Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner in The Way We Were (1973)

Vitals

Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner, Hollywood screenwriter and Navy veteran

Malibu, California, Fall 1947 through Spring 1948

Film: The Way We Were
Release Date: October 19, 1973
Director: Sydney Pollack
Costume Design: Dorothy Jeakins & Moss Mabry

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This week marks the 50th anniversary of The Way We Were, released October 19, 1973. Adapted by Arthur Laurents from his own novel of the same name, the story follows the privileged and carefree Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) and politically driven Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) through a decade of their on-and-off romance.

After a contentious and unrequited flirtation while at the same college in the late 1930s, Hubbell and Katie reunite by chance during the latter years of World War II, when Hubbell is serving in the U.S. Navy. Despite some early tumultuousness, the two gently compromise their differing personalities and enter a relationship that continues after the war and through the Red Scare of the late ’40s. The growing paranoia of McCarthyism—and Katie’s reignited activism in response—threatens their livelihood as Hubbell is working as a Hollywood screenwriter.

What’d He Wear?

For casual evenings at home, Hubbell often wears a dark navy-blue mid-weight woolen flannel twill long-sleeved service shirt, known to Navy vets as the “CPO shirt” for its association with the chief petty officer (CPO) non-commissioned rank. Section 1-9(f) of the U.S. Navy’s 1941 uniform regulations allowed that “chief petty officers’ blue flannel shirts may be worn when prescribed by the senior officer present,” so even commissioned officers like Lt.(j.g.) Hubbell Gardiner would have been familiar with the style during his World War II service.

Hubbell’s CPO shirt features the cut recognizable to those familiar with the style, as well as the usual details: long-pointed collar, front placket, and barrel cuffs that all fasten with large dark-blue plastic anchor-relief buttons. Consistent with the “1st Model” CPO shirts issued in 1939, Hubbell’s shirt has a single patch-style chest pocket on the left side with a pointed flap that closes through a single button. Later iterations of the CPO shirt authorized in the mid-’40s would balance the look with an identical pocket on the right side.

Interestingly, Hubbell wears this shirt in the two scenes that bookend Katie’s pregnancy—her announcement to him over drinks and again, months later, when they agree to end their relationship after their baby is born. The difference in the way he wears the shirt for both occasions illustrates how their relationship has devolved.

During the earlier scene when Katie tells him that she’s pregnant, Hubbell is carefree and happy, reflected with his CPO shirt worn only semi-buttoned, sleeves rolled up, and untucked. He’s barefoot, feet kicked up on the table, and clad in self-cuffed jeans—almost certainly the same medium-blue denim five-pocket boot-cut jeans that he wears during the shirtless beach volleyball scenes (years before Top Gun made it cool.)

Months later, as Hubbell and Katie mutually decide to split up, he looks more rigid and reserved. The shirt is more intentionally buttoned on the placket and cuffs, tucked into dressier corduroy trousers.

These medium-brown mid-wale cords have a medium-high rise to Redford’s waist, where he holds them up with a wide, lighter brown leather belt that closes through a large gold-toned single-prong buckle. The flat-front trousers have a straight, full cut through the legs to plain-hemmed bottoms and are styled with only slanted front pockets—no back pockets.

Unseen on screen but visible in behind-the-scenes photography, Hubbell wears tan cowboy boots with decoratively stitched brown shafts while breaking up with Katie. There’s little about Hubbell to indicate an affinity for Western style—he’s a bit too preppy for that—but he may have been influenced by California’s more relaxed sartorial culture… or they could’ve just been Robert Redford’s personal boots that were intentionally not captured on screen.

Behind-the-scenes shot of Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand filming The Way We Were, revealing Redford’s cowboy boots that are never clearly seen on screen during this sequence.

Hubbell sports his regular assortment of jewelry and accessories, including an elegant yellow-gold dress watch with a round gold dial strapped to his right wrist on a flat gold expanding band. The silver ring shining from Redford’s right hand is the actor’s personal ring, which he later explained to The Hollywood Reporter was a gift from a Hopi tribe received in 1966 and visibly worn in nearly all of his movies to follow. On his left wrist, Hubbell continues wearing his Navy-issued sterling silver curb-chain ID bracelet.

What to Imbibe

Hubbell and Katie are each drinking a martini one evening in their Malibu home—he’s working on his screenplay, she’s studying French—when she shares with him that she’s pregnant. Times have certainly changed, as I imagine most women today aren’t be swilling gin in their first trimester… or their third, as we see yet another round of martinis on the kitchen counter during their breakup dinner.

Note the martinis—and their respective garnish of a single martini—as Hubbell prepares to serve dinner.

We don’t see enough of the Gardiner family bar to fully ascertain if Hubbell and Katie are drinking their martinis with gin or vodka. Gin would be the traditional choice, still predominant by the late 1940s, though vodka was on the rise and it wouldn’t be out of character for Comrade K-K-K-Katie to be against enjoying a spirit so closely associated with Russia.

How to Get the Look

Hubbell Gardiner deftly blends his Navy duds into postwar life, repurposing a navy flannel CPO shirt into his classily cozy and casual style as a beach-dwelling screenwriter.

• Dark blue woolen flannel long-sleeved U.S. Navy “CPO shirt” with point collar, chest pocket (with pointed button-down flap), front placket, and button cuffs
• Brown corduroy flat-front trousers with belt loops, slanted front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Medium-brown leather belt with large gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Tan leather cowboy boots with decorative-stitched brown calf-high shafts
• Silver tribal ring
• Gold watch with round case, gold dial, and gold expanding bracelet
• Sterling silver curb-chain ID bracelet
• Gold necklace

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Katie, it was never uncomplicated.

The post The Way We Were: Robert Redford’s Navy CPO Shirt appeared first on BAMF Style.

Alain Delon in La Piscine (1969)

Vitals

Alain Delon as Jean-Paul Leroy, moody ad agency writer

French Riviera, Summer 1968

Film: The Swimming Pool
(French title: La Piscine)
Release Date: January 3, 1969
Director: Jacques Deray
Costume Designer: André Courrèges

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy birthday to French screen and style icon Alain Delon, born November 8, 1935. One of Delon’s most popular films is the steamy 1969 thriller La Piscine, which reunited him on screen with former partner Romy Schneider.

La Piscine (released in English as The Swimming Pool) centers around the dangerous passion and possessiveness between four people spending their summer vacations at the same Côte d’Azur villa. Though their real-life relationship had been over for years, Delon and Schneider portray the romantically involved Jean-Paul and Marianne, currently struggling through their own tension when Marianne’s ex, the gregarious Harry (Maurice Ronet) arrives with his 18-year-old daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin).

A recovering alcoholic, Jean-Paul doesn’t appreciate Harry’s taunts or temptations, though he arguably gives in to the latter during a day spent in solitude by the sea with Penelope. Jean-Paul and Penelope return from the beach in time for a Chinese dinner prepared by Harry and Marianne. The detached Pen goes to bed early, followed shortly by the shifty Harry telling Marianne he’ll be leaving the next day on his way out the door.

Jean-Paul, Marianne, and Harry during a tense dinner.

Once they’re alone, Marianne tells Jean-Paul that he’s “completely free,” elaborating that he can go upstairs—presumably to Pen’s bed—and that, as a Pisces sun with Aquarius rising, “you were born to be loved, but you don’t realize it.” (In real life, Delon was a Scorpio—a sign that would be more prominent to his character four years later in the 1973 action thriller Scorpio, starring opposite fellow Scorpio Burt Lancaster.)

As Jean-Paul drinks in solitude later that night, a drunk and distressed Harry crashes his Maserati through the gate and needles Jean-Paul as a “pathetic bastard” for his drinking and flirtation with Penelope. Harry’s insults culminate in him taking a clumsy swing at Jean-Paul that lands him in the pool. Darkened by the events of the evening, Jean-Paul sabotages Harry’s attempts to get out of the pool and even pushes Harry’s head under the water, drowning him and deepening Maurice Ronet’s 0-2 score when it comes to Alain Delon and secluded water scenes.

What’d He Wear?

Jean-Paul sits down for dinner in an ivory open-knitted sweater, its loose fit making him look especially relaxed when compared to Harry’s white voile shirt clinging to his midsection. The sweater shows signs of being a much-worn staple from Jean-Paul’s wardrobe, with its occasional pilling and fraying. The round crew-neck is edged with an olive band that matches the olive rings placed about a half-inch from the edges of the cuffs and waist hem.

Crafted with stitches spaced far enough apart to reveal the layer (or lack thereof) beneath it, the open-knit design allows airflow and breathability that make it a comfortable layer for evenings in the otherwise warm atmosphere of, say, summer in the French Riviera. Depending on the knitting patterns and yarns used, open-knit sweaters can range from delicate and lacy to chunky and rustic—the latter looking insouciant and masculine as modeled by Delon’s Jean-Paul.

Jean-Paul smartly layers the bulky sweater over a fitted black T-shirt, its wide-ribbed fabric clinging tightly to Delon’s frame and thus not competing with the sweater’s heft. The shirt has short “muscle” sleeves that just cover Delon’s shoulders and a tall crew-neck opening that stands above the sweater’s neck.

He tucks the T-shirt into his regular blue denim Lee 101 Rider jeans, identifiably by the “lazy S” stitch across the back pockets and the yellow-lettered black logo tag stitched along the top of the back-right pocket. Though the Kansas-based Lee had introduced their 101-branded 9-oz. denim “Cowboy Waist Overalls” in the mid-1920s, it wasn’t until two decades later in 1946 when they modernized these as the five-pocket 101 Rider style—with its signature “lazy S”—as worn by scores of style icons through the decades to follow, including Alain Delon in La Piscine.

Jean-Paul holds up the jeans with his usual wide and well-worn black leather belt, which closes through a tall brass double-prong buckle with matching brass eyelets.

Whether wearing denim or swim trunks, Jean-Paul’s usual shoes around the villa are black leather jute-soled espadrilles—always appropriately worn without socks. Though uppers can be made in a range of fabrics from cotton to leather, the rope-like jute outsoles are the defining characteristic of these classic, lightweight summer shoes.

Jean-Paul wears a handsome stainless steel watch with a round silver dial on a steel five-piece link bracelet.

A watch enthusiast in real life, Delon had amassed at least one hundred luxury watches from Breitling, Cartier, Rolex, and more prestigious brands over the course of his career, eventually even releasing a collection branded with his own name. On screen, he wore two different Baume & Mercier watches (in Le Samouraï and Big Guns) and an Audemars-Piguet (in Comme un boomerang), though I’m not certain what brand we’re seeing in La Piscine, which was released during this same timeframe.

For what it’s worth, he does explain to Inspector Lévêque (Paul Crauchet) that it’s waterproof, which would surely have been reassuring after he soaks it while holding Harry underwater.

What to Imbibe

Though he’d given up drinking, the circumstances of the evening—and their holiday as aw hole—send Jean-Paul back to the bottle as he drowns his sorrows in Johnnie Walker Red Label. He drinks dram after dram, poured neat into a highball glass and not letting one empty bottle stop him from cracking open another.

Made from a blend of young and mature whiskies, Red Label is considered Johnnie Walker’s entry-level Scotch, often popular for mixing in cocktails or highballs, though Jean-Paul needs it straight.

How to Get the Look

Alain Delon in La Piscine (1969)

A sweater in the summer? In the ’69 scorcher La Piscine, Alain Delon models how to effectively stay cozy while avoiding overheating by layering his light open-knit sweater with typical warm-weather gear like a T-shirt, espadrilles, and jeans.

• Ivory open-knit long-sleeved sweater with olive-banded crew-neck, cuffs, and hem
• Black wide-ribbed crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirt
• Blue denim Lee 101 Rider five-pocket jeans
• Wide black leather belt with brass double-prong buckle and grommets
• Black leather jute-soled espadrilles
• Steel wristwatch with round silver dial on steel bracelet

The post La Piscine: Alain Delon’s Ivory Open-Knit Sweater and Lee Jeans appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ethan Hawke as Jesse in Before Sunset (2004)

Vitals

Ethan Hawke as Jesse Wallace, bestselling author

Paris, Summer 2003

Film: Before Sunset
Release Date: July 2, 2004
Director: Richard Linklater
Costume Designer: Thierry Delettre

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Continuing the romantic themes after Valentine’s Day, today’s post reviews Ethan Hawke’s style in Before Sunset, Richard Linklater’s 2004 follow-up to Before Sunrise (1995) that premiered at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival (BIFF) 20 years ago this week on February 10, 2004.

Before Sunset reteamed Hawke with Julie Delpy as Jesse and Céline, set nearly a decade after the two had spent an evening wandering Vienna, planning to meet again in six months. We learn in Before Sunset that only Jesse had kept the appointment as Céline was dealing with her grandmother’s death.

In the nine years since their last meeting, Jesse has become a popular author due to his bestselling novel based on their brief encounter. The book tour brings him to Paris, where he reunites with Céline and admits that “I remember that night better than I do entire years.” Echoing their first meeting, the two spend their limited time together exploring yet another European city, discussing life and debating love from perspectives that have evolved a decade since their last encounter.

After Hawke and Delpy had contributed many of their ideas and personality into Linklater and Kim Krizian’s screenplay for Before Sunrise, they more officially collaborated with Linklater on the script for Before Sunset, even incorporating elements from their own lives into the story, resulting in an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. (Although the story was original, Academy rules inform that all sequels are considered “adapted” works.) Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy would complete the trilogy with Before Midnight (2013), set and released another nine years later.

What’d He Wear?

A decade after Before Sunrise, Jesse has matured from the leather jacket, jeans, and Chucks that were appropriate for a young American tourist whose style was rooted in ’90s grunge. Now a successful author in his 30s, Jesse dresses for this leg of the book tour in a suit and open-necked shirt—both styled with western flair that retains his youthful spirit and signals his Texan background.

Jesse’s dark-gray suit is made from a fabric more prone to wrinkling than the traditional business worsted, possibly cotton or a cotton blend that would have been cool-wearing during the extremely hot temperatures in Paris during the 15-day filming timeline in the summer of 2003.

The single-breasted jacket is uniquely detailed with straight yokes across the shoulders, no breast pocket, and welted hip pockets—rather than the traditional jetted or flapped pockets. The notch lapels end high over a three-button front, which remained trendy on men’s tailored jackets through the mid-2000s. The jacket has no rear or side vents, and the sleeves are finished with three vestigial buttons on each cuff.

Jesse wears a cream-colored western-style snap-front shirt with a small print of floral bouquets. The long-sleeved shirt has a point collar, pointed yokes over the front and back of his shoulders, and a snap-up front placket. The two chest pockets are each covered with a pointed flap that closes with a single snap, and the sleeves have triple-snap cuffs.

The suit’s matching flat-front trousers have belt loops, which go unused. The curved front pockets are similar to those found on jeans—continuing the similarities to western sportswear—but the seat features traditional button-through jetted pockets. The trousers have a comfortably full fit through the legs down to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Jesse wears black suede plain-toe desert boots, styled with two-eyelet derby-style lacing and black crepe rubber soles—a defining feature that characterizes these specifically as desert boots rather than just suede chukka boots. He wears them with black or dark charcoal-gray socks that harmonize with his footwear and trousers.

Before Sunset reveals that Jesse has since married, with the gold wedding band on his left ring finger signaling his less-than-ideal union. He also wears a vintage-looking yellow-gold watch on his left wrist, detailed with a gold dial under tarnished crystal and secured to a black scaled leather strap.

Special Shoutout to…

Julie Delpy’s dad, actor and filmmaker Albert Delpy, who makes a brief cameo as a summertime Santa grilling outside Céline’s apartment building. His pink-on-white floral-printed shirt open over a gray tank top with baggy rust-colored linen shorts and brown leather espadrilles adheres a little more closely to how I look during the summer months than I typically care to admit.

From the expression and pipe to the insouciance of his comfortable summer style, I’m in complete awe of this man.

How to Get the Look

Ethan Hawke as Jesse in Before Sunset (2004)

• Dark-gray cotton-blend sport suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, straight shoulder yokes, straight welted hip pockets, vestigial 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Flat-front trousers with belt loops, curved front pockets, button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Cream bouquet-print western shirt with point collar, pointed shoulder yokes, snap-up front placket, two chest pockets with single-snap pointed flaps, and triple-snap cuffs
• Black suede plain-toe 2-eyelet desert boots
• Black socks
• Gold wedding band
• Gold vintage wristwatch with round gold dial on black scaled leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, the second installment in Richard Linklater’s excellent “Before” Trilogy.

The Quote

It’s okay to want things as long as you don’t get pissed off when you don’t get ’em. Life’s hard, it’s supposed to be. If we didn’t suffer, we wouldn’t learn a thing.

The post Ethan Hawke in Before Sunset appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ryan O’Neal in Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987)

Vitals

Ryan O’Neal as Tim Madden, ex-convict and aspiring writer prone to blackouts

Cape Cod, Fall 1986

Film: Tough Guys Don’t Dance
Release Date: September 18, 1987
Director: Norman Mailer
Costume Designer: Michael Kaplan

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God, oh man! Oh God…!

While some recognize Ryan O’Neal from 1970s classics like Love Story, Paper Moon, and Barry Lyndon and others know him for his supporting role on Bones, the above poetry has immortalized the actor’s performance from the baffling 1987 neo-noir Tough Guys Don’t Dance, adapted and directed by Norman Mailer from his own novel of the same name.

Today is the first anniversary of O’Neal’s April 20, 1941 birthday since his death in December 2023 at the age of 82. After appearing in more than 500 episodes of the 1960s soap opera Payton Place—and earning a place in the menswear pantheon for his character Rodney Harrington’s enduring association with the Baracuta G9-style golf jacket—O’Neal became one of the biggest stars of the ’70s following his Academy Award-nominated performance in Love Story opposite Ali MacGraw. His screen credits throughout the decade included the screwball comedy What’s Up, Doc?, the ’30s-set road dramedy Paper Moon co-starring his own real-life Tatum O’Neal, Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed epic Barry Lyndon, the star-studded war film A Bridge Too Far, and Walter Hill’s sublime thriller The Driver.

As details of his volatile personal life dominated headlines more than reviews for his movies, O’Neal’s career followed a less desirable path in the ’80s as demonstrated by his appearance in Tough Guys Don’t Dance, Mailer’s attempt at a hardboiled neo-noir that received a well-deserved seven Golden Raspberry Award nominations, with Mailer cinching the Razzie Award for Worst Director.

In addition to its needlessly confusing composition of flashbacks-within-flashbacks, Tough Guys Don’t Dance became instantly notorious for the overwrought delivery of laughably scripted dialogue, particularly O’Neal’s own “oh God, oh man” moment that the actor himself pleaded with Mailer to remove, fearing it showcased his shortcomings as an actor… though audiences need look no further than the likes Barry Lyndon to see that O’Neal could truly shine under proper direction. Of course, Mailer was no Kubrick and overrode the actor’s objections by leaving the line in place, complete with its dizzying camerawork and Angelo Badalamenti’s melodramatic score.

While that’s the sort of decision that deserves Razzies, perhaps Mailer anticipated that this choice would become an ultimately pyrrhic victory as the scene propelled the movie to memefied immortality.

I will do my best to concisely describe the plot of Tough Guys Don’t Dance, but to do so in a way that isn’t confusing almost does the movie a disservice.

O’Neal plays Tim Madden, an aspiring writer who drinks more than he writes, resulting in frequent flashbacks to the poor decisions he made when he was a drug-dealing bartender running afoul of the law. Perhaps the poorest of these decisions was impulsively tanking his relationship with Madeleine (Isabella Rossellini) by proposing a night of wife-swapping with two swinging strangers—an evangelist known as “Big Stoop” (Penn Jillette!) and his dramatically Southern-accented wife Patty Lareine (Debra Sandlund)—which, as wife-swapping is wont to do, results in Tim crashing their car. It turns out that Madeleine was pregnant and loses her baby, so they do cocaine in the hospital. Sure!

After a stint in prison, Tim ends up in the picturesque Provincetown, Massachusetts, married to Patty Lareine, though that union is quickly doomed. Patty Lareine—that’s her full first name, don’t wear it out—leaves Tim, so he starts drinking for nearly a month. On the 24th day, he stops drinking at home and goes drinking at the Widow’s Walk tavern, where he meets the melodramatic ex-porn star Jessica Pond (Frances Fisher) and her stodgy husband Lonnie (R. Patrick Sullivan), who seems kinda eager but kinda angry about Tim and Jessica cuckolding him in the parking lot.

Oh God, oh man, this synopsis is growing longer than I anticipated. Anyway, the heads literally start rolling with P-town’s sneering new police chief, Alvin Luther Regency (Wings Hauser), pointing an accusatory finger at Tim… whose penchant for blackouts leaves him unable to defend himself. Matters are complicated when Tim reconnects with Madeleine, now married to the abusive Captain Regency whose primary marital value seems to be his ability to “make out[sic] five times a night… that’s why I call him Mr. Five!” as she insists to Tim before handing him the damning letter that leads to O’Neal’s even more damning response.

This is starting to make me mad, so I’ll wrap it up. Another of Patty Lareine’s ex-husbands—and Tim’s effete boyhood buddy—Wardley Meeks III (John Bedford Lloyd) also involves himself, and Tim finds help from his gruff father Dougy (Lawrence Tierney), who foregoes his cancer treatments to drink with his son. Lonnie’s closeted homosexuality and Wardley’s effete mannerisms reaffirm Will Menaker’s Letterboxd review that Mailer was essentially making “a film about what it means to be a man: knowing that everyone but you and your dad are gay.”

Indeed, from vocalizing the film’s title when recounting a dream to offering Tim aberrant degrees of paternal assistance (“I just deep-sixed two heads”), only the true noir veteran Tierney seems game to deliver Mailer’s dialogue on any degree short of laughable, though that just may be because even Mailer was too intimidated by the famously frightening actor to saddle him with his own “oh God, oh man” travesty.

What’d He Wear?

Tough Guys Don’t Dance is neither Ryan O’Neal’s best nor his most stylish movie, but I’ve already written extensively about Love Story, Paper Moon, and The Driver, so—in the spirit of Mailer’s cast—let’s just go all-out on embracing what we have to work with.

Costume designer Michael Kaplan dresses O’Neal in a few interesting sport jackets and sweaters over the course of Tough Guys Don’t Dance, but Tim Madden’s most frequent outfit through his deadly bender consists of a blue denim trucker jacket, black jeans, Nike sneakers, and a rotation of plain crew-neck shirts.

Tim’s blue medium-wash denim trucker jacket appears to be as distressed as he is, indicated by the abundance of tears and frays along the edges. (Indeed, the jacket is a brief casualty of the film’s chaotic violence as Tim finds it doused in blood in the front seat of his Jeep, though he’s able to wash it out well enough to continue wearing it through the rest of the movie.)

The jacket resembles the late model Levi’s “Type III” trucker jackets, right down to the side pockets that were added to the Type III in 1984, though the cut, buttons, and lack of a red tab signify that this is definitely not a Levi’s product. The jacket fastens up the front with six crested nickel rivet buttons, matching those on the cuffs, the two-button waist tabs on each side of the hem, and closing the chest pocket flaps. The jacket follows the classic Levi’s design with the “V”-shaped stitching that begin at the horizontal chest yoke and taper down over each front panel to the waistband, with the hand pocket openings set-in behind each “V”.

When he goes drinking at the Widow’s Walk, Tim layers two long-sleeved crew-neck pullover shirts under his jean jacket that he would also each wear on their own at various points in Tough Guys Don’t Dance. The outer shirt is a dark-gray mid-weight cotton sweatshirt with a narrowly ribbed and reinforced crew-neck. Under that, he wears a lighter-weight plain white cotton long-sleeved T-shirt.

Tim later wears a light heather-gray cotton or cotton/polyester crew-neck sweatshirt with the raglan sleeves cut off high on the forearms to convert it to a very short-sleeved shirt.

Tim’s slightly faded black denim jeans are a staple of his wardrobe, worn with everything from his tweed sports coat to a zip-up hoodie, as well as this trucker jacket. The jeans follow the traditional five-pocket design with two patch-style back pockets and two curved front pockets with the watch/coin pocket inset on the right, though they lack any of the clear branded signifiers of the “big three” (Lee, Levi’s, Wrangler) or any other ’80s outfitter.

Tim works his drunken charm while meeting Jessica and Lonnie in the Widow’s Walk.

Like his jeans, Tim almost always wears his beige Nike Equinox sneakers, a running shoe model introduced in 1984 and designed for comfortable stability with Air-Wedge midsoles, black rubber “center-of-pressure” Waffle outsoles, and external heel counter support. The beige suede-like synthetic uppers have a Duramesh-covered toe section and are laced through eight alternately staggered sets of eyelets. The brick-red leather “swoosh” logos along each side run continuously up to the “Nike Air”-branded upper heel counters, matching the brick-red and gray stacked support system along the heels of the white wedge midsoles.

Befitting the athletic association with these trainers, Tim wears plain white ribbed cotton-blend crew socks.

Tim removes one of his Nikes and socks to bathe his foot while his father Dougy was out deep-sixing some heads.

As the narrative progresses later into November and the weather grows chillier on the Cape, Tim pulls a voluminous dark-gray nylon puffer coat over his denim jacket as a more insulated outer layer. This blouson-style jacket is elasticized around the waist hem and cuffs with a horizontal yoke straight across the upper back.

The straight-zip extends up the front through the funnel-neck, which lays flat like a collar when unzipped. The front zip is covered up to the neck by an extended storm fly that closes with a single silver-toned snap at the top and a pair of silver-toned snaps at the waist. This jacket has two patch-style hand pockets, each with a vertical opening.

What to Imbibe

Tough guys may not dance in Norman Mailer’s P-town, but they certainly drink, with “bourbon, neat” being Tim’s preference—though he hardly discriminates, slugging back beer and brandy on occasion as well. During one particularly memorable exchange, Provincetown’s sinister new police chief Captain Regency produces a bottle of Wild Turkey 101-proof bourbon for he and Tim… before also shocking Tim by burning a joint.

Happy 4/20 from Provincetown Police Department Captain Regency.

The Gun

Tim ends up with the small silenced .22-caliber pistol that started in possession of Lonnie Pangborn (R. Patrick Sullivan), before it was used by Jessica Pond (Frances Fisher) to kill him… then by Patty Lareine (Debra Sandlund) to kill her… and finally used by Wardley Meeks III (John Bedford Lloyd) to hold Tim captive before turning the piece on himself.

The pistol appears to be a Beretta 950, ornately detailed with gold inlay, gold controls, and a gold hammer contrasting against the blued frame and white plastic grips. Beretta launched this reliable series of micro-compact pocket pistols in 1952, available in both .25 ACP (“Jetfire”) and .22 Short (“Minx”); given the dialogue describing this as “a .22,” we can assume it’s meant to be the 950 Minx.

Tim shows his father the silenced Beretta .22 he took from Wardley.

Beretta crafted the blowback-operated, single-action 950 series with a carbon steel slide and barrel, and the aluminum alloy frame reduces the weight to approximately 280 grams (or 9.9 ounces) when unloaded. Of course, the firearms technology of the era meant sacrificing power for this level of concealment as .25 ACP and .22 Short are hardly considered man-stoppers; the Minx fed from six-round magazines of .22 Short while the Jetfire took magazines with eight rounds of .25 ACP.

Measuring 4.7 inches long overall, with a barrel length just over two inches, these “mouse guns” were Beretta’s first pistols to feature a tip-up barrel, meaning the barrel could be pivoted upward for a user to load a round directly into the breech rather than racking the slide. The first series of 950 and 950B pistols lacked any external safeties, while the 950SB series produced after 1968 feature an external thumb-operated safety lever on the left side of the frame.

How to Get the Look

Ryan O’Neal in Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987)

Oh God, oh man, Tim’s wardrobe may be the most unimpeachable aspect of Tough Guys Don’t Dance (alongside the stunning views of Cape Cod), with pieces like his denim jacket, plain crew-neck tees, black jeans, and Nike trainers transcending the ’80s setting as hardy casual gear that can still be effectively layered today.

• Blue distressed denim trucker jacket with six crested nickel rivet buttons, two chest pockets (with button-down flaps), straight side pockets, single-button cuffs, and two-button waist tabs
• Dark-gray nylon blouson-style puffer coat with straight front-zip and snap-closed storm fly, funnel-neck, patch-style hand pockets with vertical openings, and elasticized cuffs and hem
• Gray crew-neck sweatshirt
• White cotton crew-neck long-sleeve T-shirt
• Black denim jeans
• Beige sueded synthetic Nike Equinox sneakers with brick-red “swoosh” logos and heel counters, white Air-Wedge midsoles with brick-red and gray heel counter supports, and black Waffle rubber outsoles
• White ribbed cotton-blend athletic crew socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, I guess.

The Quote

Your knife… is in… my dog.

The post Tough Guys Don’t Dance: Ryan O’Neal in Denim appeared first on BAMF Style.

Alain Delon in La Piscine (1969)

Vitals

Alain Delon as Jean-Paul Leroy, moody ad agency writer

French Riviera, Summer 1968

Film: The Swimming Pool
(French title: La Piscine)
Release Date: January 31, 1969
Director: Jacques Deray
Costume Designer: André Courrèges

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

French screen icon Alain Delon died yesterday on August 18, 2024. Today’s post pays tribute to the actor’s cinematic legacy by returning to La Piscine, Jacques Deray’s stylish psychological thriller set at a Saint-Tropez villa where a couple spends an increasingly uncomfortable summer holiday.

La Piscine reunited former real-life lovers Alain Delon and Romy Schneider as the vacationing writer Jean-Paul and his girlfriend Marianne, who welcome Marianne’s past paramour Harry (Maurice Ronet) and his 18-year-old daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin). As is wont to happen among a group so attractive, dissatisfied, and French, flirtatious dynamics emerge among the quartet as Marianne drifts back to the hard-drinking Harry while Jean-Paul focuses his attention on the young Penelope. 

After the women retire to bed one night, a drunken Harry confronts Jean-Paul about his advances toward Penelope and takes a swing at him, landing him in the eponymous swimming pool. Initially refusing to help him out, Jean-Paul seizes upon the opportunity and actively keeps Harry’s head below water until he drowns, then stages the scene to look like a drowning accident. Following Harry’s sparsely attended funeral, Inspector Lévêque (Paul Crauchet) returns from Marseilles as he continues investigating the death and confides his suspicions to Marianne.

Jane Birkin’s death last summer left Delon as the sole surviving cast member of La Piscine until yesterday when it was reported that the 88-year-old actor died at his home in Douchy, surrounded by family.

What’d He Wear?

La Piscine is known for its sun-bleached imagery of a scantily clad Delon, Schneider, and Birkin lounging in swimwear designed by André Courrèges, but Harry’s funeral provides an opportunity for the dapper Delon to appear well-tailored in a suit woven from a fawn-and-cream herringbone wool that presents an overall taupe finish.

Though not overly characteristic of the style, Delon’s three-button suit jacket reflects contemporary hallmarks of traditional Italian tailoring, including the curved “barchetta”-style welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, and ventless back. The shirred spalla camicia sleeveheads are specifically Neapolitan, though Delon’s jacket pairs them with more anomalously straight, padded shoulders. This adds an atypical degree of roping that Mr. Cavaliere describes as “structured spalla camicia”. The sleeves are finished with three-button cuffs.

Marianne and Jean-Paul share a pensive—and stylish—moment after Harry’s funeral.

The trousers reflect the lower rise and single reverse-facing pleats that were common to Italian tailoring, with a tailored self-supporting waistband that didn’t require belt or braces. Styled with side pockets, the trousers are gently tapered through the legs down to the bottoms, finished with turn-ups (cuffs).

Jean-Paul’s black leather slip-on shoes are each detailed with a self-strap over the instep that closes on the outside through a small, leather-covered buckle. Unlike monk shoes, this buckled strap appears more ornamental than functional. He wears these shoes with black socks.

Jean-Paul wears a pale ice-blue voile shirt, patterned with tonal satin self-stripes and detailed with a narrow spread collar, plain button-up front, and button cuffs. In Dressing the Man, Alan Flusser defines voile as “woven from fine hard twisted yarns with reverse twist warp threads,” resulting in a sheer fabric that shows Delon’s skin through the shirt—as well as his low-hanging silver chain-link necklace.

His appropriately funereal black tie is made from a matte cloth and knotted in a narrow four-in-hand.

French opticians Roger Pouilloux and Joseh Hatchiguian collaborated with Olympic gold medal skier Jean Vuarnet to launch the Vuarnet brand in 1961, using the sportsman’s name to market sunglasses with the innovative Skilynx lenses they had crafted four years prior. By the end of the decade, the brand’s cultural prestige grew when Delon sported his personal black nylon-framed Vuarnet 06 sunglasses with everything from his suits to swimwear in La Piscine.

This cat-eyed style has remained a Vuarnet staple, rebranded the Legend 06 in tribute to its venerated status as favored by style icons from Delon to Daniel Craig’s characterization of James Bond, as worn in his final 007 movie No Time to Die.

Jean-Paul explains to Inspector Lévêque that his waterproof wristwatch allows him to swim with it on, unlike Harry’s gold watch. During the questioning, Jean-Paul wears the stainless steel timepiece in question over the left cuff of his shirt, a practice associated with “the Rake of the Riviera” Gianni Agnelli.

He wears this same watch with its silver-ringed off-white dial and steel five-piece bracelet throughout La Piscine, though it occasionally resembles a contemporary Omega Seamaster or—as suggested by a Redditor—a Universal Genève Polerouter.

As if to punctuate to Lévêque that he is able to swim with his watch on because he wears a waterproof model, Jean-Paul brashly keeps his wristwatch strapped over his left shirt cuff in the style of Gianni Agnelli.

Alain Delon was a watch enthusiast in real-life, with a personal collection of more than one hundred luxury watches including the likes of Blancpain, Breitling, Bulgari, Cartier, and Rolex, while he prominently sported his own Audemars Piguet, at least two different Baume & Mercier watches (in Le Samouraï and Big Guns), and an Endicar Ultra Dive (in Les Aventuriers) on screen.

How to Get the Look

Alain Delon and Romy Schneider on the set of La Piscine with her 2-year-old son David.

Jean-Paul elevates an otherwise conservative herringbone suit and black tie with fashionable sunglasses, snappy strap-detailed shoes, and his watch nattily worn à la “L’Avvocato” over his shirt cuff—rakish dashes of style that many could attempt but few aside of Alain Delon could effectively accomplish all together.

• Taupe herringbone wool Italian-tailored suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, curved “barchetta”-style welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Flat-front trousers with beltless waistband, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale ice-blue self-striped voile shirt with narrow spread collar, plain front, and button cuffs
• Matte-black tie
• Black leather plain-toe self-strap slip-on shoes
• Black socks
• Vuarnet 06 (VL000600017184) sunglasses with black nylon frames and brown Skilynx lenses
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round silver-ringed off-white dial on steel five-piece bracelet

The post La Piscine: Alain Delon’s Herringbone Suit for a Funeral appeared first on BAMF Style.

Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins in The Third Man (1949)

Vitals

Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, moderately successful writer

Vienna, Fall/Winter 1948

Film: The Third Man
Release Date: September 1, 1949
Director: Carol Reed
Wardrobe Credit: Ivy Baker

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I’m lurking in the shadows of moody, war-torn Vienna today to kick off #Noirvember with The Third Man, one of my favorite films noir. Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, The Third Man was directed by Carol Reed from a screenplay by Graham Greene.

American pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) travels to the British sector of Allied-occupied Vienna to accept a job working for his old pal Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to learn upon his arrival that “the best friend he ever had” is reported dead and buried after an automobile accident on his street. (“Is that what you say to people after death? ‘Goodness, that’s awkward’,” Holly responds to a new acquaintance’s platitudinous condolences.)

As a mostly penniless writer of “cheap novelettes”, Holly has little else to do but remain in Vienna and try to discover what happened to Harry, whom he soon learns from Royal Military Police officer Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) was “about the worst racketeer to ever make a living in this city.” Despite a contentious relationship with the major, Holly discovers he has a fan in his assistant, Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), who apologizes for having to subdue the writer and assures him that he’s read a few of his Western novels after helping him back to his feet. His personal investigation plunges him into the duplicitous underworld of the Austrian black market with characters ranging from Harry’s shady colleagues to his refugee girlfriend Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli).

With its iconic score by zither player Anton Karas, Welles’ memorable performance with his “cuckoo clock” monologue, and Academy Award-winning black-and-white cinematography by Robert Krasker, The Third Man remains not just one of the most acclaimed examples of classic film noir but also considered one of the greatest movies of all time.

What’d He Wear?

Lacking the resources to buy or change clothes, Holly Martins spends the entirety of The Third Man dressed in the same wardrobe of a tweed suit, tweed coat, sweater vest, and tie. The rustic charm of Holly’s lived-in tweeds contrasts his more sensitive nature against the smooth shades of black worn by his villainous friend Harry Lime.

While both men dress in hats and coats over suits and ties, Holly looks more homespun and humble in his tweeds and knitwear than Harry in his darker layers.

Despite suggestions that he’s a man of limited means, Holly’s mid-colored tweed suit is handsomely tailored and well-maintained. Tweed has sporting origins and often lends itself to sporty tailoring, but Holly’s suit is styled like a conventional lounge suit.

The single-breasted jacket has fashionably large notch lapels that taper cleanly to the center button of his 3/2-roll front. The shoulders are padded but hardly to the extended of the dramatic “Bold Look” associated with late 1940s American menswear. The ventless jacket has four-button cuffs, a welted breast pocket, and straight flapped hip pockets. As Holly wears his suit jacket and sweater in every scene, we see little of these reverse-pleated trousers aside from their side pockets and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Under his suit, Holly wears a light-colored pullover sweater made from a soft wool, possibly cashmere. The sweater’s shallow V-neck frames the spread collar of his white cotton shirt and his woolen tie, woven from alternating light and dark threads. The sweater and tie especially create a textured harmony with the coarse tweed of his suit and overcoat.

Holly’s dark herringbone tweed overcoat has notch lapels with swelled edges, gently rolling over the top of his three buttons for a 3/2.5-roll, though he occasionally wears all three buttons fastened and turns up his lapels, revealing the dark felt under-collar and an additional throat-latch button on the right side which connects to the buttonhole at the edge of his left lapel. The knee-length coat has a long single vent, side pockets with gently slanted welt entries, and raglan sleeves finished with turnback cuffs.

Following the conventions of the era, Holly often wears a dark felt fedora, self-edged and detailed with a dark, wide grosgrain band.

Continuity errors reflect both monk shoes and cap-toe oxfords on Joseph Cotten’s feet, though the single-strap monks seem to intended as Holly’s canonical footwear. In addition to being more prominently seen in shots that capture Holly’s feet, monk shoes nicely align with the dressed-down informality of his knitwear and tweeds. Despite the film’s black-and-white photography, it’s evident that Holly’s monk shoes have brown leather uppers.

Holly’s socks are dark silk. On his left wrist, he wears a wristwatch on a brown leather strap.

The Gun

Holly’s fan, Sergeant Paine, carries a Webley .38 Mk IV Pocket Model revolver, which Holly takes during the climactic search for Harry Lime in the sewers beneath Vienna. Nearly a quarter century after British arms manufacturer Webley & Scott introduced the .455 Mk IV before the turn of the century, the company evolved the design in the 1920s for a smaller caliber, specifically the .38 S&W cartridge—designated “.38/200″ in British service.

The .38-caliber model retained the same break-top operation and double-action trigger as the .455 design, albeit scaled down in size and mass. The standard service revolver was fitted with a five-inch barrel, though Webley & Scott also manufactured a 4″-barreled model (as carried by Harry) and a 3”-barreled “Pocket Model” which finds its way from Paine to Holly Martins. The .38 Mk IV remained in British military and police service through World War II and well into the 1960s.

Holly pulls the Webley revolver from Sergeant Paine’s hand.

What to Imbibe

After Harry’s funeral, Major Calloway drinks with Holly at a local tavern, pouring him shots of Hennessy cognac. One of the best-known and best-selling cognac houses in the world, the Hennessy cognac distillery was founded in 1865 by Irish Jacobite military officer Richard Hennessy, who had retired to the Cognac region of France after serving in Louis XV’s army. Hennessy began exporting his brandies to England, his native Ireland, and the United States, and his distillery became the world’s leading brandy exporter by the 1840s. In addition to this sales prominence, Hennessy has also innovated cognac designations as the first house to use star ratings as the V.S.O.P. and XO gradings.

Major Calloway—not Callahan; he’s British, not Irish—pours another Hennessy for an increasingly inebriated Holly.

Later at the Casanova Club with Anna, Holly orders whiskey, followed by another round of “double whiskies” with Harry’s old forger friend Popescu (Siegfried Breuer). We’re not made privy to the label poured out in the club, though Anna reveals a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label blended Scotch that she keeps in her room.

How to Get the Look

Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins in The Third Man (1949)

• Mid-to-dark tweed lounge suit:
  • Single-breasted 3/2-roll jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Reverse-pleated trousers with side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton shirt with spread collar
• Light-and-dark woven wool tie
• Light-colored cashmere woolen V-neck pullover sweater
• Dark-brown leather single-strap monk shoes
• Dark silk socks
• Dark herringbone tweed single-breasted 3/2.5-roll overcoat with swelled-edge notch lapels, raglan sleeves with turnback cuffs, slanted side pockets, and long single vent
• Dark felt self-edged fedora with dark grosgrain band
• Wristwatch on brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I’m just a hack writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls.

The post Joseph Cotten in The Third Man appeared first on BAMF Style.