2011
Director: Adam Bernstein
Costume Designer: Peggy A. Schnitzer

Background

It just seems appropriate to feature Hank Moody on 6/9, so today’s #NiceDay post explores one of his lesser seen outfits.

Midway through the fourth season, in the midst of Hank’s post-Mia revelation legal troubles, he is offered a gig to rewrite the shitty dialogue littering the script of a zombie movie starring his latest fling, Sasha Bingham (Addison Timlin), as a police officer.

Of course, Sasha’s request for our favorite writer turns out be more libidinous than literary, so Hank escapes this potentially sticky situation… and finds himself landing in another one.

In the meantime, Hank’s daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) has found herself following in her father’s substance-abusing footsteps, forcing Hank to reevaluate his life choices… and unfortunately giving him some relatable talking points when he finds himself talking to another frustrated parent (Callie Thorne) at a hotel bar. We all know how that will go.

What’d He Wear?

Hank’s outfit in this scene is an interesting outlier against his usual spectrum of navy to black. For all of his loyalty to brown leather jackets and boots, we rarely see Hank wearing a shirt any browner than the olive button-up that he started sporting in the show’s third season.

Yet, for this one episode in season four, Hank visits Sasha on set in a brown shirt with a slim collar and six brown plastic buttons down the front placket. He wears the button cuffs undone and rolled up to his elbows.

Hank promotes himself from writer to director over the course of a single episode.

So why did this shirt make an appearance? And once it did… why just once? For one thing, it does seem a little tight on Duchovny’s torso, especially pulling at his shoulders.

Also, we may be discovering the origins of Hank’s preference for black shirts when he bends over to kiss Sasha’s forehead and reveals a large spot that is undeniably armpit sweat. Black and navy are the best colors for hiding moisture… although the darker fabrics may also create sweatier situations by absorbing the intense sunlight of a southern California afternoon.

Out of context, this screenshot looks rather problematic.

Dark jeans are a staple of Hank’s wardrobe, worn for all occasions from a cocktail party to a trip to the gym. In just the previous episode, “The Recused” (Episode 4.07), Hank describes denim as “the people’s fabric” to a snobbish country club staffer.

Through most of the show’s run, including the fourth season, Hank wears Earnest Sewn bootcut jeans with copper buttons, the usual five-pocket layout, and belt loops that goes perennially unused.

Hank’s hotel room hijinks are intensified when Sasha discovers the identity of his newest bedmate.

Hank wears his tried-and-true Timberland Torrance chelsea boots, although the dull brown suede of his well-loved boots contrast against the warmer shade of his shirt.

Not even convincing as a zombie, Hank proves why he should stick to writing rather than acting.

Despite the new shirt, his accessories remain the same. His thin gunmetal-framed sunglasses are the same brown-lensed Izod 725 shades that he’s worn since the first episode.

Hank wears his usual silver double-ridged ring on his right index finger and doubles up the black leather bracelets on his left wrist; a slim braided bracelet ist tied around his wrist with the studded snap bracelet worn just above it.

UrbanWrist’s reproductions of Hank’s bracelets are one of the company’s best sellers, available in this $40 bundle pack.

Go Big or Go Home

Need something to listen to? The show’s second episode introduced Becca’s fandom of the band Eagles of Death Metal which, four seasons later, made it into the show’s soundtrack with its “Stuck in the Metal with You” cover of Stealers Wheel’s similarly named and melodied 1973 hit single.

How to Get the Look

Perhaps it stands out because it’s so different from his usual, but Hank Moody’s brown shirt in this fourth season episode of Californication has always stuck out in my mind.

• Brown shirt with slim collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Dark blue bootcut denim jeans
• Brown sueded leather Timberland “Torrance” slip-on Chelsea boots with black elastic side gussets
• Black socks
• Black boxer briefs
• Silver ring with two ridged bands, worn on the right index finger
• Black leather bracelet with silver hexagonal and round studs, snapped on the left wrist
• Thin black braided leather bracelet, also worn on the left wrist
• Izod 725 sunglasses with thin gunmetal frames and brown lenses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series. My favorites are the first and second seasons, but this episode appears smack in the middle of the fourth season.

The Quote

No stranger to misery, are you? I like that in a woman sitting alone at a bar.

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp in The Rum Diary (2011)

Vitals

Johnny Depp as Paul Kemp, expatriate American journalist

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Summer 1960

Film: The Rum Diary
Release Date: October 28, 2011
Director: Bruce Robinson
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood

Background

“In summary, this airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy,” heralded Hunter S. Thompson’s honorable discharge from the U.S. Air Force in November 1957, a considerable understatement given the iconic writer’s eventual symbolic anti-authoritarian status.

Following his discharge, Thompson tried a few journalistic stints in New York but was fired by Time (for insubordination) and the Middletown Daily Record (for damaging a candy machine) and moved to Puerto Rico in 1960.

Having failed to procure a position with the San Juan Star, Thompson wrote for the El Sportivo sporting magazine… though it folded quickly after his arrival. His experiences in San Juan formed the basis of The Rum Diary, a novel that he penned shortly after his return to the U.S. the following year, although it wasn’t published for more than three decades.

While it would be inaccurate to describe The Rum Diary as a strict roman à clef, its morose, restless narrator Paul Kemp is clearly modeled on Thompson himself, and Thompson’s friend Johnny Depp was naturally tapped to play the role in the film adaptation.

What’d He Wear?

In an interview with Lucky around the time of the film’s release, costume designer Colleen Atwood explained that “[Depp’s] character has a slightly Midwestern meets southern style that is very American and not at all European. His clothes are fairly stiff, but they kind of wilt in the heat, so it feels more relaxed. His stuff was all made out of this ’60s cotton.”

Paul Kemp dresses for his some dangerous escapades in Puerto Rico with the summer friendly layers of a light windbreaker, lightweight short-sleeve polo shirt, chinos, and desert boots. They are essentially the same elements that he wore earlier with the jacket of his blue gabardine suit, but dressed down with a windbreaker instead.

The modern idea of a windbreaker evokes an unlined rain jacket made from a paper-thin synthetic polyester or nylon, often brightly colored and fitted with a hood. In fact, windbreakers have a far more elegant pedigree, dating back to the 1940s as the trademarked name for a line of casual gabardine zip-up jackets made by John Rissman & Son in Chicago (like this one).

In The Rum Diary, Johnny Depp wears a stone-colored cotton gabardine blouson that shares much more in common with the original Rissman windbreaker than its modern descendent.

Maniacal night in an unfamiliar place or not, this seems like an impractical way for such a practical dresser to be wearing his hair.

The point collar has a wide extended throat latch tab on the left side that, when closed, would fasten to a button under the right side of the collar, creating a quasi-Harrington “funnel neck” to protect a wearer’s throat from the elements.

With its flat collar and set-in sleeves that end with adjustable rather than elasticized cuffs, Kemp’s windbreaker shares little in common with the classic Harrington jacket, which was just emerging as a menswear staple at the time that the film is set.

The jacket’s two outer patch pockets are so large that they take up the entire lower half of each front panel. Each pocket has a slanted hand opening.

The waistband is elasticized and the zip pull is shaped like an arrowhead. The cuffs at the end of each set-in sleeve have two buttons to adjust the fit on an arrow-pointed tab, although Kemp typically leaves his cuffs undone.

As he did with the blue suit jacket, Kemp cycles between two light-colored and lightweight cotton polos.

The pale blue cotton polo is the only real shakeup to Kemp’s otherwise monochromatic off-white palette in these scenes. The short but full set-in sleeves fall to his elbows, and he leaves the top two buttons of the shirt’s long three-button placket undone. The shirt has a rounded breast pocket.

Cigarettes, rum, and a typewriter… removing any doubts that Paul Kemp is the story’s Hunter S. Thompson surrogate.

Later, Kemp dons a similarly styled white short-sleeve polo shirt that shares the voluminous fit, three-button placket, breast pocket, and short set-in sleeves of the previous shirt.

One of these things is not like the other… Kemp always looks hopelessly out of place when next to Bob Sala (Michael Rispoli).

Kemp wears beige cotton gabardine chino trousers with a waistband tab that extends over the straight fly, slanted side pockets, and jetted back pockets with no buttons. The flat front chinos have short belt loops, through which Kemp wears a slim light brown center-stitched leather belt with its squared brass single-prong buckle off on the left side rather than over the center. The trouser bottoms are finished with short cuffs (turn-ups).

Kemp sails off into the sunset.

Kemp’s casual footwear of choice in Puerto Rico is a pair of tan suede chukka boots. He wears the chukkas with cream socks that nicely continue the leg line into his favorite pairs of beige chinos.

The hard brown leather soles differentiate Kemp’s boots from desert boots, which would have crepe soles and would be an equally appropriate choice for this dressed-down outfit.

Kemp adds a vintage touch to his otherwise timeless outfit by donning a pair of Sol Amor wraparound sunglasses with a curved gold semi-frame across the front and brown-tinted bubble lenses.

The plain military-style wristwatch that Kemp wears on his left wrist suits his character, modeled after Hunter S. Thompson who had just come off of a two-year stint in the U.S. Air Force before he took his job in San Juan. The plain steel case, black dial, and tan strap is indicative of watches like the Hamilton Khaki that were provided to the American military during the era.

The three stooges roll through the streets of San Juan.

Johnny Depp filming The Rum Diary, in character and on location in Puerto Rico, 2009.

How to Get the Look

Paul Kemp sticks to classic menswear staples in light colors and lightweight fabrics when comfortably layering for casual adventures around San Juan.

• Stone-colored cotton gabardine zip-up windbreaker with flat point collar (with wide single-button throat latch tab), large patch pockets (with slanted openings), and set-in sleeves (with adjustable button cuffs)
• White or pale blue lightweight cotton short-sleeve polo shirt with 3-button placket and breast pocket
• Beige cotton gabardine flat front chino trousers with belt loops, extended waistband tab, slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Light brown center-stitched leather belt with a squared brass single-prong buckle
• Tan suede two-eyelet chukka boots
• Cream socks
• Sol Amor gold-framed wraparound sunglasses with brown bubble lenses
• Hamilton Khaki automatic wristwatch with steel case, round black dial, and tan strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the movie.

You might be wise to read the book first to really get into the Hunter S. Thompson state of mind.

Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Vitals

Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker, powerful and domineering newspaper columnist

New York City, Fall 1956

Film: Sweet Smell of Success
Release Date: June 27, 1957
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Costume Designer: Mary Grant

Background

In commemoration of Burt Lancaster’s birthday today, I’m exploring my favorite of his films, the atmospheric 1957 noir Sweet Smell of Success that starred Lancaster as acerbic columnist J.J. Hunsecker to Tony Curtis’ unscrupulous PR flack Sidney Falco.

J.J. Hunsecker is a man whose legendary power and mercurial temper is meant to intimidate nearly all in his orbit. To illustrate just how perfect Lancaster was for this role, consider that Ernest Lehman – who co-wrote the screenplay adapted from his own novelette – declined the opportunity to direct the film due to a stomach illness (though some say it was in part due to his fear of working with Lancaster.) Lancaster evidently blamed the film’s lack of success on the box office on Lehman’s withdrawal, confronting him at the after party by saying: “You could have made this a much better picture. I ought to beat you up!” to which Lehman, having evidently overcome his fear of the aggressive actor, replied “Go ahead, I need the money.”

Time has been kinder than the box office to Sweet Smell of Success, and – six decades on – the film remains an intriguing ode to 1950s New York thanks to Alexander Mackendrick’s direction, James Wong Howe’s cinematography, and the talented cast’s ability to deliver the snappy dialogue penned in a screenplay co-written by Lehman, Mackendrick, and playwright Clifford Odets, all underscored by a jazzy soundtrack composed by Elmer Bernstein and performed by the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Bernstein himself had some choice words from his experience with Lancaster:

Burt was really scary. He was a dangerous guy. He had a short fuse.

One could say the same of J.J. Hunsecker.

What’d He Wear?

J.J. Hunsecker’s primary suit in Sweet Smell of Success is a dark birdseye wool suit, likely charcoal gray or dark navy blue, worn for his introduction at the 21 Club and his final confrontation with Sidney in his penthouse apartment.

One phone call is all it takes for J.J. Hunsecker to ruin an enemy.

J.J. wears only double-breasted suits, reflecting a popular style in the mid-fifties but also projecting strength and intimidation through the style’s strong, boxy cut. His double-breasted suit jackets have low four-on-one button fronts in the “Kent” style, which he wears both open and closed. The peak lapels have slanted gorges, pointing at the wide and strongly padded shoulders. Only the three-button cuffs on this jacket differentiate the styling of this suit from his other suit, also double-breasted but in a lighter shade of flannel.

J.J. wears a white pocket square neatly folded in the jacket’s welted breast pocket. The jetted hip pockets and ventless back are consistent with typical double-breasted styling of the era.

J.J. and Sidney make their way out of 21.

The suit’s flat front trousers, best seen when J.J. wears his jacket open, are held up with a thin dark leather belt with a small square single-prong buckle. The full cut extends to the bottoms, finished with cuffs (turn-ups), that break over his dark oxford shoes and dark socks.

J.J. wears a white shirt with a long point collar that compliments Burt Lancaster’s wider head. The shirt has a front placket and squared double (French) cuffs held together by textured square links.

His first tie, worn for an evening at 21 Club, is solid dark silk. It appears to be about 3″ wide and fall about an inch short of his trouser waistband.

“Match me, Sidney.”

J.J.’s second tie, worn during the finale, is white or pale-colored silk with a subtle pinhead texture that differentiates its from the untextured light-colored tie he wore with his lighter flannel suit. Both are tied in a Windsor knot that covers the moderate tie space of his shirt’s point collar.

Leo Bartha describes J.J. as having “the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.” Thus, his gangsterish attire of dark suit and light-on-light tie for the final scene.

Venturing outside, J.J. dons his coat and hat. Unlike Sidney, his income and lifestyle preclude him from the expense of leaving “a tip in every hat-check room in town!” His mid-colored felt fedora, probably gray, has a wide black grosgrain band.

J.J.’s dark wool single-breasted overcoat has notch lapels that roll to a three-button front. The coat also has patch side pockets and a swollen seam down the center back.

A dedicated columnist like J.J. doesn’t even take the time to remove his coat upon getting home, lighting up one of his English Ovals, and tapping away at the Remington Rand.

Ten years after browline glasses jumped onto the fashion scene with the Shuron “Ronsir” brand, Burt Lancaster canonized this style of eyewear in Sweet Smell of Success, identified by BAMF Style reader Preston Fassel as Art Craft “Clubman” eyeglasses based on the subtle sloped studs. The Clubman is still offered from the nearly century-old brand Art Craft Optical and can be purchased for just over $100 from Frames Direct.

Mackendrick had requested that the actor wear his own black-framed browline glasses to deliver the appearance of “a scholarly brute” and filmed the overhead-lit character from a low angle with a wide lens, casting shadows over Lancaster’s eyes.

The effect of J.J.’s browline glasses was supposedly enhanced with a thin layer of Vaseline smeared over the lenses to prevent Lancaster from focusing his eyes as he judges his world with a perpetually blank gaze, as described in James Naremore’s Sweet Smell of Success: A BFI Film Classic.

The gold tank watch on J.J.’s wrist may have also been one of Lancaster’s own items. It has a rectangular case, a white square dial, and a textured strap in likely black leather.

J.J. Hunsecker coolly takes a drag from one of his English Ovals cigarettes as Sidney Falco eagerly sits by his side, waiting for another opportunity to “match” him, as needed.

Go Big or Go Home

After late evenings holding court as New York royalty at the famous 21 Club, J.J. Hunsecker rises dozens of stories to his swanky penthouse overlooking Manhattan, where he takes breaks from furiously typing his nicotine-fueled columns to observe his chosen “dirty town” from the balcony.

It’s a dirty town, but someone’s gotta love it…

Unfortunately for aspiring columnists hoping to live the Hunsecker high life, his “apartment building” was actually the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway on 49th Street, a commercial tower that housed offices and studios where some of the most popular American music from the 1930s to the 1960s was penned and recorded with acts ranging from the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Bobby Darin to Frankie Valli and Dionne Warwick headquartered in the building.

Nearly 90 years after it was built, the building remains a hub for the show business industry with Broadway Video, Key Brand Entertainment, and Paul Simon Music among its tenants.

How to Get the Look

J.J. Hunsecker is all power and intimidation in his dark double-breasted suits that take full advantage of using the contemporary 1950s fashions to flatter his strong physique.

• Dark birdseye wool full-cut suit:
  • Double-breasted 4-on-1-button jacket with peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Flat front trousers with slim belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White dress shirt with long point collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Large textured square cuff links
• Light-colored pinhead-textured silk tie
• Slim leather belt with small square single-prong buckle
• Dark leather cap-toe oxfords/balmoral shoes
• Dark socks
• Mid-gray felt fedora with wide black grosgrain band
• Dark wool single-breasted three-button overcoat with notch lapels and patch hip pockets
• Black acetate-framed “browline” eyeglasses
• Gold dress watch with square white dial and black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Buy the movie.

The Quote

I love this dirty town.

Dominic Cooper as Ian Fleming in the first episode of Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond (2014)

Vitals

Dominic Cooper as Ian Fleming, former British Secret Service agent and aspiring author

Goldeneye, Jamaica, March 1952

Series: Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond
Episode: Episode 1
Air Date: January 29, 2014
Director: Mat Whitecross
Costume Designer: Caroline Harris

Background

This Monday, May 28, marks the 110th birthday of Ian Fleming, the author who created James Bond based on his own experiences in British naval intelligence during World War II. Fleming’s works have famously been adapted to the screen in one of the most successful film franchises to date, while the man’s own life has been adapted a few times as well.

Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond, is the most recent visual retelling of Fleming’s life, focusing on the period of 1938 to 1952 that included Commander Fleming’s service in the British Naval Intelligence Division during World War II and much of the gambling, girls, and gin that would become a hallmark for both Fleming and his fictional creation.

The real Ian Fleming at Goldeneye, sporting attire that no doubt inspired costume designer Caroline Harris as she developed Dominic Cooper’s outfit at Goldeneye.

After being a bachelor for 44 years, I was on the edge of marrying and the prospect was so horrifying that I was in urgent need of some activity to take my mind off it. So, as I say, my mental hands were empty and although I am as lazy as most Englishmen are, I have a Puritanical dislike of idleness and a natural love of action. So I decided to write a book.

– Ian Fleming, 1956

The first episode begins as Fleming puts his finishing touches on Casino Royale, both the first James Bond book as well as Fleming’s own first novel. Though he’d had experience writing as a journalist, Fleming had long told friends that he wanted to write a spy novel. His upcoming marriage to Ann O’Neill, née Charteris, provided the impetus for the nervous groom-to-be to channel his anxiety into his ambition.

“I know what you’re doing,” announces Ann (Lara Pulver) as she finds Fleming outside at the opening of the series. “Can’t bear the thought of being married, so you’re taking it out on that poor, bloody machine.” She voices her dislike for Bond, “a sadistic brute,” though she can’t help but note that her fiancé equipped said brute with his own golf handicap and drinking preferences.

“He’s not me,” insists Fleming.

“You as you’d like to be,” corrects Ann. “Your fantasy… is that who he is?”

“Not exactly,” Fleming responds.

Fleming began writing Casino Royale on the morning of February 17, 1952, completing his manuscript in less than a month, just in time to marry Ann on March 24. The rest is history.

What’d He Wear?

We all know Mr. Bond often wore Sea Island cotton shirts in Fleming’s novels, though the miniseries places Ian himself in what appears to be a navy linen shirt while penning Casino Royale in Jamaica.

Of course, linen is an ideal choice for a warm tropical climate like one may encounter in Jamaica, though some Bond style purists would have likely preferred to have seen the character’s creator in the Sea Island cotton that was so extolled in his books. After all, we do hear about “a sleeveless dark blue Sea Island cotton shirt” in chapter 11 of From Russia With Love as well as references to the same in Moonraker and Thunderball.

Cooper’s navy linen shirt as Fleming shares much in common with shirts worn by the real Ian Fleming, including the notched camp collar, baggy half-sleeves, and breast pocket. The back is pleated on the sides. The shirt closes with big black plastic sew-through buttons up the plain front, with the highest button undone at the chest.

“What shirt should Bond wear?” Fleming asks himself. He then looks down at his own garb, and eureka, a dark blue Sea Island cotton shirt it is!

As Fleming wears his shirt untucked and spends much of the scene behind a desk, we don’t see much of his shorts except to discern that they appear to be a slightly darker shade of navy than his shirt. They are likely also linen.

As Ann pulls Fleming onto the bed for something arguably more fun than being hunched over a typewriter, we get a look at his espadrilles. Fleming had specified “rope-soled shoes” for Bond to wear in Dr. No, set not far from the Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, so it’s reasonable to assume that the author himself sported this comfortable warm-weather footwear while penning his secret agent’s adventures. Check out what I wrote for Primer last summer about espadrilles here.

The canvas uppers of Fleming’s espadrilles appear to be black with two black eyelets for black laces. The outsoles are braided rope. If you’re looking for a similar pair for yourself, Ben Sherman’s “Prill Oxford Sneaker” on Amazon looks like a reasonable option for shoppers looking in the $50 to $70 range.

Who would Bond be without his watch of course? Throughout the series, Fleming wears a military-style wristwatch with a squared steel case and a round black dial with yellow Arabic numerals. The watch is fastened to his wrist on a well-worn brown leather strap.

Ian and Ann celebrate the completion of his first novel.

Go Big or Go Home

…or, better still, go to Fleming’s home!

As James Bond became an international phenomenon, there emerged an obvious interest in sojourning to the place he was created.

“Would these books have been born if I had not been living in the gorgeous vacuum of a Jamaican holiday? I doubt it,” Fleming is quoted on the official site for The Fleming Villa in Orcabessa Bay, Jamaica.

Fleming had first visited Jamaica in 1942 for an Anglo-American intelligence summit, and he immediately fell in love with the lush island nation. After the war, his friend Ivar Bryce helped him find a plot of land in Saint Mary Parish in northeast Jamaica. Fleming sketched a design for a three-bedroom home with jalousie windows and a swimming pool, and the structure was built in 1946 overlooking a private cliff. Adjacent to Ruth Bryan Owen’s Golden Clouds estate, Fleming took a cue from one of his wartime operations and named the estate “Goldeneye”.

Fleming’s mistress Ann Charteris had married Conservative politician Lord Rothermere in June 1945, but she spent much of the seven years of her marriage visiting Fleming at his Goldeneye home until she finally divorced Lord Rothermere and married Fleming in 1952.

Ann (Lara Pulver) looks over Fleming’s manuscript in Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond. Note the three rings on Fleming’s cigarette, a personal trademark that he would also pass along to 007.

Of course, Ian Fleming made it very easy to copy his lifestyle by conspicuously passing along each detail to James Bond.

“He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street,” wrote Fleming in the fourth chapter of Casino Royale. “…he filled a flat, light gunmetal box with fifty of the Morland cigarettes with the triple gold band,” included the description in chapter 8. Most of the subsequent books continue to add detail about Bond’s smoking habits, always naturally echoing the sixty-cigarette-per-day Fleming’s own preferences. (As an Easter egg for Bond fans, there are several instances in Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond where we see Fleming’s packet of cigarettes clearly identified from Morland & Co.)

Why three gold bands? This cosmetic addition is almost certainly a reference to Fleming’s – and, thus, Bond’s – rank in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, where a Commander’s rank is denoted by three gold ribbons on the end of his or her sleeve.

Ian Fleming would no doubt be proud of this visual representation of his life. The typewriter here is an Optima Elite 3, as the author had yet to purchase his infamous golden Royal.

Five months after he completed the first manuscript of Casino Royale, Fleming rewarded himself with the purchase of a gold-plated Royal Quiet Deluxe typewriter. A collection of his typewritten communications is now marketed in the aptly named and essential volume The Man with the Golden Typewriter.

Dominic Cooper as Ian Fleming in the first episode of Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond (2014)

How to Get the Look

Dominic Cooper channels a warm-weather look often worn by the real-life Ian Fleming, the perfect warm-weather getup for sitting by the sea and penning the adventures of a sophisticated secret agent.

• Navy linen short-sleeve shirt with notched camp collar, plain front, breast pocket, and back side pleats
• Dark navy linen shorts
• Steel military-style watch with round black dial (with yellow Arabic numerals) on brown leather strap
• Black canvas two-eyelet rope-soled espadrilles

Though not quite an affordable alternative, 007-friendly brand Sunspel offers a nearly identical shirt, sans breast pocket, in Fleming’s preferred Sea Island cotton for $270. For obvious reasons, the shirt is marketed as part of Sunspel’s Ian Fleming Collection.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series, and consider living the Ian Fleming lifestyle at Goldeneye!