Sean Connery and Lana Wood in the seventh James Bond film, Diamonds are Forever (1971), filmed and set in Las Vegas.

Vitals

Sean Connery as James Bond, British government agent

Las Vegas, Spring 1971

Film: Diamonds are Forever
Release Date: December 17, 1971
Director: Guy Hamilton
Wardrobe Master: Ray Beck
Tailor: Anthony Sinclair

Background

It’s Friday the 13th! Considered an unlucky day by some, this summer occurrence feels like just the right time to follow James Bond as he tests his own luck in a Las Vegas casino in Diamonds are Forever, the 1971 film that convinced Sean Connery to portray the British secret agent one more time.

Luck appears to be initially on 007’s side as he wins $50,000 at craps and makes the acquaintance of the voluptuous Plenty O’Toole (Lana Wood).

Unfortunately, his luck runs out by the time he and Plenty arrive inside the doorway of his hotel room, where four black-suited thugs corner him with guns drawn and defenestrate his scantily clad “fulsome friend” directly into the Tropicana’s swimming pool.

Once he’s assured that Plenty is alive and well after the gangster’s “exceptionally fine shot” into the pool, Bond prepares for battle… but the gunmen ease out of the room. Entering his bedroom with his trusty Walther PPK drawn, he finds diamond smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) waiting for him in his bed.

Presumably, I’m the condemned man and obviously you’re the hearty breakfast, right?

Lucky for Bond, “the evening may not be a total loss after all.”

What’d He Wear?

Although it had only been a decade since the Rat Pack’s infamous Las Vegas summit that popularized their tuxedoed persona, Sean Connery’s James Bond is already a walking anachronism when he steps out onto the casino floor in his white dinner jacket. Never mind that the look is relatively timeless for an elegant warm-weather locale, the average gambler in early ’70s Sin City simply didn’t dress like Frank, Dean, or Sammy… though the latter does make a brief appearance in a scene that was ultimately deleted from the final film.

“They ain’t never gonna get a cake big enough to put him on top of,” jokes Sammy Davis Jr. upon seeing Connery in his off-white dinner jacket as Bond.

Though it lacks the red boutonnière, this outfit is arguably an early ’70s update of Connery’s iconic summer formal wear in Goldfinger that consisted of an off-white peak-lapel dinner jacket, white-on-white striped shirt with French cuffs, black bow tie, and midnight blue formal trousers.

Bond’s white dinner jacket for the Whyte House hotel and casino may be overdressing, but there’s no denying that he stands out among the sea of garish polyester jackets and Ban-Lon sport shirts.

The Ban-Lon boys stare on dumbfounded as 007 out-classes them all.

As described by Bond sartorial expert Matt Spaiser at The Suits of James Bond, Connery’s ivory single-breasted dinner jacket is cut like his other Anthony Sinclair tailored jackets in Diamonds are Forever with a clean chest and natural shoulders with roped sleeveheads. The self-faced peak lapels with their high gorges are a traditional and tasteful width, rolling down to a single mother-of-pearl four-hole sew-through button. The four buttons on each cuff are downsized but otherwise identical.

Timeless cut aside, the dinner jacket takes some styling cues from contemporary trends. The double vents in the back are likely about 12″ long to match his other tailored jackets in the film. The slanted hip pockets with wide flaps are an unorthodox alternative to traditional straight, jetted pockets, possibly a concession to the era as well as a tailoring technique to draw attention away from Sean Connery’s increasing midsection.

Bond reholsters his PPK, likely to avoid an accidental discharge, upon finding Tiffany in his hotel room.

Although Roger Moore would wear a double-breasted white dinner jacket just three years later in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Diamonds are Forever marks the last appearance of the classic single-breasted white dinner jacket for more than a decade until the final two films of Sir Roger’s tenure. It would then be another thirty years until 007 pulled a white dinner jacket from his closet when Daniel Craig sported his Tom Ford “Windsor” jacket in Spectre (2015).

Connery wears a white self-striped formal shirt from Turnbull & Asser with a spread collar, pleated front, and mother-of-pearl buttons down the front placket. The double (French) cuffs are fastened with a set of gold-trimmed black onyx oval links.

Bond’s black silk bow tie is a large butterfly/thistle shape, consistent with early ’70s trends. The medium width of the jacket lapels works in tandem with the bow tie to ensure that one doesn’t dwarf the other.

Bond, unimpressed with Shady Tree’s schmaltzy burlesque comedy. No wonder his reaction to the comic’s death is basically to shrug and go play craps.

Aside from his off-screen strip-down prior to his assignation with Tiffany, Sean Connery wears the dinner jacket’s single button fastened throughout the scene. However, behind-the-scenes shots of Connery on location show a little more of his midnight blue trousers with their medium rise, side pockets, and flat front.

Sean Connery on location in Las Vegas with some of the local talent. Photo by Terry O’Neill, 1971.

Bond wears no cummerbund, waistcoat, suspenders, or braces, instead likely relying on his usual “Daks top” button-tab side adjusters. His formal trousers have a black silk stripe down the side of each leg of his trousers down to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Bond ducks into Shady Tree’s dressing room and finds his most promising lead dead so he… goes and plays craps? I’m not sure much of this movie was supposed to make sense anyway, right?

Bond wears black patent leather cap-toe derby shoes and thin black silk dress socks. You can see more of Bond’s outfit, including his midnight blue formal trousers and black derbies, in this NSFW photo also by Terry O’Neill.

Not that it matters for this particular setting, but derby shoes are less formal than oxfords, which are considered to be the most acceptable lace-up with black tie.

Bond’s patent leather derby shoes shine in the dark just before they are shrouded by Plenty’s discarded dress.

A Little Nothing He’s Almost Wearing…

Once Bond finds Tiffany Case in his bed, he judges from her attitude and attire that he’ll need to strip down in order to be properly attired himself for what she has in mind.

Bond nonchalantly takes off his black tie kit, hanging the off-white dinner jacket, white shirt, and black tie on a hanger before settling into bed with Tiffany. He’s supposed to be naked, but modesty ruled the day and Sean Connery was evidently given a pair of short, beige-colored briefs intended to match his skin tone.

The condemned man prepares for his hearty breakfast. Note the low briefs, colored to match Sean Connery’s skin tone.

Terry O’Neill Gallery

Go Big or Go Home

I’ll take the full odds on the ten, 200 on the hard way, the limit on all the numbers, 250 on the eleven. Thank you very much.

“Say, you played this game before,” observes the sharp-witted Plenty O’Toole, who thought she spotted an easy mark with the obvious big spender in his out-of-place dinner jacket until Bond shocked her with his knowledge of how to properly bet on craps. His $50,000 payday, his $5,000 “tip” for her, and the way he “handles those cubes like a monkey handles coconuts” is evidently all that Plenty needs before we next see her undressing in his arms in his hotel room.

Plenty receives a well-earned $5,000 after the grueling task of merely standing next to James Bond for a few seconds.

As it turns out, Bond and Plenty did make an attempt at a date before retiring to his room for the night. One of several deleted scenes from this sequence finds the two at a restaurant, serenaded by a topless woman floating through a pool, playing the harp. A waiter has just poured Bond a glass of white wine, but the epicurean agent can’t hide his displeasure.

Bond’s snobbery hits an all-time high as he literally (or as close to “literally” as this idiom can get) turns his nose up at an inadequate white wine that he is poured during his date with Plenty O’Toole.

“Uh-uh… no good,” Bond utters. The disappointed waiter retreats with the bottle, much to Plenty’s amazement.

Plenty: Hey, I didn’t think you could really do that! I bet they charge you for it.
Bond: I was under the impression you were paying.
Plenty: Well, it was still a very classy thing to do!

Plenty laughs, but Bond responds with only a smirk.

Plenty: Hey, listen, you’re not a knight or anything like that, are you?
Bond: No, I’m afraid not. A mere commoner.
Plenty: Don’t feel bad. It doesn’t make any difference to me, I’m a Democrat!

After recognizing the topless harpist (“Hi Myrna!”), Plenty decides to end their date early so that she may thank him “properly… for being so great and everything.”

Myrna floats up behind Bond during his date with Plenty.

In short… whether it’s playing craps or tasting wines, know what you’re doing and you won’t fail to impress.

How to Get the Look

Sean Connery as James Bond in Diamonds are Forever (1971)

James Bond’s breaks from sartorial convention in this black tie ensemble would likely be more acceptable in a casual locale like Las Vegas rather than the gambling palaces of London, France, or Monaco… especially now that Sin City is the domain of elderly tourists in their wolf t-shirts and fanny packs.

• Ivory single-button dinner jacket with self-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and long double vents
• White self-striped formal shirt with spread collar, pleated front, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold-trimmed black onyx oval cuff links
• Black silk wide butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Midnight blue formal flat front trousers with side pockets, satin stripe side-braiding, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather cap-toe derby shoes
• Black thin silk dress socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I’m afraid you’ve caught me with more than my hands up.

Footnote

Interestingly, Tiffany Case and Plenty O’Toole’s rivalry for James Bond’s affections extended beyond the 007 universe as both Jill St. John and Lana Wood were romantically involved with Sean Connery during the making of Diamonds are Forever. According to IMDB, this and the mysterious drowning death of Lana’s sister Natalie Wood fueled a decades-long feud between the two actresses.

Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve (1941)

Vitals

Henry Fonda as Charles “Hopsie” Pike, brewery heir and ophidiologist

SS Southern Queen, sailing north from South America,
August 1940

Film: The Lady Eve
Release Date: February 25, 1941
Director: Preston Sturges
Costume Designer: Edith Head
Men’s Wardrobe: Richard Bachler

Background

To celebrate the birthday today of my wonderful, patient, and charming girlfriend, I’d like to highlight the elegant evening wear worn by Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve, a classic screwball comedy that I first discovered with her family.

The Lady Eve is a fun, comedic change of pace for Fonda, who had just received an Academy Award nomination the previous year for the sobering The Grapes of Wrath. As opposed to a Dust Bowl drama featuring death and despair, The Lady Eve‘s set was reportedly plenty of fun for all involved. Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, who would remain lifelong friends, rarely returned to their dressing rooms, instead opting to trade stories and script notes with Preston Sturges, who both wrote and directed the film.

Sturges, who would have celebrated his 120th birthday yesterday, had set out to write a fantastic screenplay with Stanwyck in mind for the leading role, and he did just that while in Reno waiting out a divorce from his third wife.

Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck take direction while filming the famous flirty scene in Jean’s cabin.

The film begins as ophidiologist Charles Pike returns from a year-long expedition studying reptiles (as ophidiologists do) along the Amazon. Nicknamed “Hopsie” in recognition of his family’s successful brewery (“The Ale That Won for Yale”), Pike hopes for a quiet voyage on the SS Southern Queen as he heads back to the States, but his dashing looks and reputable success have him turning the heads of every woman during dinner. Only Jean Harrington is wily enough to force the heir to reciprocate her attention… and understandably so!

A few months after Hopsie’s suspicions of Jean’s true motives ruin their chance at romance, she reappears in his life as the “Lady Eve Sidwich”, posing as a posh English socialite who pretends not to recognize her former near-paramour. The Pike family hosts a dinner party in honor of “The Lady Eve”, calling for Hopsie to don his finest formal regalia. The astounded heir first ruins his evening tailcoat and white tie kit, then his black double-breasted dinner jacket, forcing him to return to the dinner in the same off-white dinner jacket he wore during his first encounter with Jean on the Southern Queen.

“It’s the last one,” Hopsie bemoans. “If anything happens to this, I’ll have to wear a beach towel.”

…so, naturally, he finds himself directly under the falling coffee service and yet another dinner jacket bites the dust.

What’d He Wear?

More than a decade after the dinner suit, or tuxedo, was increasingly accepted as formal wear in the years following World War I, stylish gents began looking for alternatives to traditional black or midnight blue dinner jackets that would be comfortable yet fashionable in warmer climates. Enter the white dinner jacket.

It would be more accurate to describe the color of a “white” dinner jacket as off-white or ivory, providing a touch of contrast against the crisp white dress shirt beneath it. Single- and double-breasted styles were both popular during the emergence of the white dinner jacket in the 1930s, though the double-breasted style eliminated the need for its wearer to don an additional layer that would cover the waist. Thus, a double-breasted dinner jacket would have been very comfortable for Hopsie Pike’s equatorial evening at sea.

No matter how comfortable your dinner jacket may be, there’s no sartorial cure for awkwardness.

Likely constructed from a light, summer-weight wool, Hopsie’s dinner jacket has a wide self-faced shawl collar that rolls to a 4×1-button double-breasted front with mother-of-pearl sew-through buttons that match the three smaller buttons on each cuff. The relaxed formality in situations calling for white dinner jackets means the lapels are traditionally not faced in grosgrain or satin silk as found on dark dinner jacket lapels, nor are the buttons covered in silk. The ventless jacket has a welted breast pocket where Hopsie wears a white display kerchief and straight hip pockets.

Hopsie appropriately wears a black silk bow tie, and the pointed-end bow tie (also known as a “diamond tip”) nicely balances Henry Fonda’s narrower face.

Hopsie’s white formal dress shirt has a large point collar typical of the era’s fashion trends. A later scene that finds Hopsie changing into his other dinner jacket gives us a better look at the shirt, which appears to be a sheer cotton voile with the visible collar, bib, and double cuffs made from thicker marcella cotton.

The dress shirt has three small round black studs with metal trim on the front bib. The double (French) cuffs are fastened with a set of thin cylindrical links.

A year up the Amazon does nothing to prepare Hopsie Pike for a situation like this.

Suspenders (braces) with black tie kits are meant to be useful but not visible, yet the unorthodox position that Hopsie finds himself in during mid-embrace with Jean reveals his white suspenders to the audience. White leather double-hooks on the front and back connect to buttons along the inside of the trouser waistband.

The trousers themselves are the same black or midnight blue wool formal trousers that would be worn with a full dinner suit, with silk braiding down each side and plain-hemmed bottoms. In accordance with traditional black tie standards, Hopsie also wears a well-shined pair of black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes with black dress socks.

Production photo of Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda filming The Lady Eve.

As the black tie dress code was developed and standardized during the early 20th century, there was uncertainty about how a gentleman should wear his timepiece. Early practices with formal white tie stipulated that, if a man must wear a watch with his formal wear, that it be a discreetly placed pocket watch on a simple but elegant chain. However, World War I introduced both relaxed dress codes and popularity of the wristwatches that had been worn by servicemen, and men were increasingly keeping time on their wrist, whether dressed for business or dinner.

Hopsie wears a wristwatch with an elongated rectangular case on a brown leather strap. As these were the days before watchmakers like Omega invested millions to have their timepieces on James Bond’s wrist, little attention would have been paid to the exact watch model during production and it’s likely that this is Henry Fonda’s own wristwatch.

Henry Fonda as “Hopsie” Pike in The Lady Eve (1941)

How to Get the Look

Henry Fonda wears a classic example of the warm-weather white dinner jacket in The Lady Eve, perfectly styled and appropriately suitable for a summer evening at sea. The look would become iconic the following year as Humphrey Bogart dressed in an ivory dinner jacket to brood over his bourbon in Casablanca.

• Ivory wool double-breasted dinner jacket with 4-on-1 button front, shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Black wool formal trousers with black satin side stripe, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton voile formal dress shirt with long marcella point collar, marcella front bib with three black studs, marcella double/French cuffs
• Black silk pointed-end bowtie
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Rectangular wristwatch on brown leather strap
• White silk pocket kerchief

This weekend also presents your last opportunity to wear white before Labor Day… if you’re the sort of the Northern Hemisphere dweller who follows such practices.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie… and take care of your dinner jackets!

The Quote

You’re certainly a funny girl for anybody to meet who’s just been up the Amazon for a year.

Footnote

Interestingly, context clues on the checks written by her father indicate that Jean’s attempted seduction at sea seems to be set on August 28, 1940, exactly 78 years and two days ago!

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Indiscreet (1958)

Vitals

Cary Grant as Philip Adams, sophisticated playboy economist

London, Fall 1957 to Spring 1958

Film: Indiscreet
Release Date: June 26, 1958
Director: Stanley Donen
Tailor: Quintino

Background

Happy birthday to the great Cary Grant, born 115 years ago today on January 18, 1904, in Bristol, England. Born Archibald Leach before he assumed his catchier stage name, Grant’s signature screen presence blended his self-deprecating sense of humor with peerless suavity in both attitude and style. Grant’s popularity during the mid-20th century and the height of the dinner suit’s ubiquity meant the debonair actor would don a tuxedo almost as frequently as James Bond… and it’s not surprising to hear that Grant was an early contender for the role of 007, at least in the mind of the character’s creator Ian Fleming.

Between 1955 and 1962, Grant starred in seven contemporary-set films that didn’t require him to be in military uniform; of these, he sported a tuxedo in all but one (the lone exception, North by Northwest, featured the actor wearing arguably the most famous suit in movie history so there was little need for black tie.) In the middle of this impressive and stylish run of movies is Indiscreet, a Stanley Donen-directed romantic comedy that earned Grant his first of five Golden Globe nominations.

Indiscreet reunites Grant with Ingrid Bergman, with whom he had shared remarkable chemistry—and a rather famous kiss—in Hitchcock’s 1946 thriller Notorious. Bergman plays Anna Kalman, a successful London-based actress whose life has been lucky in all but love. After a string of boring men, she meets the charming, interesting, and seemingly eligible economist Philip Adams (Grant) who would be her perfect match except for one small detail… he tells her that he’s married.

Despite his confession of marriage, Anna pursues a date with Philip with the unspoken understanding that it will be the beginning of an affair. Philip arrives at her flat the following Saturday evening to pick her up before the ballet. The conversation is stilted—particularly when considering each’s intentions for the other—with topics ranging from dinner reservations to climate change before Anna is swarmed by autograph-seekers on the way to dinner at The Players Club.

Of course, their legitimately engaging conversation over dinner results in the couple so immersed in each other that they’re late for the ballet. Surrendering their tickets to a young couple, Philip and Anna find themselves aimlessly wandering the streets of London, sharing their first kiss by the Thames. By now, the affair is inevitable and it’s only a matter of time before Anna’s heart is broken by a married man who refuses to leave his wife… or is it?

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman amuse themselves with newspaper clippings on the set of Indiscreet (1958)

Months later, Philip breaks the news to Anna that his NATO job is summoning him to New York for 3-5 months. She is devastated, but luckily the two have plans for a party that evening with friends at the Royal Naval College’s annual Spring Dance at The Painted Hall, where they spent their first evening together. By the time they’re sitting down to dinner, a spiteful Anna knows the truth that Philip isn’t married and that he merely pretends to be so that he can end his various romantic entanglements before women begin talking to him about marriage.

A famous scene finds Philip obliviously mugging his way through dancing a Scottish reel, unaware that Anna is fuming mad and awfully fed up with him and his antics, though it gives the erstwhile Archie Leach an opportunity to show off the dancing expertise he learned early in his career.

Anna keeps the ruse going after dinner when Philip returns for a nightcap, torturing him—and his pride—with dreamy talks about an ex-suitor named David who has returned his attention to her. It’s nice to see Ingrid Bergman get to emotionally manipulate someone else for a change!

Philip: For an evening that started out well, this has turned into one of the most exasperating evenings of my whole life.
Anna: Your life isn’t over yet…

What’d He Wear?

Both Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman were immaculately dressed in Indiscreet, Bergman outfitted by Christian Dior while Grant was tailored by Quintino, the Beverly Hills tailor also credited with making his iconic suit in the following year’s North by Northwest.

Indiscreet showcases a parade of elegant tailoring from Grant’s business suits to a full white tie kit. The pièce de résistance of Grant’s wardrobe as Philip Adams is arguably the sharp three-piece dinner suit in dark midnight blue wool that makes several appearances during Philip’s various romantic outings with Anna.

Elegance indeed.

This tuxedo echoes his formal wear in the previous year’s An Affair to Remember, though this single-breasted dinner jacket has a traditional single-button closure rather than the link-button closure on his jacket in An Affair to Remember. The single front button and the four cuff buttons on his Indiscreet dinner jacket are all black plastic sew-through buttons rather than the silk-covered kind often found on formal wear.

Philip and Anna’s first date begins with an awkward—but stylish—elevator ride.

Grant had worn a similar dinner jacket during his last collaboration with Ingrid Bergman, Hitchcock’s 1946 spy thriller Notorious, so it’s possible that he may have just nostalgically repurposed the jacket for his reunion with her a dozen years later in Indiscreet. In addition to the details of the black plastic sew-through buttons, both dinner jackets share their cut with a full chest and straight shoulders.

Perhaps the most compelling argument that it’s the same jacket is the width of the broad, satin-faced peak lapels with their slanted gorges. These lapels would have been more fashionable at the time Notorious was filmed and set in the mid-1940s and they look somewhat—but only somewhat—out of place on a dinner suit in the late ’50s.

Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant on the set of Indiscreet (1958). The dinner suit appears to be the same, though Grant wears cap-toe oxfords rather than the opera pumps he wears in-character.

Particularly interesting when considering the jacket’s lineage, BAMF Style reader “Wolf” commented on the post about his tuxedo in An Affair to Remember that Cary Grant may have worn the Notorious dinner jacket as early as 1940 when attending the premiere of The Philadelphia Story. It seems hardly likely that Cary Grant—of all people—would wear a dinner jacket that was pushing 20 years old in one of his films, but that could be a testament to the quality of tailoring.

Would Grant have been wearing Quintino-tailored garments as early as the 1940s? Given that Indiscreet’s opening credits so proudly tout “Cary Grant’s clothes by Quintino”, the dinner suit that he wears for significant portions of the film and the majority of its promotional artwork would undoubtedly have been made by Quintino.

Cary Grant was known to favor wearing a waistcoat with his dinner suits rather than a cummerbund. Here, he sports a single-breasted waistcoat with a wide-bellied “dog ear” shawl collar, welted pockets, and three very closely spaced buttons.

White shirts are the most classic and formal option for black tie, and Grant would be the last to break a tradition like that. His white formal shirt in Indiscreet has his usual point collar that he preferred as he was self-conscious about the size of his head, consistent with Alan Flusser’s direction in Dressing the Man that “medium to long straight-point collars will narrow a wide countenance.”

The shirt has a plain marcella bib front that takes two visible diamond shirt studs, and he wears a set of round mother-of-pearl cuff links in the shirt’s double (French) cuffs.

Philip enthusiastically claps along during the Spring Dance. Anna… not quite as enthusiastic.

A large black silk butterfly-shaped bow tie harmonizes with the wide silk-faced lapels. A smaller bow tie tends to make one’s head look bigger—an issue where Grant was famously self-conscious—so it makes sense that he would opt for larger bow ties.

Philip wears double forward-pleated formal trousers that match the midnight blue wool of the dinner jacket with a thin double silk braid down each side. The waistband of the trousers is never seen as Grant never removes his dinner jacket on screen, but they like have buckle-tab side adjusters to fit around the waist. The bottoms are plain-hemmed per formalwear tradition.

Philip is none too pleased with Anna receiving late evening calls, purportedly from a rival for her affections.

Grant’s chosen footwear with his black tie ensemble is a pair of patent leather opera pumps. This shoe, considered the most formal, was increasingly rare across the 20th century as men opted for the more accessible and versatile black patent leather oxford shoe to accompany their dinner suits. “They are correct wear with evening dress, especially if you are dancing,” writes Hardy Amies in The ABC of Men’s Fashion, adding that they “have been largely, and I think, unfortunately, replaced by a light tie-shoe in patent leather.”

Decades later, Alan Flusser remarked in Dressing the Man that, “as a vestige of male court dress, the opera pump remains the sole item of men’s fashion to enter the twenty-first century pretty much as it left the nineteenth.” The pumps that Grant wears in Indiscreet are black patent leather—the most formal and correct material—with black ribbed grosgrain silk bows and red silk lining. He wears them with dress socks made of thin black silk.

Philip makes a point of his elegant sartorialism by keeping his patent leather pumps in hand while gesticulating around Anna’s room.

Philip Adams wears a gold watch with a white rectangular dial on a black leather strap, possibly the Cartier Tank that Grant wore in real life. Louis Cartier took inspiration from the Renault tanks that rolled through the Western front when designing this innovative timepiece that helped popularize wristwatches when they entered mass production after World War I. Over a century of production, these watches have been appropriately associated with some of the most elegant style icons including Clark Gable, Jacqueline Kennedy, Yves St. Laurent, Rudolph Valentino, Princess Diana, and—of course—Cary Grant.

During the awkward conversation that precedes their first date to the ballet, both Philip and Anna comment on the unseasonably muggy weather. However, the passing hours herald a chill in the November air, and Philip finds himself wearing the black wool knee-length Chesterfield that he was carrying. He buttons all three of the single-breasted coat’s buttons and even fastening a fourth button at the neck, closing the coat over his chest for additional warmth.

The weather may have decreased in temperature, but the passion between Philip and Anna increased over the course of their date.

The coat also has hand pockets, cuffed sleeves with no buttons, and a long single vent.

What to Imbibe

On their first real date, Philip and Anna both order Scotch and soda at The Players Club. One of the simplest drinks, with its ingredients limited to Scotch whisky and carbonated soda water, the Scotch highball emerged as a particular favorite of the Mauve Decade and remained in vogue through the first half of the 20th century before it was supplanted by more “interesting” drinks during the resurgence of cocktail culture in the ’50s and ’60s.

Scotch and soda carries particular significance throughout Indiscreet, as Anna had previously complained that they were only two of a dozen words spoken by her previous paramour, a banal “Greek statue” of a colonel. However, she was more than happy to mix some Johnnie Walker Red Label with soda water during her and Philip’s first evening together earlier that week, and she herself orders a Scotch and soda with him at The Players Club.

The Players Club evidently chooses not to serve highballs in traditional highball glasses.

Dinner at The Players Club is accompanied by a few bottles of Pouilly-Fuissé, a dry Mâconnais white wine. The Pouilly-Fuissé village appellation was instituted in 1936, taking in the four villages of Solutré-Pouilly, Fuissé, Vergisson, and Chaintré.

The passage of time is marked during Philip and Anna’s date as the waiter removes one bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé to replace it with another. Any oenophiles able to ID the bottle?

The night after the Spring Dance, a jaunty Philip pours out “champagne for the occasion… some for you, some for me. I’ll swizzle it with my nose.”

How to Get the Look

Cary Grant in Indiscreet (1958)

Once one has accepted the fact that it’s not very possible to match Cary Grant’s level of elegance when wearing a tuxedo, feel free to take inspiration from his sartorial wisdom. Grant’s venerated place as a style icon is no accident: he had access to fine tailoring (in this case, Quintino), he was aware of what was most specifically flattering to his physique and looks, and he respected the traditions of men’s formalwear without being afraid to make his own mark.

• Midnight blue wool single-button dinner jacket with wide silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, and 4-button cuffs
• White cotton formal shirt with point collar, plain front, and double/French cuffs
  • Diamond shirt studs
  • Round mother-of-pearl cuff links
• Black silk large butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Midnight blue wool three-button formal waistcoat with “dog ear” shawl collar, V-shaped opening, and welted pockets
• Midnight blue wool double forward-pleated formal trousers with double-striped silk side braiding, on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather opera pumps with black grosgrain bows and red silk lining
• Black silk dress socks
• Black wool single-breasted Chesterfield coat with notch lapels, three-button front, straight hip pockets, cuffed sleeves, and single vent
• Cartier Tank gold watch with white rectangular face on black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I don’t consider myself a snob, but I’m sure there are no one among my acquaintances who follow women to powder rooms!

Footnotes

A brief vignette of Philip returning to London to see Anna’s performance in her new play finds him enthusiastically clapping while dressed in his classic dinner suit. The short clip has been immortalized in GIF format and is likely more recognizable to many modern Internet users than the movie Indiscreet itself. (Though I would love to be proven wrong!)

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957)

Vitals

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans, womanizing nightclub singer

San Francisco, Spring 1957

Film: Pal Joey
Release Date: October 25, 1957
Director: George Sidney
Costume Designer: Jean Louis

Background

Joey Evans’s first night with the band finds him already complicating his romantic life, balancing his attraction to the demure singer Linda English (Kim Novak) with the vivacious ex-stripper Vera Prentice-Simpson (Rita Hayworth) when the band is hired to play a gig at Vera’s place as a fundraise for the local children’s hospital.

Speaking of which, the children’s hospital in my hometown is currently sponsoring a terrific fundraiser for sports fans. Learn more about how you can enter to win autographed gear from Steelers and Penguins and support the cancer programs at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh here!

But back to Joey, who can’t hold his tongue after sizing up the glamorous Vera…

Joey: Not a bad-looking mouse.
Ned: Yeah. Too bad you can’t afford her brand of cheese.

Sappy romantic that I am, I was inspired to draft this post in the spirit of Valentine’s Day this past week, though my work at the hospital has also informed me that February is Heart Month, an observance to raise awareness of cardiovascular diseases that kicks off with #NationalWearRedDay on the first Friday of the month.

What’d He Wear?

Red is the uniform color for Ned Galvin and his Galvinizers, from the mens’ mess jackets to Linda’s satin dress.

Per Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man: “The white mess jacket represented the first radical change in male evening wear and received such broad national acceptance that it was immediately adopted for the uniforms of bellhops and orchestra members.” The decision to dress the gents of the band in matching mess jackets was a common practice in mid-century America, though it can arguably be linked to the reduced popularity of the mess jacket as an alternative to traditional black tie due to its growing connotation implying that its wearer was among “the help”.

Joey and Linda, two galvanizing Galvinizers in red.

The red wool waist-length mess jackets worn by Joey and the boys are covered with three-color flecking in burgundy, gold, and white. The jackets are double-breasted with flat black plastic two-hole sew-through buttons in the classic six-on-two formation with a seventh button along the edge of the right side; evidently, unlike some mess jackets, this one was built with functioning buttons that could be closed, though Joey wears his open for a slightly more relaxed appearance.

A reassuring wink. Joey shows us one major benefit of mess jackets: a wearer can stick his hands in his trouser pockets without bunching up the jacket.

“While it resembled a tailcoat cut off at the waistline, the mess jacket was not flattering to many figures, particularly those that didn’t happen to resemble that of Adonis,” comments Flusser. Like the traditional mess jacket, Joey’s band uniform coat ends at the waist, gently coming to a point in the center of his back.

Befitting the semi-formal nature of mess jackets, Joey wears his with a plain white cotton shirt without the frilly lace trim or fancier pleats of the dress shirts he would later wear with more formal dinner jackets. Instead, the shirt has a plain front with mother-of-pearl sew-through buttons and double (French) cuffs fastened in place with his usual large silver-toned ridged round silver cuff links. The shirt has a large point collar where he has knotted a long, straight black silk bow tie.

Though Joey’s mess jacket was made with functional buttons to allow the wearer to close the front, he wears it open, revealing the wide black pleated silk cummerbund that elongates his waist for a considerably high rise. The cummerbund conceals the top of his black wool formal trousers, which have double reverse pleats flanking the fly, side pockets, and the usual black grosgrain silk braid down each side to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Joey, front and center.

Joey’s shoes are black patent leather oxfords, worn with black socks.

Joey willingly withdraws to the side of the stage to spectate as Vera reverts to her days as Vera with the Vanishing Veils to perform “Zip”.

Though Joey would later wear a gold tank watch not dissimilar to Sinatra’s own, he doesn’t appear to have a visible timepiece in this sequence.

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957)

How to Get the Look

By the time of Pal Joey‘s production in the mid-1950s, the role of the mess jacket had been mostly subjugated to slick bands and the service industry, with Joey and his fellow Galvinizers falling under the former category.

Yet, it’s hard to beat Frank Sinatra in formal attire and Joey still dresses to impress in the band’s issued duds.

• Red flecked wool waist-length mess jacket with shawl collar, six-button double-breasted front, and plain cuffs
• White cotton dress shirt with long point collar, plain front, and double/French cuffs
  • Round silver ridged cuff links
• Black straight bow tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black double reverse-pleated formal trousers with satin side stripes, straight/on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather oxfords
• Black silk socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie!

Cary Grant and Doris Day in That Touch of Mink (1962)

Vitals

Cary Grant as Philip Shayne, smooth, sophisticated, and suave investment executive and “perfect gentleman”

Bermuda, Spring 1962

Film: That Touch of Mink
Release Date: June 14, 1962
Director: Delbert Mann
Tailor: Cardinal Clothes (credited “for Cary Grant’s suits”)

Background

To commemorate the birthday of Cary Grant, born on this day in 1904, let’s celebrate the debonair actor who was seemingly born to wear a tuxedo. After three decades of a well-tailored career, the erstwhile Archie Leach sported his final on-screen dinner suit in the romantic comedy That Touch of Mink released in 1962, the same year as the first James Bond movie was released, thus heralding the transfer of the definitive screen dinner suit-wearer to 007. (Of Grant’s three final films, he sported nothing more formal than businesslike lounge suits in Charade and Walk Don’t Run and he spent his penultimate film—Father Goose—dressed in the comfortably threadbare beach wear that Variety described at the time as “tattered attire.”)

That Touch of Mink stars Grant opposite Doris Day as Cathy Timberlake, a Sandusky-born shopgirl who finds herself swept off her feet by Philip Shayne, a charming and successful businessman in the tradition of Grant’s customary screen persona. He plans a romantic escape for them in Bermuda, but she succumbs to the internalized pressure of his possible expectations and breaks out into hives just before bed. With little to do when Cathy quarantines herself int heir suite, Roger makes the rounds of the resort grounds, splitting his time between a poolside chat with a nervous newlywed played by Dick Sargent (aka Bewitched‘s controversial second Darren) and cheating at cards. As he later describes to his neurotic assistant Roger (Gig Young):

Roger, I flew 800 miles to a tropical paradise to drink hot milk and butter. I spent half the night playing gin rummy with a bookie from Detroit. It was not a memorable evening. Now if you’re not out of here in five seconds, I’ll raise your salary.

What’d He Wear?

As Cary Grant evolved his personal brand of on-screen elegance, he established the link-button dinner jacket as his preferred style, favored in films like To Catch a Thief and An Affair to Remember. Grant’s tuxedos were almost always midnight blue wool, the tasteful alternative to plain black, though his style reverted from the shawl collar of John Robie’s dinner jacket to the more traditional and formal peaked lapels that he would wear exclusively on his on-screen black tie kits, excepting the natty velvet dinner jacket rigged with a shawl collar that he wears in The Grass is Greener.

In That Touch of Mink, Grant’s final screen-worn tuxedo is a culmination of his debonair career. His midnight blue wool dinner jacket is tailored with a comfortably full and flattering cut that gave the 58-year-old actor room to move without even approaching looking baggy or oversized. The wide shoulders, roped at each sleevehead, balance the actor’s larger head for which he was famously (if unfairly) self-conscious. Per the fashions of the early ’60s, his peak lapels are narrower than those on the previous decade’s dinner jackets, though still of a moderate width that transcends timely trends. The lapels have a straight gorge with no space notched between the upper collar and the satin-faced lower portion of each lapel.

Cathy and Philip ascend to their room on the “scandalous” elevator.

The peak lapels on Grant’s ventless dinner jacket roll to the single link-closure buttoning point at his natural waist, perfectly positioned over where his cummerbund covers the waist line of his trousers. The dinner jacket has a welted breast pocket, though he wears no white or colorful pocket hank to dress it, in addition to straight jetted hip pockets.

Each sleeve ends with a narrow silk gauntlet “turnback” cuff, a neo-Edwardian detail that was also occasionally favored by black tie icons Sean Connery (as James Bond) and Frank Sinatra. There is also a single silk-covered button adorning each cuff.

Philip treats himself to a nightcap from the greatest hotel room bar this side of Scent of a Woman.

Grant wears a white formal shirt with a point collar, his usual shirt collar chosen to counter his head size, though this effect is somewhat negated as he naturally wears a bow tie rather than a straight necktie.

The shirt has a narrowly pleated front, though the pleats occasionally group together to create the look of wider pleats that are difficult to differentiate depending on the lighting, camera distance, and screen resolution. Rather than attached buttons, the shirt placket fastens with two visible onyx studs, and the double (French) cuffs are linked by recessed gold cuff links, detailed with a small onyx filling in the center of each link.

Philip meets a newlywed (Dick Sargent) in Bermuda. In 1962, Bewitched was still two years away, and Dick Sargent would actually be offered the role of Darren Stephens before it was filled by Dick York. When York left the show in 1969, Sargent stepped in to play Darren.

Grant wears a bow tie of midnight blue silk to coordinate with his dinner suit and match the silk facings. While the straight batwing and diamond-pointed styles were very common in mid-century menswear, Grant opts for a classic wide thistle (or “butterfly”) shape, tied in a thick knot.

Some gents prefer larger bow tie knots to properly fill the tie space between shirt collar leaves, but this wouldn’t be necessary with the limited tie space of Grant’s point collar.

The matching midnight blue wool formal trousers have forward-facing pleats that add to an elegantly full fit through the hips down to the plain-hemmed bottoms, accented by the requisite silk piping along each side seam.

Though he never removes or even unbuttons his jacket to confirm this, Grant appears to be wearing a midnight silk cummerbund, a wise and cooler-wearing alternative to a waistcoat in Bermuda’s warm tropical climate.

Grant suitably ends his black tie tenure by sporting a pair of black patent leather opera pumps, decorated with a black grosgrain silk bow on each vamp and worn with black socks. Also known as the court shoe, the formal men’s pump shoe dates back more than 200 years to the Regency era and, at the start of the 20th century, it was still de rigeuer for men’s formal white tie and semi-formal black tie dress codes. Particularly with the latter, pump shoes were phased out by the popularity and practicality of lace-up oxfords though they remained in use by arbiters of good taste with a sense of tradition.

Not only are Philip’s pump shoes the traditional choice, they would also likely be more comfortable and practical in the warm and relaxed Bermuda resort.

How to Get the Look

Cary Grant as Philip Shayne in That Touch of Mink (1962)
Photo by Milton Greene.

That Touch of Mink offered Cary Grant a fitting farewell to the elegant black tie dress code associated with the debonair actor and the sophisticated characters he played throughout the decades, sending him off in a neatly tailored and uniquely detailed dinner jacket.

• Midnight blue wool dinner suit:
  • Single-breasted link-button dinner jacket with straight-gorge silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, single-button gauntlet cuffs, and ventless back
  • Forward-pleated formal trousers with silk seam piping, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton pleated-front formal shirt with point collar and double/French cuffs
  • Onyx shirt studs
  • Gold recessed circular cuff links with onyx-filled centers
• Midnight blue silk butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Black patent leather opera pumps
• Black thin silk socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I’m kissing you, do you mind?

Timothy Dalton as James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987). Source: thunderballs.org.

Vitals

Timothy Dalton as James Bond, British government agent

Bratislava, Fall 1986

Film: The Living Daylights
Release Date: June 27, 1987
Director: John Glen
Costume Designer: Emma Porteous
Costume Supervisor: Tiny Nicholls

Background

Happy birthday to Timothy Dalton, born 74 years ago today on March 21, 1946! To celebrate the Welsh actor’s birthday, I want to revisit Dalton’s debut as James Bond, bringing a serious, Ian Fleming-influenced approach two decades before Daniel Craig would approach the role in a similar manner.

Dalton had long been a contender for the role, turning it down twice due to his youth when the filmmakers sought a replacement for Sean Connery and then for George Lazenby. When it was unclear if Roger Moore would return for his trio of 007 films in the ’80s, Dalton’s name came up each time, but it wasn’t until Pierce Brosnan was contractually obligated to turn down the role to return to Remington Steele in 1986 that a pathway was finally opened for Dalton, then 40 years old and seasoned enough to play the agent, to slip into Bond’s finely tailored dinner jacket for The Living Daylights.

The Living Daylights was inspired by one of Fleming’s own short stories, deriving from 007’s line in both the story and film when he quips that he must have “scared the living daylights” out of a beautiful female sniper that he was assigned to shoot during a KGB agent’s defection. Unable to fire the fatal shot in both instances, the line concludes the short story while the movie itself is only just beginning as Bond takes the next step to investigate the supposed sniper—a blonde cellist named Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo)—and her connection to the defector.

What’d He Wear?

Saunders: You’re bloody late. This is a mission, not a fancy dress ball.
Bond: We have time.

If Saunders (Thomas Wheatley), head of section V in Vienna, wasn’t impressed with Bond’s sharp attire in The Living Daylights, he should have waited to see Dalton in Licence to Kill when he would really have something to complain about! (Though Saunders’ comment could also be considered a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that, in Ian Fleming’s story, Bond and Saunders’ literary counterpart Captain Sendler merely spend their three days waiting in a drab Berlin apartment rather than meeting up at an opulent concert.)

Saunders’ criticism that “this is a mission, not a fancy dress ball!” is used by 007 sartorial expert Matt Spaiser to introduce his own article about Dalton’s first dinner jacket on his authoritative blog, The Suits of James Bond, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in learning more about James Bond’s clothing or tailored menswear in general.

Dalton’s first on-screen dinner jacket is arguably the most elegant of his two 007 outings, at least until he converts it into a tactical shooting jacket. But before that happens, Bond dresses quite appropriately for an evening concert in a black wool dinner jacket with a broad, satin-faced shawl collar that rolls to a satin-covered, single-button front. The ventless jacket has four satin-covered buttons at the end of each sleeve, jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket that he wears with no pocket square, likely to avoid having a patch of visible white that he would just have to tuck away when taking up his position in the window.

The Living Daylights provides a reversal of sorts of the iconic Goldfinger moment when Sean Connery strips away his black tactical garb to reveal a white dinner jacket; Dalton’s more serious Bond is the type who converts his fashionable evening wear into something more functional for the job.

From Sean Connery’s first Bond appearance on, we’ve always been reminded of how much care Bond puts into his clothes, though Dalton’s Bond breaks the mold by showing how his clothing emphasizes function over form. Working under the assumption that he needs to conceal himself from a trained marksman across the street, Bond merely turns up the shawl collar of his dinner jacket, fastening it with a velcro strap that extends across the neck, thus shrouding his potentially conspicuous white shirt from the enemy sniper.

A dinner jacket with a tactically oriented shawl collar like this serves no practical purpose in the real world for most of us (though I’d love to hear your suggestions for when this could come in handy), but it’s a minor character detail that further illustrates the wonderfully escapist world of James Bond, a place of alluring international intrigue where elegantly dressed men and women break away from concerts, take up arms, and tensely oversee a defection from seedy upper floors.

Forget the tactile-neck, Sterling Archer. What you need is a tactile-tux.

The dinner jacket that folds into a sniper’s garment is a more cinematic version of the story’s black velvet hood that is already “laid out like sinister evening clothes” for Bond to wear during his three days of waiting in a drab rented apartment at the corner of the Kochstrasse and the Wilhelmstrasse overlooking “Checkpoint Charlie” in Berlin.

When the jacket’s shawl collar is worn correctly flattened against the rest of the jacket, we see Bond’s white formal shirt with its spread collar and narrowly pleated front fastened with mother-of-pearl buttons. The double (French) cuffs are fastened with a set of ornate gold links.

Saunders is just jealous that he doesn’t look as debonair as England’s star secret agent.

Luckily for the tactical requirements of 007’s mission, fashionable bow ties were back to a more reasonable size by the mid-1980s so the classic proportions of Dalton’s black satin bow tie keep it from interfering with his folded-over shawl collar as the oversized bow ties of a decade earlier—memorialized by many awkward prom photos from the ’70s—would have done. Dalton’s bow tie is shaped in the classic thistle, or “butterfly”, shape.

Like his wide-shouldered dinner jacket, Bond’s formal trousers have double pleats in accordance with fashions of the late ’80s, with the de rigueur satin stripe running down the length of each side to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

We can’t tell from any visible on-screen evidence if Bond’s trousers are fitted with side adjusters as on some of Dalton’s predecessors’ formal trousers, but we do see that he wears them with white suspenders (braces) that are fastened to the top of his trousers with silver clips. The more acceptably formal approach would have been for Bond to wear suspenders that button onto the waistband itself, and we know that this the clip-on faux pas is regularly practiced by Dalton’s Bond as we also see the clips on his trousers when he’s running through the Vienna amusement park in a different tuxedo later in the film. If Dalton’s Bond felt so compelled to wear clip-on suspenders, he could have at least mitigated the sartorial solecism by donning a cummerbund or the more Bond-approved formal waistcoat.

Unfortunately, the combination of Dalton’s Bond being a man of action and his preference for clip-on suspenders allows his trousers to sag to a less elegant lower rise.

Bond’s chosen footwear with both this dinner jacket and the later-seen notch-lapel jacket in Vienna are black patent leather slip-on shoes with a plain toe and a black grosgrain strap across the vamp.

Dalton the Fleming purist may have appreciated that the shoes were a consistent choice for the literary Bond’s eschewal of laced shoes, seeing these grosgrain-strapped shoes as a less fussy and more modern alternative to the classic opera pump, which is traditionally the most acceptable non-laced shoe for white tie and black tie dress codes.

“Pigs! Borscht! Cake! There must be another way!” Koskov complains of Bond’s experimental but ultimately effective method of securely transporting him out of Soviet territory via a literal pipeline to the west.

Bond’s wristwatches aren’t as prominently featured in The Living Daylights as they would be in other 007 adventures, leaving experts like Dell Deaton to exhaustively research what Dalton may have been wearing in scenes like this, where his jacket and shirt sleeves tend to cover his wrists for the majority of the screen time. Despite this, Deaton’s comprehensive blog states that there is a brief moment in the hotel room as Bond is preparing to take his rifle to the window when his stainless TAG Heuer Professional Diver can be spied on Dalton’s left wrist.

The prospect of spotting a watch on Bond’s wrist is further complicated when he dons a bulky black fingerless shooting glove on his left hand.

Bond would go on to wear two more dinner jackets in The Living Daylights, an extensively seen notch-lapel dinner jacket when taking Kara to the Vienna amusement park (and worn by Dalton for much of the film’s promotional photography) and a double-breasted dinner jacket with the appropriate peak lapels that is briefly and barely seen during the finale.

The Gun

The first firearm we see Timothy Dalton’s Bond is indeed a Walther, but it isn’t the compact PPK pistol that 007 had slung in his shoulder holster for the better part of a quarter century. Assigned to snipe an enemy from a hotel window, James Bond needs a high-powered rifle and for this he takes up the Walther WA 2000, a rare and distinctive-looking semi-automatic “bullpup” rifle made from the same German weapons manufacturer responsible for Bond’s trademark PPK.

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS

Carl Walther GmbH Sportwaffen spent years designing what would become the WA 2000, reportedly developed in response to the infamous 1972 Summer Olympics massacre in Munich. By the late 1970s, many European militaries were adopting bullpup rifles like the Steyr AUG and the French FAMAS so Walther followed suit, designing their new rifle in a bullpup configuration that placed the action and magazine behind the trigger, building the rest of the weapon around the barrel. This popular bullpup design provided the advantageous capabilities and accuracy of a full-length barrel in a more compact package, though the completed WA 2000 was still a solid weapon that weighed more than 15 pounds even when unloaded, nearly double the weight of the successful AUG and FAMAS bullpups.

The closed-bolt WA 2000 fed from six-round box magazines of .300 Winchester Magnum ammunition, chosen for its long-range accuracy, which added nearly a pound to the rifle’s mass, though select models were also chambered for the 7.62x51mm NATO (.308 Winchester) and 7.5x55mm Swiss rounds.

Saunders: You’ll want the soft-nosed ones, I expect.
Bond: No, the steel-tipped. KGB snipers usually wear body armor.

Rather than the iron sights of a standard rifle, the WA 2000 was meant to be used strictly with mounted optical sights like the Schmidt & Bender 2.5–10x telescopic sight, which contributed additional weight to the heavy rifle.

The Walther WA 2000, as clearly branded in this intentionally framed shot, has a two-stage trigger for greater shooter control.

Despite limited adoption by a few police agencies in Germany, the Walther WA 2000 was too prohibitively expensive (and not robust enough to justify it) for widespread adoption by military and law enforcement units with only 176 rifles produced in two generations from 1982 through November 1988. However, like many distinctive-looking weapons, its representation in movies, TV shows, and video games presents the Walther WA 2000 to be considerably more available. According to IMFDB, The Living Daylights was the first screen appearance for the Walther WA 2000, followed swiftly by a supporting role in the 1988 TV adaptation of The Bourne Identity. Its ubiquity in the Hitman video game series assured it a spot in Timothy Olyphant’s hands when he played Agent 47 in the 2007 film adaptation.

One thing that may have tipped Bond off to the fact that Kara wasn’t a professional was her choice of armament. A bitter Bond expects there to be “plenty of time for a sniper to make strawberry jam” out of Koskov, a graphic description that would imply an enemy armed with an automatic weapon like the “Kalashnikov” AK-pattern rifle referred to in Ian Fleming’s short story. However, he spies the cellist taking up a position in the window with a bolt-action Winchester Model 70, a fine rifle for sure but undoubtedly out of place in the high-tech world of agents and assassins… especially when it’s loaded merely with blanks.

“That girl didn’t know one end of a rifle from the other,” Bond recounts to Saunders after intentionally shooting her Winchester instead of her. You can see the panel that will be “shot” away on the left side above the trigger.

Interestingly, Fleming’s short story actually arms Bond with a Winchester rifle, though it’s intended to be a more advanced one that Fleming describes as “mostly a .308-caliber International Experimental Target rifle built by Winchester to help American marksmen at World Championships, and it had the usual gadgets of superaccurate target weapons—a curled aluminum hand at the back of the butt that extended under the armpit and held the stock firmly into the shoulder, and an adjustable pinion below the rifle’s center of gravity to allow the stock to be nailed into its grooved wooden rest… the usual single-shot bolt action replaced by a five-shot magazine.”

M assures Bond that the rifle will be securely shipped to Germany via diplomatic pouch and, when 007 next shoulders the weapon, it’s been fitted with a “Sniperscope” that, along with the wooden and metal parts of the rifle, has been “painted a dull black” for additional evening concealment.

The Car

007’s main ride in The Living Daylights is an on-brand Aston Martin V8 that would be prominently featured both as a convertible and a hardtop, but Dalton the new Bond also breaks new automotive ground by featuring the agent behind the driver’s wheel of not one but two different Audis. The first and most prominently seen is a gray 1986 Audi 200 quattro four-door sedan, ostensibly owned by Saunders or used by him as a work car in Bratislava with license plates #W207-182 registered to Vienna. When Bond takes control of the mission, he also takes control of the car, a relatively subdued-looking but still luxurious choice, standing in for the sputtering black Opel Kapitan referred to as Captain Sendler’s escape car in Ian Fleming’s short story.

Still armed with his Walther WA 2000, Bond takes charge, immediately dismissing Saunders’ suggestion of attempting to smuggle Koskov in the trunk of his Audi.

Four different generations of Audi 100 and 200 models evolved from the introduction of this full-size sedan line in 1968 through the line’s final year of manufacture in 1994. All were built on the Volkswagen Group’s C platform, with the C1, C2, C3, and C4 platform designations correlating with each of the first, second, third, and fourth generations, respectively. Each generation, in turn, was also designated with a type number.

The first generation (F104), consisting only of Audi 100 models, was designed by Ludwig Kraus and powered by a limited lineup of four-cylinder engines. For the 1976 model year, the lineup was refreshed for the C2 generation (Type 43) that included five-cylinder engines and also saw the introduction of the top-of-the-line Audi 200 during the 1979 Frankfurt Auto Show.

Bond’s screen-driven Audis in The Living Daylights were produced during the C3 generation (Type 44), launched in September 1982 with a more aerodynamic design restyled for the ’80s. Beginning with the 1983 model year, the C3 generation also heralded the introduction of the “quattro” permanent four-wheel-drive drivetrain for Audi 100 and 200 models, having been developed by Audi earlier in the decade. The Audi 200 remained as an upmarket model, particularly when selected with the “Exclusiv” trim as driven by Bond and Saunders with its flared wheel arches and 16-inch BBS RS split-rim alloy wheels. According to Bond Lifestyle, the Audi 200 “Exclusiv” was the most expensive Audi ever made until the introduction of the Audi V8 in 1988. The 1986 Audi 200 quattro “Exclusiv” featured in The Living Daylights is now reportedly owned by the Audi Museaum in Igolstadt.

Saunders and Bond stand astride Station V’s Audi 200 quattro sedan.

1986 Audi 200 quattro

Body Style: 4-door full-size luxury sedan

Layout: front-engine, quattro four-wheel-drive (4WD)

Engine: 2144 cc (2.1 L) Volkswagen line-5 with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection

Power: 180 hp (134 kW; 182 PS) @ 5700 RPM

Torque: 186 lb·ft (252 N·m) @ 3600 RPM

Transmission: 5-speed manual

Wheelbase: 105.8 inches (2687 mm)

Length: 189.3 inches (4807 mm)

Width: 71.4 inches (1814 mm)

Height: 56 inches (1422 mm)

The second Audi that Bond drives in The Living Daylights is another 200 Quattro, albeit an Avant estate wagon that is seen only in a single vignette as 007 surveils General Pushkin from the driver’s seat while parked in Tangier.

The Audi 200 was discontinued with the end of the C3 generation, and the C4 generation (Type 4A) introduced in the fall of 1990 included only the Audi 100, essentially a facelifted C3 that included a new V6 engine option. It was during the Type 4A period that Audi transitioned out of its existing model-naming system and developed the S4, A6, S6, etc. models that are familiar to modern Audi drivers.

How to Get the Look

Timothy Dalton as James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987)

In this day and age, very few of us are engaged in missions or attending fancy dress balls, but there will always be an argument to be made for owning a tailored tuxedo, and Timothy Dalton’s shawl-collar dinner jacket at the outset of The Living Daylights follows in fine 007 tradition.

• Black wool single-button dinner jacket with tactically convertible satin-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, satin-covered 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White formal shirt with spread collar, narrowly pleated front with placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold ornate cuff links
• Black satin silk thistle-shaped bow tie
• White suspenders/braces with silver clips
• Black wool double reverse-pleated formal trousers with satin silk side striping and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather plain-toe slip-on shoes with grosgrain straps
• Black dress socks
• TAG Heuer Professional Diver stainless steel wristwatch with black bezel and dial on steel bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Stuff my orders! I only kill professionals. That girl didn’t know one end of her rifle from the other. Go ahead, tell M what you want. If he fires me, I’ll thank him for it. Whoever she was, it must have scared the living daylights out of her.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013)

Vitals

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, eagerly romantic millionaire and bootlegger

Long Island, New York, Summer 1922

Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: May 10, 2013
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Costume Designer: Catherine Martin

Background

On the eve of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday, let’s look at the most recent major adaptation of his most famous work, The Great Gatsby. Fitz’s 1925 novel had been adapted for the big screen at least four times before Baz Luhrmann directed his colorful spectacle during the past decade.

Nine months ago, Instagram was ablaze with my friends posting photos from New Year’s Eve parties, toasting to the dawn of the new “roaring ’20s”… unaware that this also meant the spread of a global pandemic not unlike the Spanish flu that may have killed up to 50 million between 1918 and 1920, infecting at least ten times that number. While it’s too soon to definitively compare the new coronavirus with that unusually deadly flu outbreak, the months under quarantine suggested just why those denizens of what Fitzgerald dubbed the “Jazz Age” were prone to such famous parties: reveling in the relief that it was once again safe to congregate and celebrate.

“Partying like Gatsby” has become modern shorthand for these bacchanalia, though the pendant in me is compelled to comment that all those Forever 21-esque tees should really be encouraging one to party like Gatsby’s guests as the reclusive host explains to his neighbor that he doesn’t care much for parties himself, only hosting such lavish events at his West Egg mansion in the hopes of attracting the interest of his lost love.

Thanks to decades of high school curricula, most of us are already well aware of the plot, themes, and characters of The Great Gatsby as well as the symbolism behind his yellow car, et cetera, et cetera… and this familiarity as well as the already existing adaptations provided Luhrmann with a relatively free reign to tell Trimalchio’s tale in his own style, retaining the central characters, narrative, and setting, but seeking relevance for this modern audience with a contemporary soundtrack infused with popular artists like Beyoncé, Fergie, Jack White, Jay Z, and Lana Del Rey rather than exclusively featuring the more historically correct strains of “Ain’t We Got Fun?”, “The Sheik of Araby”, and “Who?” that scored Jack Clayton’s 1974 adaptation. (Though, to the artist’s credit, will.i.am’s “Bang Bang” during the first party does sample a version of the ’20s dance hit “Charleston” as featured during Gatsby’s first party.)

Wisely retained by Luhrmann from Fitzgerald’s novel is the announced “jazz history of the world” against a backdrop of fireworks at Gatsby’s first party, allowing Gershwin’s famous “Rhapsody in Blue” to hit its most dramatic moments while Leonardo DiCaprio’s Gatsby is formally introduced to both Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) and the audience as the hero of our story.

What’d He Wear?

Proponents of the classic men’s tuxedo have the 1920s to thank for its popularity and enduring elements. Perhaps a decade before The Great Gatsby was set, the newly emerging dinner jacket may have still been too informal for an evening party on Long Island, even among the young and fashionable set. After decades in slow development and adoption, the black tie dress code had emerged to some degree during the Edwardian era, but the loosening formalities that followed the first world war found the more comfortable dinner jackets eclipsing full white tie and tails as the expected evening wear for most gatherings by the time the next world war started.

Rudolph Valentino, one of the most fashionable matinee idols of the era, wears a peak-lapel dinner jacket, wing collar, low-slung white waistcoat, and white pocket square in the silent romantic drama Beyond the Rocks, released in May 1922, just months before the setting of The Great Gatsby.

Nowhere was this more true than in the United States, already a less formal culture than much of Europe though still primarily taking its lead from English fashions. The “dinner jacket” first appeared in English print in 1887, and the Americans weren’t long to embrace the dressed-down dinner attire, providing the “tuxedo” nomenclature the following year in reference to Tuxedo Park, an elite enclave in New York state’s Hudson Valley where the dinner jacket became a familiar sight. (The term “black tie” in this context would not appear in print until at least 1926, as determined by Gentleman’s Gazette.)

While the ubiquity of dinner jackets at Jazz Age jamborees is accurately captured in Luhrmann’s Gatsby adaptation, I suggest that we’re seeing a degree of historic license exercised by many of the gents in Gatsby’s coterie, most notably in the case of the enigmatic host himself.

As stated earlier, the early ’20s was still a transitional period for men’s evening attire with the black tie dress code taking its cues from the more formal white tie dress code as opposed to the business-oriented lounge suit. This meant essentially replacing the tailcoat and white tie with a shorter single-button dinner jacket and black bow tie but generally retaining the wing collar, low-cut waistcoat (in white or black), and high-waisted trousers.

So why the inaccuracies in a film based on possibly the most famous fiction about the roaring ’20s? One could argue that Luhrmann and company were presenting a modern “fantasy” of the 1920s, designed to specifically appeal to audiences of 2013 by infusing the music, clothing, and dialogue with enough of a contemporary touch that audiences can balance relating and retreating into the escapism of Jazz Age glamour.

For more expert commentary that delves into the specific inconsistencies between Gatsby’s wardrobe and historical record, I invite you to read this post from the Black Tie Blog published shortly after the film’s release in 2013. You can also explore this decade-by-decade breakdown of acceptable evening dress codes at Gentleman’s Gazette.

The First Dinner Suit

Both dinner jackets that Leonardo DiCaprio prominently wears in The Great Gatsby are similarly cut and styled, shaped with front darts for a close fit suggested to be more contemporary to the film’s production than its 1920s setting. The narrow shoulders are accented with roped sleeveheads.

These single-breasted jackets have a full three-button front, consistent with the jackets of business suits and lounge suits rather than traditional evening wear, with all three buttons covered with black silk to match the satin facings on the broad peak lapels. The straight hip pockets are flapped—another detail more consistent with informal lounge suits—and both jackets have a center-slanting welted breast pocket, which Gatsby dresses with a silk pocket square to coordinate with his neckwear.

Gatsby makes a rare appearance at one of his own parties, watching his new neighbor leave among the rest of the colorful carousers.

DiCaprio’s first on-screen dinner jacket is black with a subtle sheen suggesting silk or mohair, a theory supported by the wool and mohair blend construction of the dinner jacket included in Brooks Brothers’ “The Great Gatsby Collection”, released to coincide with the movie in 2013. The ends of each sleeve, adorned with four silk-covered buttons, are further detailed with silk “gauntlet” cuffs. This neo-Edwardian detail has been sporadically revived throughout the 20th century, particularly in the early ’60s as seen on some of Sean Connery’s dinner jackets as James Bond or even Joe Pesci’s suits in Goodfellas.

Note Gatsby’s silk-faced gauntlet cuffs.

The wing collar was still the most accepted style for shirts to be worn with dinner jackets in the early 1920s, when turndown collars with black tie were still primarily the dressed-down domain of jazz bands as illustrated by the publicity photos of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from the period. Turndown collars would gain more general acceptance with dinner suits during the following decade.

Gatsby’s white formal shirt is rigged with a point collar, gently rounded on the points. The razor-thin pleated front has a unique “French placket”, distinctive as it only includes stitching along the edge of the shirt and not on the other side to the left of the buttonholes, fastened with black-filled studs that are threaded to the shirt like buttons rather than removable studs but often covered by the too-high rise of Gatsby’s waistcoat. The silver-toned metal framework of these buttons coordinate with the round etched silver cuff links worn in Gatsby’s double (French) cuffs, which are textured with a subtle rib.

One of the most unique aspects of an already unorthodox black tie kit is the tie itself, a black thistle-shaped bow tie with white piping along the edges. This neckwear pushes the outfit into the more creative realm of evening-wear, appropriate for a man who likes to draw attention to himself via lavish parties, a gleaming yellow touring car, and eye-catching threads like that famous pink suit.

“His smile was one of those rare smiles that you may come across four or five times in life. It seemed to understand you and believe in you, just as you would like to be understood and believed in.”

Leonardo DiCaprio in a promotional portrait for The Great Gatsby.

While much of Gatsby’s divergences from then-accepted evening-wear standards can be excused as “creative black tie” choices, I would argue—in agreement with the knowledgable author of this Black Tie Blog post—that his choice of a high-fastening waistcoat transcends into the world of anachronism, particularly as we see this style practiced by other characters though Tobey Maguire’s Nick likely took his sartorial inspiration from Gatsby himself.

To the best of my knowledge, high-fastening waistcoats as seen with business or lounge suits were generally not worn with black tie until a half-century later. Considering the disco era’s embrace of powder blue tuxedoes, frilly shirts, and jumbo-sized bow ties, the higher-fastening fancy waistcoats may be the least egregious of the bunch, but they also influenced generations of formal-wear to follow as many modern rental houses and prom photos suggest chest-high vests in an array of colors, fabrics, and patterns to be de rigeur for evening dress. (Indeed, even yours truly wore a burnt orange waistcoat as part of my rented prom kit back in 2007!) Despite this trend, the traditional waist coverings for gents in black tie remains either a cummerbund or a low-fastening waistcoat, typically black though white adds a vintage-inspired touch.

During his first on-screen party, Gatsby wears an all-black silk waistcoat with vertical satin stripes. The single-breasted waistcoat has five black buttons, a notched bottom, and four pockets. His choice is made additionally surprising as the high-fastening, full-backed waistcoat would add another layer that could get warm during his summer garden party.

The Last Dinner Suit

By late summer, Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) are deep into their rekindled romance, five years after they had last met before he went to war and returned to make a fortune. Complicating their “happily ever after” is Daisy’s husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), a gruff hypocrite whom Gatsby can’t help but to irk with snide remarks and innuendo when the Buchanans join Nick at what would be Gatsby’s last soiree of the summer.

In the 1974 version of Fitzgerald’s novel, Robert Redford’s Gatsby dressed for the occasion in white tie and tails, but DiCaprio’s Gatsby stays true to his preference for three-piece black tie kits. His dinner suit is nearly identical to the black suit worn for the previous party, albeit constructed from a rich midnight blue silk-blended suiting with all the facings—jacket lapels, buttons, pocket flaps, and trouser striping—covered in a black silk.

On this jacket, the sleevehead roping is less defined with a softer structure almost evocative of the famous Neapolitan “con rollino” shoulder. The most notable difference is the lack of gauntlet cuffs; instead, the sleeves of Gatsby’s dinner jacket are finished with four silk-covered buttons.

Gatsby guides his guests Daisy, Nick, and Tom “the Polo Player” Buchanan through what would be his final party of the summer.

Gatsby wears the more traditional neckwear that gives the black tie kit its designation, a plain black satin silk bow tie in a medium butterfly (or “thistle”) shape. Barely contrasting against the dark dinner jacket is his black silk pocket square, worn “puffed” in his welted breast pocket.

“Can’t repeat the past..? Why, of course you can!”

Gatsby matches his black silk waistcoat to his bow tie as opposed to the midnight blue dinner suit. Similarly cut and styled with its high, five-button front and four pockets, the waistcoat’s tonal pattern consists more of boxes than the stripes of the earlier waistcoat. The fit can be adjusted around the waist with a half-belt in the back.

The aftermath of another one Gatsby’s summer shindigs.

Gatsby’s dark formal trousers match the fabrics of his dinner suits, detailed with the standard black satin stripe down the side of each leg. The trousers seem to have flat fronts or at least lack dramatic pleats, and the bottoms are appropriately finished with plain hems that break over his black patent leather cap-toe oxfords.

Gatsby and Daisy break away from his party for an intimate moment in the woods.

Seven years after the film’s release, there’s still no definite confirmation on the wristwatch DiCaprio wears as Gatsby. While it may have been inspired by the elegant tank watches popularized through mid-century by Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and Longines, the piece has been theorized to be a piece custom-made for the production, possibly through the film’s well-publicized partnership with Tiffany & Co.

Constructed from a silver-toned metal like stainless steel, white gold, or platinum, the rectangular-cased watch has a white rectangular dial with black hands and a unique hour-marking system that spells out “12” and “6” as well as elongated numerals for the corner hours (1, 5, 7, and 11), while the hours in between are all marked with a simple, non-numeric dash.

The Deco-style dial is consistent with the film’s setting, but the metal bracelet could be argued as the anachronism here. As wristwatches grew increasingly common in the years following World War I, most were still strapped to men’s wrists on leather bands, reserving daintier metal bracelets for women’s timepieces. Gatsby may have indeed had access to this more masculine “rice grain”-style bracelet in 1922, but I attribute the choice to wear it here as another element of reinterpreting the roaring ’20s for modern audiences as a man in his position would likely not have worn a metal-banded wristwatch until at least 20 years later (and certainly not with a tuxedo for another 20 years after that when James Bond popularized sport watches with evening-wear.)

Gatsby’s watch flashes from under his shirt cuff as he cherishes every minute spent with his once-lost love.

Gatsby frequently fiddles with a large pinky ring that gets plenty of attention on screen. Likely made of sterling silver, the chunky ring has a large rectangular surface with an etched “sunburst”.

Having met Gatsby’s ring during his introduction earlier, we get a sense that he’s approaching Nick when we see his ring before the rest of him at the first party. (Also note the subdued ribbing on his shirt cuff.)

How to Get the Look

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013)

Befitting his persona as a somewhat eccentric and offbeat millionaire, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Gatsby infuses forward-thinking fashions and unorthodox details into the three-piece dinner suits he wears for his famous parties, anonymously holding court in what more resembles “upgraded” evening-wear than the era’s traditionally accepted black tie dress.

• Black or midnight blue silk-blend single-breasted 3-button dinner jacket with satin-faced peak lapels, slanted welt breast pocket, straight hip pockets with silk-faced flaps, turnback “gauntlet” cuffs with 4 covered buttons, and double vents
• Black tonal-patterned silk single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with four welted pockets and notched bottom
• Black or midnight blue silk-blend flat front formal trousers with black satin side striping, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton formal shirt with point collar, edge-stitched “French placket”, thin-pleated front, and double/French cuffs
  • Round silver etched cuff links
• Black silk butterfly-shaped bow tie with white-piped edges
• Cream silk pocket square
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Silver pinky ring with dark “starbust” face
• Stainless wristwatch with a rectangular white face and stainless rice-grain bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original novel, even if you already did read it in high school! I also enjoyed the graphic novel adaptation by Fred Fordham with illustrations by Aya Morton, released this summer.

Love the songs from soundtrack but still want an authentic Jazz Agee sound for your next Gatsby-inspired shindig? I recommend The Jazz Recordings as recorded by The Bryan Ferry Orchestra… yes, that Bryan Ferry! This “selection of yellow cocktail music” per the album subtitle includes recognizable queues like “Young and Beautiful”, “Crazy in Love”, and “Bang Bang”, but arranged and recorded in the style of 1920s hot jazz bands.

The Quote

I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love.

The post Leonardo DiCaprio’s Black Tie in The Great Gatsby appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 1.05: “5G”).

Vitals

Jon Hamm as Don Draper, mysterious and award-winning Madison Avenue ad man

Series: Mad Men
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant

Background

Only three days left in 2020! The tradition of gents wearing black tie on New Year’s Eve, popularized in movies like the 1960 Rat Pack classic Ocean’s Eleven, seems to have fallen out of favor among the general population as standards of formality have decreased. However, given how excited many will be to see 2020 come to an end may herald a resurgence in dinner jackets and tuxedoes as many celebrate the new year in private.

On #MadMenMonday, we can take a few style tips from the enigmatic Don Draper on assembling a classic black tie ensemble from his half-dozen screen-worn dinner jackets.

Don’s most creative black tie ensemble, a blue silk plaid dinner jacket evidently worn to celebrate the New Year in 1956, is sadly never seen beyond this slide from his Kodak Carousel pitch in the first season finale.

What’d He Wear?

Jon Hamm and January Jones on Mad Men (Episode 1.05: “5G”)

“5G”

Episode: “5G” (Episode 1.05)
Air Date: August 16, 2007
Director: Lesli Linka Glatter

Set in Ossining, New York, Spring 1960

“5G” begins with Don and Betty Draper returning home tipsy from the NYOC Awards, he in black tie and she in an elegant white gown, establishing what would become an enduring Mad Men pattern of Don in black tie portending potential disaster for his personal life. In this case, the initial disaster seems to be no worse than a hangover… until the well-publicized awards dinner brings his half-brother Adam back into his life. Adam’s return could mean Don’s exposure as Army deserter Dick Whitman… but the titular $5,000 payoff instead leads to a slow burn and a tragic end for the vulnerable Adam.

Long before that, Don dresses to celebrate his role as a rising star in the advertising world. His black tie kit follows the trends of 1960, with some elements still rooted in the ’50s, particularly echoing the slimmer continental styles that emerged in mid-decade rather than the fuller-cut fashions of the immediate post-war era.

Don would exclusively wears shawl-collar dinner jackets throughout the ’60s, though the “5G” jacket in 1960 was the only one to feature silk piping rather than full facings. The wide pleats on Don’s shirt bib would be supplanted going forward by narrower pleats.

• Black single-button dinner jacket with piped-edge shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton formal shirt with spread collar and wide-pleated bib (with black studs) and double/French cuffs
• Black narrow “batwing”-style bow tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black reverse-pleated formal trousers with wide satin side stripe and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather oxfords
• White folded cotton pocket square

The drunk Drapers. We almost never see them this happy together.

Read the full BAMF Style post.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 2.07: “The Gold Violin”)

Summer White in “The Gold Violin”

Episode: “The Gold Violin” (Episode 2.07)
Air Date: September 7, 2008
Director: Andrew Bernstein

Set in New York City, Summer 1962

Don’s only on-screen variance from his established black tie pattern occurs in the climax of this pivotal second season episode when he and Betty join the Barretts for a summer evening at the famed Stork Club. Having pulled up in his brand-new Cadillac with his beautiful wife on his arm, Don looks every bit the fabled “Mr. Success” in Sinatra’s song of the same name, though his fortune will be short-lived as the obnoxious comedian Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) all too eagerly divulges to Betty his suspicions regarding Don and his domineering wife Bobbie (Melinda McGraw).

Appropriate for the summer evening, Don arrives in a dashing off-white dinner jacket. From his dinner jacket’s shawl collar to his pleated shirt and straight bow tie, every detail of Don’s outfit is slim and sleek, a trademark of the Camelot years in the early ’60s. Jimmy Barrett dresses similarly and doesn’t look half bad, though I hate giving any credit to the crass comic.

Interestingly, his personal slideshow in “The Carousel” had depicted Don wearing a similar dinner jacket for his marriage to Betty circa 1954. Given the events of “The Gold Violin”, he bookends both the beginning and the end of their marriage wearing the same thing… yes, the two would remain married for another year and a half, but the love was effectively gone after Betty learned about one dalliance too many.

• Ivory single-button dinner jacket with narrow self-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, spaced 2-button cuffs, and single vent
• Off-white cotton formal shirt with semi-spread collar and narrow-pleated front (with gold studs) and double/French cuffs
• Black narrow straight bow tie
• Black formal trousers with satin side stripe and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather oxfords
• Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Classique wristwatch with a yellow gold rectangular case on a brown alligator leather strap

The Drapers arrive at the Stork Club.

007 inspo? The inaugural James Bond movie, Dr. No, was still months away from its U.K. premiere, so the fictional secret agent would have had no real impact on Draper’s style. That said, it could be argued that this was Mad Men‘s homage to Sean Connery’s memorable off-white peak-lapeled jacket that he wears as Bond in Goldfinger‘s pre-credits sequence two years later.

Read the full BAMF Style post.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 3.10: “The Color Blue”)

“The Color Blue”

Episode: “The Color Blue” (Episode 3.10)
Air Date: October 18, 2009
Director: Michael Uppendahl

Set in New York City, Fall 1963

More than a year after the fateful night at the Stork Club, the Draper marriage is on life support. Betty has discovered Don’s box of secrets detailing his past life as Dick Whitman and has begun constructing a path to her own future life with Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley). Don is oblivious to it all as he embarks on yet another romantic affair, this time a little too close to home in the form of his daughter’s teacher, Suzanne Farrell (Abigail Spencer).

The ad man beams with pride as he’s honored with yet another award, presented to him by his now-estranged friend and colleague Roger Sterling (John Slattery), though there won’t be a night of drunken canoodling with a giggling Betty to follow.

Don has updated his tuxedo for the ’60s, now wearing a black dinner suit with a subdued diamond self-textured print that only shines under the light of the Draper boudoir as he’s dressing for the event, layering the dinner jacket over his usual underpinnings of narrowly pleated shirt, cummerbund, and suspenders.

• Black diamond-textured single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton formal shirt with semi-spread collar and narrow-pleated front (with gold-trimmed black studs) and double/French cuffs
• Black narrow “batwing”-style bow tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black suspenders
• Black reverse-pleated formal trousers with wide satin side stripe and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White folded cotton pocket square
• Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Classique wristwatch with a yellow gold rectangular case on a brown alligator leather strap

Don gets an eyeful of Betty before the awards dinner. Note the unique pattern in his suiting.

007 inspo? Draper’s black tie kit generally follows the template that Sean Connery would wear throughout his first four films as James Bond in the early ’60s.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 5.07: “At the Codfish Ball”)

“At the Codfish Ball”

Episode: “At the Codfish Ball” (Episode 5.07)
Air Date: April 29, 2012
Director: Michael Uppendahl

Set in New York City, Fall 1966

Don Draper’s year of loneliness saw little cause for celebration, so his black tie wouldn’t emerge back on screen until the fifth season. Now, relatively happy in his marriage to Megan (Jessica Paré), Don escorts his in-laws and his daughter Sally to an American Cancer Society dinner in his honor. What could go wrong here, you ask? Well, Don wears a tuxedo, so we know something won’t go well!

For starters, Don receives the ironic news that his publicly published anti-smoking letter—the very missive that resulted in this evening of awards—has turned companies like Corning Inc. against him, limiting the ceiling for his success. Poor ten-year-old Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) also encounters “dirty” disappointment after discovering her grandmother-in-law Marie (Julia Ormond) praising at the altar of Roger Sterling.

Echoing the evolving style of the era as he too grows older, Don’s black tie ensemble takes on more timeless proportions with more body to the jacket’s shawl collar and the thistle-shaped bow tie. This particular tuxedo was auctioned by ScreenBid following the end of the series’ run, where it was described as an Arnold Constabile dinner suit with a size 42R jacket.

• Black single-button dinner jacket with satin-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• White cotton formal shirt with semi-spread collar and narrow-pleated front (with gold-trimmed black studs) and double/French cuffs
• Black silk thistle/”butterfly”-shaped bow tie
• Black formal trousers with satin side stripe and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather oxfords
• White folded cotton pocket square
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator

Don Draper, American Cancer Society honoree and lifetime smoker.

007 inspo? Don continues the example he wore for “The Color Blue”, which also aligns with how Sean Connery was dressing in black tie through the Bond films of the 1960s.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 6.05: “The Flood”)

“The Flood”

Episode: “The Flood” (Episode 6.05)
Air Date: April 28, 2013
Director: Christopher Manley

Set in New York City, Spring 1968

Two years after his ACS awards dinner, Don has changed little of his approach to black tie as he’s settled into a pattern rooted in timeless styling appropriate for a man at his age and status. The continuance of the ’60s has hardly affected his dress with only a little more girth to his bow tie signaling the wider fashions that would follow in the next decade.

The major difference noted in “The Flood” is seeing an overcoat over Don’s tuxedo for the first time on Mad Men, an appropriate addition given the chilly weather of New York in April. April 4, 1968, that is… the date of Martin Luther King’s assassination. News of the murder understandably brings the Advertising Club of New York’s annual awards banquet to a halt as the attendees are shaken by the tragedy.

• Black single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• White cotton formal shirt with point collar and narrow-pleated front (with black studs) and double/French cuffs
• Black silk thistle/”butterfly”-shaped bow tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black suspenders
• Black formal trousers with satin side stripe and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather oxfords
• Black wool single-breasted overcoat with notch lapels
• White folded cotton pocket square
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator

Draper’s dinner suit, deconstructed. While Megan unwisely phones her father for consolation after Dr. King’s assassination, Don finds more consistent comfort in a roly-poly of Canadian Club.

007 inspo? Bond kept his dinner suit in the closet in You Only Live Twice so, even if the theme song made its way into Mad Men, it would not be influencing any of Don Draper’s evening attire.

Jon Hamm as Don Draper on Mad Men (Episode 7.08: “Severance”)

“Severance”

Episode: “Severance” (Episode 7.08)
Air Date: April 5, 2015
Director: Scott Hornbacher

Set in New York City, Spring 1970

Now in complete control of his identity more than we’ve ever seen him, a once-reticent Don now eagerly regales Roger and a trio of young ingenues with the story of his poor upbringing in rural Pennsylvania during the Depression. We don’t know where they’re coming from, but the long night has landed the group in a roach-infested, hole-in-the-wall diner where Don gets intrigued by their mysterious waitress Diana (Elizabeth Reaser).

Don the bachelor has notably adopted a new dinner jacket for the new decade, partying during the spring of 1970 in a single-breasted dinner jacket cut with peak lapels. Though this traditional style dates back to the earliest days of the black tie dress code at the start of the 20th century, Don’s lapels appropriately skew a little wider—matching the wider wings of his butterfly-shaped bow tie—in accordance with the early ’70s trends.

As with their daily dress, Don doesn’t get as caught up in the fads of fashion as his colleague Roger Sterling, now sporting a white walrus mustache in addition to his crushed velvet dinner jacket and frilly shirt. A ScreenBid auction following the series finale has confirmed Don’s dinner jacket as a genuine vintage piece made by Gingiss Formalwear.

• Black single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced peak lapels with welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and single vent
• White cotton formal shirt with point collar and narrow-pleated front (with gold-trimmed black studs) and double/French cuffs
• Black silk large thistle/”butterfly”-shaped bow tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black suspenders
• Black formal trousers with satin side stripe and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather oxfords
• Omega Seamaster DeVille wristwatch with stainless 34mm case, textured black crocodile strap, and black dial with date indicator

Don shares the story of an unwisely gifted toaster in the Whitman family.

007 inspo? After a decade in shawl-collar dinner jackets, Don finally opts for peak lapels as he looks ahead to the 1970s. This follows the example set by ’60s style icon James Bond, as it wasn’t until George Lazenby’s turn the previous year in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service that 007 would wear a dark dinner jacket with peak lapels.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series, and have a happy New Year!

Roger Sterling and Don Draper wish you a very happy New Year.
(Photo taken during production of season 6’s “The Flood” by Frank Ockenfels/AMC)

I also recommend checking out Bryant Draper, the new menswear line from Inherent Clothier in collaboration with Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant. The classic-inspired collection includes timeless pieces to build a traditional black tie ensemble like the Gable Tuxedo and the Fairbanks Tuxedo Shirt, named in tribute to famously fashionable Hollywood icons.

The post Mad Men: Don Draper’s Decade of Black Tie appeared first on BAMF Style.

Rod Taylor as Bruce Templeton in The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Vitals

Rod Taylor as Bruce Templeton, charismatic aerospace lab chief

Long Beach, California, Spring 1966

Film: The Glass Bottom Boat
Release Date: June 9, 1966
Director: Frank Tashlin
Costume Designer: Ray Aghayan (credited with Doris Day’s costumes only)

Background

In honor of Aussie actor Rod Taylor’s birthday on January 11, 1930, today’s post explores the first movie of his that I’d seen. The Glass Bottom Boat reteamed Taylor with Doris Day after their collaboration the previous year in Do Not Disturb, this time in a Cold War-era romantic comedy where Doris’ PR flack is suspected of being a spy sent by Mother Russia to seduce scientific secrets out of Bruce Templeton, the debonair head of a NASA research facility.

The suspicions and seductions culminate during a party at Templeton’s home, in fact the mid-century estate that had recently been designed and constructed by architect David Lyle Fowler for his mother. (This home at 1261 Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills has since been demolished and replaced with the massive Pritzker estate mansion.)

What’d He Wear?

The subtle creative elements of Bruce Templeton’s black tie kit suggest a man of taste who respects tailoring well enough to add unique personal touches that neither interfere with tradition nor ignore trending fashions.

Perhaps the most noticeable affectation would be the black velvet trim on Bruce’s black dinner jacket, constructed from a material with a touch of shine that suggests a blend of wool and mohair, then a fashionable fabric for men’s tailoring. The collar is covered in black velvet, while the rest of the straight and sharp peak lapels appear to be the same material as the rest of the jacket; had these lapels been faced in silk as on a traditional dinner jacket, this could have clashed with the velvet trim to make the jacket too busy.

The lapels roll to a single black plastic button at the waist, which matches the two buttons on each cuff. Black velvet piping also accents the jetting along the straight hip pockets and around the top and sides of the welted breast pocket, where Bruce wears a triangular-folded scarlet silk pocket square. The nicely tailored ventless jacket has straight, English-style shoulders with light padding and roped sleeveheads.

Bruce Templeton coolly confers with Zack Malloy (Dick Martin).

Bruce’s white cotton dress shirt has a textured front bib split into stripes that alternate between a plain broadcloth finish and a white-on-white birdseye weave. It’s one of these birdseye stripes that runs vertically up the plain “French placket” where the buttonholes are cut, and through which Bruce wears three small black studs. The shirt also has double (French) cuffs and a point collar.

His short black satin bowtie is shaped in the then-fashionable batwing style, characterized by its narrow, almost rectangular, appearance when tied.

Bruce’s flat front formal trousers match his dinner jacket in the same shiny black fabric, detailed with the requisite black silk side striping. He covers the waist with a unique black silk cummerbund that fastens on through an adjustable back strap, though the design has three satin-covered buttons on the front and a gently dipped crest so that, with the dinner jacket on (but unbuttoned), the cummerbund would resemble a formal waistcoat with a low V-shaped opening.

Watching a shirt-sleeved Bruce tie on his narrow bow tie before slipping on his dinner jacket reminded me of a passage in the eighth chapter of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale. #IYKYK

Among the more conventional pieces of Bruce’s black tie ensemble are his black cap-toe oxford shoes, though they appear to be a calf leather rather than dressier patent leather.

Throughout The Glass Bottom Boat, Bruce Templeton wears a slim gold dress watch with a champagne gold dial and flat gold bracelet, indeed an ideal wristwatch style to wear for formal occasions.

Bruce tries to spirit Jennifer Nelson (Doris Day) away from the paranoid conspiracy theories being bounded about by his colleagues.

We also see some interesting black tie looks from Bruce’s friends and fellow revelers. As his fiercely—and comically—loyal pal and colleague Zack Malloy, comedian Dick Martin dresses in the fashion that was then popular by his similarly named entertainer Dean Martin, right down to the informal white button-down collar shirt, butterfly-shaped bow tie, and bright red silk pocket square.

Dick Martin in The Glass Bottom Boat.

The Glass Bottom Boat also nods to its adopted genre with an uncredited cameo by Robert Vaughn, then in the middle of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.‘s four-season run on NBC. The heightened sense that the party is filled with spies and the music cue for Vaughn’s brief appearance suggests that he’s in character as Napoleon Solo, as does his dapper three-piece dinner suit, similar in style—if not exact detail—to one that he had worn on the series, as comprehensively written about by Matt Spaiser for Bond Suits.

In his unfortunate disguise, Homer Cripps (Paul Lynde) may think he’s a master spy, but Napoleon Solo is the real deal.

What to Imbibe

After Jennifer Nelson (Doris Day) overhears Bruce and his colleagues discussing the possibility that she’s a spy, she decides to have some fun with their suspicions, kicking off the evening’s festivities with a drink that Bruce’s housekeeper Anna (Ellen Corby) describes as “Hooch… that’s half-Scotch, half-Bourbon.”

“It sounds delicious,” a steely Jenny replies before downing the glass. I suspect she was incorrect.

How to Get the Look

Rod Taylor as Bruce Templeton in The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

A classy guy like Bruce Templeton chooses his dinner suit wisely, incorporating touches of fashionable creativity allowed for the intimacy of a party hosted within his own home while still respecting the tested-and-true black tie traditions.

• Black wool-and-mohair single-button dinner jacket with velvet-collar peak lapels, velvet-trimmed welted breast pocket, velvet-jetted hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and no vents
  • Scarlet red silk pocket square
• White cotton dress shirt with point collar, alternating self-striped bib, and double/French cuffs
  • Black shirt studs
• Black satin silk batwing-style bow tie
• Black silk 3-button cummerbund
• Black wool-and-mohair flat front formal trousers with satin side striping, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather cap-toe oxfords
• Black socks
• Thin gold wristwatch with gold dial on flat gold bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

That’s right, pally, you play your games and I’ll play mine.

The post Rod Taylor’s Velvet-Trimmed Dinner Jacket in The Glass Bottom Boat appeared first on BAMF Style.

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line (2005)

Vitals

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, rising country rock star

Texarkana, Texas, Summer 1955

Film: Walk the Line
Release Date: November 18, 2005
Director: James Mangold
Costume Designer: Arianne Phillips
Tailor: Pam Lisenby

Background

Eighty-nine years ago on February 26, 1932, J.R. Cash was born in Arkansas. His childhood was dominated by music, as there was little else to encourage the family enduring the hard years of the Depression made worse by a dangerous flood and the violent death of Jack, one of the seven Cash children. It was when he joined the military that the 18-year-old Cash expanded his first name as the Air Force wouldn’t allow just initials, though it wasn’t until cutting his first recording at Sun Records that he established the name that would become legendary: Johnny Cash.

Johnny Cash, circa 1955.

I’d long been a fan of Cash’s music, and my girlfriend fiancée Olivia surprised me this Christmas with At Folsom Prison on vinyl, among other great records and Booze & Vinyl: A Spirited Guide to Great Music and Mixed Drinks, a volume by siblings by André and Tenaya Darlington that matches a duo of interesting cocktails with classic albums. It was while enjoying the Darlingtons’ recommended pairing of At Folsom Prison with more than a few of the rum-and-cider concoctions known as a Stone Fence that Liv discovered that she too is a Johnny Cash fan, and it’s been a delight hearing her playing one of my favorite artists.

Just over a year after Cash released his first Sun single, “Cry! Cry! Cry!”, he made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry in Memphis on July 7, 1956. It was while backstage at the Ryman Auditorium that he met June Carter, then two years his senior and a voice he’d long admired from the radio days of his childhood in Dyess.

The two would grow their personal and professional relationship, frequently touring together over the dozen years to follow until June accepted Johnny’s marriage proposal on stage in Toronto in February 1968, just over a month after they recorded the landmark At Folsom Prison. The couple would remain together until her death in May 2003, with Johnny himself to follow only four months later.

What’d He Wear?

June Carter and Johnny Cash meet backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, July 1956.

The 2005 biopic Walk the Line depicts Johnny Cash and June Carter’s first meeting a year earlier in Texarkana, between a characteristically chaotic Jerry Lee Lewis performance and Cash with the Tennessee Two performing “Get Rhythm”. Though the circumstances gently differ between their real-life meeting and the cinematic depiction, costume designer Arianne Phillips paid tribute to recreating Cash’s stage outfit, comprised of a white shawl-collar jacket over a dark shirt, bow tie, and trousers.

As Cash, Joaquin Phoenix wears an off-white single-button jacket in a lightweight cloth with an imperfect slubbing that suggests raw silk. Though the Walk the Line jacket nixes the showy “J.C.” embroidered on the real Cash’s left lapel, the narrow shawl collar is piped in a similar braided gilt embroidery.

The wide, padded shoulders are characteristic of the mid-1950s, and the jacket is additionally detailed with a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and a single vent. The sleeves are finished with two non-functioning white buttons at each cuff.

Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two, clad in their white stage jackets with uniquely piped shawl collars. True to his nature, Johnny’s the only one sticking to black underpinnings while the bassist Marshall Grant (Larry Bagby) sports a bright red shirt and laconic guitarist Luther Perkins (Dan John Miller) wears a subdued beige.

Befitting the “Man in Black” image he would cultivate over his career, the rest of Cash’s attire under the gold-piped white jacket is all-black. His flat front trousers are self-suspended at the waist, worn without a belt but possibly fitted with button-tab side adjusters. He also wears black leather shoes, likely lace-ups.

Rather than the long striped Western-style bow tie Cash actually wore for the Opry debut where he met June, Phoenix’s Cash wears a simpler plain black satin bow tie in the straight, narrow style that was fashionable during the fabulous fifties.

Moments before introducing himself: “Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.”

Walk the Line suggests that Cash’s famous all-black stage wardrobe originated as it was the only shirt color that he, Marshall Grant, and Luther Perkins shared. Once they’re on the road, successfully touring and selling records, this seems to be less of a consideration as the trio opts for matching stage jackets and differently colored shirts, Cash sticking to black for reasons ranging from practical (easier to keep clean while touring) and pointed (symbolizing rebellion).

Rather than the striped black shirt seen in photos from the ’56 Opry appearance, Phoenix’s Cash wears a plain black cotton Western-style work shirt with mother-of-pearl snap closures up the front placket, on the triple-snap cuffs, and fastening the two “sawtooth” double-snap flaps over the chest pockets. The shirt snaps right up to the collar, which is lined along the inside in a beige sateen fabric.

After the performance, he takes off the bow tie and unsnaps the top of his shirt, showing the top of his white ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt as he takes a seat next to June at the all-night diner.

Emboldened by his stage success, Johnny continues his budding friendship with June after a late meal at a local diner.

Once he’d reached (and surpassed) great fame and success, Johnny Cash was a known fan of Rolex watches, including a gold Day-Date on a “President”-style bracelet seen during performances across the late ’70s and into the ’80s. (To read more about the real Cash’s Rolex watches, check out these articles from Rolex Magazine and Revolution.)

We’re not quite there yet at this point in Walk the Line, as Cash has only just evolved from a struggling salesman into one of a half-dozen budding stars on the Sun Records touring lineup. He’s depicted wearing a different yellow gold watch, though the manufacturer and model are unclear to me. On the opposing wrist, he wears a sterling silver chain-link ID bracelet.

He also wears a gold wedding ring symbolizing his first marriage to Vivian, though we witness his commitment get a little hazier once he makes June’s acquaintance.

Things… aren’t great at home.

How to Get the Look

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line (2005)

Inspired by 1950s-era stage suits worn by the real Johnny Cash, costume designer Arianne Phillips rigged Joaquin Phoenix in a black-and-white outfit piped in gold that may not be practical for day-to-day wear but could inform some rockabilly-driven takes on creative black tie.

• Off-white slubbed silk stage jacket with braided gilt-piped shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, vestigial 2-button cuffs, and single vent
• Black cotton work shirt with snap-up front placket, double-snap “sawtooth” flap chest pockets, and triple-snap cuffs
• Black narrow bow tie
• Black flat front self-suspended trousers
• Black leather lace-up shoes
• Black socks
• Sterling silver chain-link ID bracelet
• Yellow gold wristwatch with gold dial and gold bracelet
• Gold wedding ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and pick up some Johnny Cash records. His 1968 live album At Folsom Prison may be personal favorite but to hear Cash at this early stage of his career, I recommend his debut album, Johnny Cash with his Hot and Blue Guitar!

Originally released in October 1957 by Sun Records, this record chronicles some of Cash’s biggest hits from the first three years of his recording career, including “Cry! Cry! Cry!”, “Folsom Prison Blues”, and “I Walk the Line”. The expanded reissue from Columbia includes alternate versions of the latter two hits as well as “Get Rhythm”, the pulsating B-side of “I Walk the Line” that Phoenix performs in this sequence.

The Quote

Hello. I’m Johnny Cash.

The post Walk the Line: Johnny Cash in Rockabilly White and Black appeared first on BAMF Style.

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile (1978)

Vitals

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, eccentric Belgian detective

Egypt, September 1937

Film: Death on the Nile
Release Date: September 29, 1978
Director: John Guillermin
Costume Designer: Anthony Powell

Background

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Peter Ustinov, the brilliant dramatist and diplomat who—among his many achievements—played Agatha Christie’s celebrated sleuth Hercule Poirot in a half-dozen productions.

Fluent in multiple languages, Ustinov was easily able to glide between the English and French required to play the fussy Belgian detective and was able to provide his own voice in the French and German versions of his movies, including several of the Poirot productions.

Death on the Nile was the first—and often considered the strongest—of Ustinov’s six films as Poirot. Based on Christie’s 1937 novel of the same name, Death on the Nile should be a familiar title for those even unfamiliar with most of the author’s work as Kenneth Branagh’s well-publicized adaptation has been repeatedly delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now scheduled for release next February, Branagh’s version will actually be the third adaptation as an extended episode of the long-running series starring the excellent David Suchet as Poirot had aired in 2004.

Ustinov’s Poirot is debuted while on holiday in Egypt, unable to keep himself from eavesdropping on the drama unfolding between the vivacious Jacqueline de Bellefort (Mia Farrow) and the newly married Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) and Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale). Poirot’s spectatorship of this dangerous—and ultimately deadly—triangle is briefly interrupted by a happy reunion with Colonel Race (David Niven), a lawyer and sportsman working in a secretive capacity investigating Linnet’s shady attorney, Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy).

Colonel Race dryly quips about Poirot’s somewhat inflated opinion of himself as the two recall “that strange affair of the decapitated clergyman” where they had last met, though Poirot finds himself humbled when a drunken Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury) misidentifies him as “Hercules Porridge, the famous French sleuth.”

Cheers!

The joy expressed by Ustinov and Niven upon their reunion was likely authentic as, more than 30 years earlier, Lieutenant-Colonel David Niven had been briefly attended to during World War II by a young private named… Peter Ustinov. Of course, it wasn’t mere coincidence as Ustinov was co-writing Niven’s upcoming film, The Way Ahead, with Eric Ambler. British Army customs forbade association between privates and high-ranking officers, so Ustinov was appointed Niven’s batman to skirt conventions and allow their professional collaboration.

Following the war, Ustinov resumed his multi-faced career as an actor, activist, and author, writing plays, films, novels, and nonfiction. Considered a 20th century Renaissance man, Ustinov was recognized throughout his life with multiple state and governmental honors and more than a dozen honorary degrees from institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, and Switzerland. His three Emmys, two Academy Awards, and Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children makes him one award short of the celebrated “EGOT” status… though Ustinov had been nominated for two Tony Awards in his career as well. After Ustinov’s death at the age of 82 near his Swiss home, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy spoke at his funeral, representing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Update: Sadly, I learned that Anthony Powell, who won his second of three Academy Awards for Best Costume Design for his work on Death on the Nile, died today at the age of 85.

What’d He Wear?

For each evening of his holiday along the Nile, no matter how many murders he’s tasked with solving, Hercule Poirot dresses for dinner in the same black three-piece dinner suit, or “tuxedo” to some. Poirot’s approach to dressing may be fussier than many with its various old-fashioned idiosyncrasies, but his sense of decorum informs that he wouldn’t depart too dramatically from the traditions of black tie, instead adapting evening-wear standards to his size and peculiarities.

The differing body types of the rotund Poirot and the lean, athletic Colonel Race offer an interesting comparison of how each man dresses to flatter his respective frame, each following the same general approach of a single-breasted peak lapel dinner jacket, wing collar, and even gold signet rings and a “double Albert” watch chain looped across a single-breasted waistcoat; in fact, the only significant difference of the two men’s approaches are the colors of their waistcoat as Race sports a low-fastening white while Poirot opts for black silk that matches the facings of his dinner jacket.

Indeed, the broad peak lapels of Poirot’s black wool ventless dinner jacket are faced in black silk, rolling to a single silk-covered button positioned at his waist line that he wears open. The shoulders are soft and padded, and the sleeves are finished in four silk-covered buttons. He dresses the welted breast pocket with a white linen display kerchief, often placing his hands in the jacket’s jetted hip pockets.

Poirot shares his findings to an understandably fascinated audience that includes the late Linnet’s frenemy Jackie, Poirot’s partner-in-crimesolving Colonel Race, and the widowed (and bathrobe-clad) Simon Doyle.

Poirot wears one of the traditional shirts associated with the black tie dress code, constructed of finely woven white cotton marcella (piqué) and collarless to allow its wearer to attach the clean collar of his choosing. In this case, Poirot opts for a stiff white wing collar, worn with the pointed wings in front of his bow tie as he does with his daily dress. His thistle-shaped bow tie is black silk, thus the dress code’s naming convention.

Gold studs affix the collar to the front and back of the shirt’s neckband. This old-fashioned system allowed wearers to wash their shirts and collars separately, the collars subjected to rigorous cleaning and starching to keep them stiff, sharp, and presentable… and easily replaced as needed. It was around the time that Death on the Nile was set in the mid-1930s that evening shirts began trending toward their more modern evolution, thanks to increasingly relaxed attitudes, central heating, and improved laundry processes, but Poirot remains a proponent of the old sartorial guard with his stiff detachable collars.

Poirot offers a well-received platitude for the benefit of a drunken Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury).

Though these old-fashioned shirts often had detachable cuffs in addition to collars, Poirot’s double (French) cuffs appear to be attached to the shirt and made from the same lightly textured marcella shirting. He fastens them with a set of cuff links connected by a long double bar that keeps the cuffs together over his thicker wrists.

The squared pearl-effect surfaces of his cuff links match the three visible studs in place of buttons on the shirt’s front placket.

Poirot hands a clue—a torn corner of a thousand-franc note—to Colonel Race at yet another murder scene.

Though cummerbunds were increasingly accepted as alternative waist coverings in warm locales like a late summer evening in Egypt, a gentleman of Poirot’s size—not to mention his old-fashioned sartorial sensibilities—benefits from the full and more flattering coverage provided by a waistcoat as the intermediate layer between his dinner jacket and the top of his trousers.

As mentioned earlier, Poirot’s shawl-collar waistcoat is a black silk to match the lapel facings of his dinner jacket. Styled to accommodate Peter Ustinov’s girth and six-foot height, the waistcoat rises a touch higher than the traditional dress waistcoat—though still not as egregiously full-covering as the modern “prom rental” waistcoat—with four buttons covered in the same black silk as the body of the garment. Lined with white fabric, the waistcoat has two hip pockets, and Poirot wears his gold pocket watch in one of them with the chain worn “double Albert” style through a small hole cut expressly for this purpose near the third button.

Poirot’s black wool formal trousers match his dinner jacket, detailed down the side seams with narrow double stripes in black silk to echo the jacket facings and waistcoat. Even when crouching to investigate a crime scene or less-than-elegantly sprawled in drowsy repose in the ship’s lounge, Poirot’s jacket and waistcoat do their job of covering the top of his trousers so we’re privy to little of the detailing aside from the stripes running down to the plain-hemmed bottoms. We can assume that they’re held up by suspenders (braces), with white silk being the most traditional fabric, and that Poirot would opt for his usual pleats in accordance with both trending fashions and the most comfortable tailoring for his build.

By the 1930s, oxfords had increasingly supplanted the old-fashioned opera pump, or “court shoe”, as the widely seen and accepted footwear with semi-formal black tie evening-wear and even full evening dress of white tie and tails. However, as with his detachable collar, Poirot remains true to tradition as he completes his kit with a pair of well-shined black patent leather pumps detailed with the requisite grosgrain silk bows and worn with thin black silk socks.

In his 1964 volume ABCs of Men’s Fashion, published decades after Death on the Nile was set, the estimable Hardy Amies wrote that pumps “are correct wear with evening dress, especially if you are dancing” though he lamented that they “have been largely, and I think, unfortunately, replaced by a light tie-shoe in patent leather.”

Poirot keeps a pair of ivory dress gloves—likely a soft leather like chamois or suede—in his pocket, fashionable for gentlemanly pursuits like dancing but also likely serving a practical purpose should he need to handle any grisly evidence at the occasional murder scene. Of these too, Sir Hardy observes that “you were once considered to be incorrectly dressed without your gloves,” and it’s thus no surprise that Poirot would continue the tradition well into the ’30s even after many men had abandoned them for all but ceremonial occasions and cold weather.

Poirot signals respect to his lovely dance partner Rosalie Otterbourne (Olivia Hussey) by slipping on his dress gloves before sharing a tango.

For occasions requiring additional scrutiny, such as calculating his quadruple jump in checkers, he keeps his pince-nez handy, attached to a thin black cord worn around his neck. Unlike modern eyeglasses with arms and earpieces, pince-nez were supported on one’s face by bridging the bridge of their nose… hence the name “pince-nez”, which translates from French to “to pinch the nose”.

Pince-nez in hand after waking from an unexpected nap, Poirot explains to Mrs. Van Schyuler (Bette Davis) that he can “hardly keep my eyes open.”

The gloves and glasses may come and go, but Poirot always wears his sole affectation, a gold signet ring on his left pinky that appears to be etched with his monogram “H.P.”

What to Imbibe

Hoping to circumvent the slow bar service in the dining room, Poirot forages behind the bar for a liqueur that meets his gustatory preferences, inadvertently overhearing a damning confrontation between the blustering Dr. Bessner (Jack Warden) and the doomed Linnet. After she leaves the room, he makes his presence evident by rising from behind the bar, a bottle of crème de cacao in hand, to pour himself an apertif.

Poirot’s preference for these flavored liqueurs would continue into Evil Under the Sun when he requests either crème de Cassis or a sirop de banane during cocktail hour.

For the actual dinner service, Poirot’s fondness for Château Pétrus—and the telltale “moldy” sediment noted by Colonel Race—eventually tips him off that his wine must have been tampered with on the night of the first murder.

Poirot: That’s the normal sediment for a great bottle of Château Pétrus. Will you join me in some?
Col. Race: No, thanks. You stick to your wine, I’ll stick to my whisky.

Poirot and Race bicker over the colonel having sent back Poirot’s Pétrus.

One of the most exclusive and expensive wines, Château Pétrus serves as a fitting favorite for our eccentric epicurean. With typically no more than 30,000 bottles produced in a year at its Pomerol vineyard and esstate, this Bordeaux has been celebrated for its refined qualities and complex nose. Though it had been championed for decades, winning a gold medal at the third Paris World’s Fair in 1878, it wasn’t until after World War II and the successful 1945 vintage that the Pétrus global reputation truly begin to grow.

How to Get the Look

Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile (1978)

As fastidious a dresser as he is a detective, Hercule Poirot leaves no detail unaddressed in his period-perfect black dinner suit complete with wing-collar shirt, patent leather pumps, and a shawl-collar waistcoat ornamented by his elegant gold “double Albert” watch chain.

• Black wool single-button dinner jacket with wide silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Black silk single-breasted 4-button formal waistcoat with shawl collar, hip pockets, and notched bottom
• Black wool pleated formal trousers with black silk double side stripes and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton marcella evening shirt with collarless neckband, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Detachable stiff wing collar (with gold studs)
  • Mother-of-pearl squared shirt studs
  • Mother-of-pearl squared bar-style cuff links
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black patent leather opera pumps with grosgrain bows
• Black silk dress socks
• Ivory dress gloves
• Gold monogrammed signet pinky ring
• Pince-nez glasses, attached via black neck-cord

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Agatha Christie’s original novel!

The Quote

With me it’s the exercise of the little grey cells. Luck, I leave to the others.

The post Death on the Nile: Peter Ustinov’s Dinner Suit as Poirot appeared first on BAMF Style.

Cary Grant as Victor, Earl of Rhyall, in The Grass is Greener (1960)

Vitals

Cary Grant as Victor, Earl of Rhyall, deadpan but debonair nobleman

Rural England, Spring 1960

Film: The Grass is Greener
Release Date: December 23, 1960
Director: Stanley Donen
Wardrobe Supervisor: John Wilson-Apperson

Background

Today marks the 35th anniversary since the death of screen legend and style icon Cary Grant. To commemorate the actor’s prolific career, I wanted to highlight his characteristically stylish clothing from one of his lesser-discussed works, the Stanley Donen-directed romantic comedy The Grass is Greener.

While The Grass is Greener isn’t among my favorite of Grant’s filmography, I can certainly appreciate its cast and style! The execution feels a little too stagey for my liking, which makes sense as it was adapted by Hugh Williams and Margaret Vyner from their own hit play, deriving its title from the centuries-old idiom that is paraphrased by Grant’s character when he admits that “indeed, the grass is always greener on the other side of the hedge.”

Grant plays Victor, the Earl of Rhyall, who opens the stately country manor he shares with Countess Hilary (Deborah Kerr) to guided tours in order to boost their falling fortune. The wealthy American oilman Charles Delacro (Robert Mitchum) visits the house during one of the tours, leading to an affair beginning with the romantic-minded countess. The mannered Earl opts not to react jealously to his wife’s infidelity with Charles, instead entertaining visits from their socialite friend Hattie (Jean Simmons) as mounting tensions in the love quadrangle boil into an old-fashioned duel between Victor and Charles.

What’d He Wear?

“As one ascends the social ladder, with its increasing demands for dress up, the odd or separate dinner jacket surfaces,” wrote Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man. “Paired with the conventional formal trouser, this nonmatching jacket surrogate is often a variation on the velvet-smoking-jacket theme and traditionally reserved for less grand affairs.”

Particularly in one of “the stately homes of England”, the dress code for an intimate dinner would permit the Earl to take a relaxed approach to black tie, especially considering that he likely defines entertaining the man who’s been having a dalliance with his wife as a “less grand affair”.

Victor dresses for dinner in a double-breasted dinner jacket made from a lush green velvet, perhaps reflecting the eponymous maxim or expressing the emotion that he’s “green with envy” on his literal sleeve. Of course, there’s also an argument to be made that green is simply the Earl’s go-to color, seen across the rest of his wardrobe including his cardigans and silk dressing gown. It’s also referenced when Charles spots Victor’s great-great-grandfather in a photo and observes, “say, he’s got a green coat on just like yours!” For a man who rigidly honors decorum, Victor would certainly delight in following the fashions of his forebears.

Victor’s perfectly tailored velvet jacket has been rigged accordingly for its role as a dinner coat, the trim shawl collar faced in black grosgrain silk, matching the coverings on the buttons. The double-breasted front is arranged in the 4×1-button “Kent”-style, with two rows of two buttons, though only the closer-positioned bottom row has a fastening button. The ventless jacket has gently padded shoulders, front darts to flattering sculpt the cut, and straight hip pockets but no breast pocket. Each sleeve is finished with two closely spaced buttons.

Victor (Cary Grant) and Hilary (Deborah Kerr) entertain their potential paramours Charles (Robert Mitchum) and Hattie (Jean Simmons).

Victor and Charles both wear evening shirts in white voile, a high-twist plain-weave cotton that results in a fine, lighter-wearing fabric, which would be particularly comfortable under the heavy velvet of Victor’s dinner jacket. Given that voile is a nearly sheer fabric, it’s typically reserved for the bodies and sleeves of men’s dinner shirts, with reinforced bibs that offer both modesty and a crisper white presentation in the part of the shirt that shows under a jacket. (You can read more about voile shirting at Bond Suits.)

On Victor’s shirt, made by Frank Foster, the pleated bib has two round diamond studs up the front, echoing the larger cuff links that fasten his squared single cuffs. The shirt also has a traditional long-pointed spread collar, double-layered like the cuffs. Victor wears a midnight blue silk bow tie in the traditional butterfly, or “thistle”, shape.

Charles and Victor strip down to their dinner shirts to allow more mobility when firing in their duel, overseen by Sellers.

Victor wears dark midnight blue reverse-pleated formal trousers with an appropriately long rise to Grant’s natural waist. Consistent with his more dressed-down kit and the fact that his double-breasted jacket offers ample coverage, he foregoes a waist covering unlike Charles, who wears a cummerbund with his dinner suit. The trousers have side-adjusters on each side of the waistband, adjusted by sliding a tab through the silver buckle. Vertical-entry pockets positioned along the seams just behind the standard silk side stripe, and the back-right pocket closes through a single button.

The trousers have an ample fit through the legs, finished with plain-hemmed bottoms that break over his black patent leather opera pumps. Also known as “court shoes”, these slip-on shoes with their grosgrain silk bows were once the most formal footwear options for both black and white tie dress codes. Men’s dress pumps generally fell out of fashion over the course of the 20th century in favor of oxfords, though they still had their place in the stately homes of England and Sir Hardy Amies was still celebrating them in his 1964 volume ABCs of Men’s Fashion as “correct wear with evening dress, especially if you are dancing.”

Victor’s pumps have midnight grosgrain bows that match the silk across the rest of his outfit, and even his thin dress socks may be made from a midnight blue silk, if not black.

Victor and Charles each don a pair of glasses for the duel, allowing for more accurate vision and eye protection for somewhat more responsible shooting… in an ultimately irresponsible situation. Victor likely wears Cary Grant’s own personal glasses, as the actor had started wearing these thick black-framed specs around this time and would continue sporting glasses like this through the rest of his life.

Victor’s glasses allow him to take a more careful aim during his duel with Charles.

After taking a bullet to his left arm during the duel, Victor recuperates by changing out of his velvet dinner jacket into his favorite dressing gown, a knee-length robe in olive green silk, patterned all over with scattered scarlet dots. The lightweight dressing gown has a shawl collar, breast pocket, hip pockets, and a sash-style belt, all made from the same silk as the rest of the robe.

Victor and Hilary craft a makeshift sling out of a navy silk scarf, patterned in a burgundy and bronze paisley print, which they loop over his neck and tie under his left arm to support his wounded wing.

Hilary tends to her wounded husband by helping him dress for comfort in his silk dressing gown with a silk makeshift sling.

The Gun

The dinner party evolves into a duel, suggested by Victor in accordance with his old-fashioned compulsion to defend his wife’s honor. “Swords or pistols?” asks Charles, to which Victor responds “I think pistols would be less tiring.”

The family butler, Sellers (Moray Watson), produces two handguns. Following a coin toss, Charles takes the Luger pistol, while Victor picks up a Webley .38 Mk IV “Duty Model” revolver, apropos his English heritage… though neither man realizes that Sellers loaded both weapons with blank ammunition.

“Since the government insists that nuclear weapons are a deterrent against war, surely they’d accept dueling as a deterrent against divorce.”

Webley & Scott had been producing top-break service revolvers since the 1880s, chambered for the massive .455 Webley cartridge. Following World War I, the British government sought smaller-bore alternatives to the .455 and, following extensive tests, concluded that the ideal round to balance power and portability would be a 200-grain .38-caliber cartridge. Webley thus scaled down the frame of the .455 Webley Mk IV revolver currently in service to develop the Webley .38 Mk IV, a cosmetically similar but smaller and lighter revolver that retained the self-extracting top-break mechanism of the classic Webleys but fired the new .38/200 cartridge, also known as the .38 S&W.

Much to Webley & Scott’s dismay, the British government took the design to the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield (RSAF Enfield), who mimicked it to produce the service revolver that would be designated “No. 2 Mk I” upon its introduction in 1932. Webley & Scott responded to the slight by suing the government, and the storied firm would have the last laugh when RSAF Enfield was unable to match the needed demand to arm British troops with the No. 2 revolver during World War II… resulting in the Webley .38 Mk IV being ultimately authorized alongside it for British Army service. Enfield would produce approximately 270,000 No. 2 revolvers over 25 years or production, with Webley & Scott producing nearly twice as many .38 Mk IV revolvers, ending production in 1978.

The Webley .38 Mk IV was produced in multiple barrel lengths, including the full 4.9″-barreled version, a 4″-barreled “Duty” model, and the compact 3″-barreled “Pocket” model. Victor appears to have the “Duty” model with a four-inch barrel.

What to Imbibe

“As a matter of fact, I’ve a very good brandy, but I’m saving that for Charles and myself,” Victor declares to the group, and he appears to have poured out snifters for Charles and himself following their billiards match. The “Co-” visible at the beginning of the label suggested Courvoisier, but the label doesn’t appear to be recognizable as Courvoisier beyond that, and it may just be a stock “Cognac” prop label.

Regardless of the producer, brandy continues to be the Earl’s drink of choice even after the duel, when Charles exclaims “You can’t just sit around with a bullet hole in you, drinkin’ brandy!”

After Charles and Hattie leave to fetch the doctor that will treat the Earl’s wounded arm, Victor and Hilary rekindle their romance over glasses of champagne that he had ordered earlier in the day. The distinctive dark green bottles with their gold-wrapped necks and yellow labels suggests Veuve Clicquot, the refined French champagne dating back to the 1770s. Following Madame Clicquot’s innovations like introducing vintages and blended rosé, the brand introduced its now-signature yellow label in the late 19th century.

Victor raises a glass to reconciliation while enjoying a quiet moment with Hilary following their chaotic evening with Charles and Hattie.

Throughout the evening, the foursome take advantage of the well-stocked bar cart that had been wheeled into the drawing room. Most drink brandy at one point in the evening, with the exception of Hattie, who diverges from her usual concoction of Pink Gin with “burned” bitters to drink Wolfschmidt Kümmel.

A colorless liqueur flavored by caraway seed, kümmel originated in the Netherlands during the late 16th century, eventually drifting east to Russia and Germany, specifically the latter which remains its most prominent country of production today. Kümmel experience has been compared to gin, albeit with a more calming effect that has popularized it as a post-prandial digestif as well as a favorite “putting mixture” among Scottish golfers.

Hattie pours herself a small wine glass of kümmel produced by Wolfschmidt, once a modest purveyor of clear spirits like gin and vodka that has spent the last several decades descending the shelves at your local liquor store to the point that now can one purchase a plastic handle of Wolfschmidt vodka for around $15.

Given her elevated emotional state, one could understand why Hattie turns to drinking kümmel while dining with Victor and Hilary.

How to Get the Look

Cary Grant as Victor, Earl of Rhyall, in The Grass is Greener (1960)

The dignified and debonair Earl dresses appropriately for a small dinner party at his stately home, accommodating the setting-influenced black tie dress code but swapping out the traditional dinner jacket for a still-elegant double-breasted jacket in dark green velvet. His pump shoes, while once the most formal evening footwear, also suggest a slipper-like intimacy appropriate for the soirée of four.

• Dark green velvet double-breasted dinner jacket with grosgrain-faced shawl collar, grosgrain-covered 4×1-button front, straight hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton voile evening shirt with spread collar, pleated bib (with diamond studs) and single cuffs (with diamond links)
• Midnight-blue silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Midnight-blue single reverse-pleated formal trousers with silk side stripe, silver-buckle side adjusters, on-seam side pockets, button-through back-right pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather dress pump shoes with grosgrain bows
• Midnight-blue silk dress socks
• Black-framed glasses

Have you considered a green velvet jacket for any upcoming holiday soirees? While I like the smoking jacket-adjacent aesthetic of Cary Grant’s screen-worn shawl-collar double-breasted, there are plenty of affordable varieties you could explore to experiment with elegance:

• Alfani single-breasted notch-lapel jacket in green velvet (Macy’s, $118)
• Dobell shawl-collar single-button dinner jacket in dark green velvet (Dobell, $199.95)
• Gianni Feraud double-breasted jacket in green velvet (ASOS, $51.50)
• Zara single-breasted peak-lapel dinner jacket in dark green velvet (Zara, $149)

All prices and availability updated as of Nov. 22, 2021.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Marriage isn’t like a tray of hors d’oeuvres, you can’t just pick what you fancy, you’ve got to take the lot or nothing.

The post The Grass is Greener: Cary Grant’s Velvet Dinner Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Frank Sinatra sings his ’40s-era hit “All or Nothing at All” during his June 1971 retirement concert in L.A.

Vitals

Frank Sinatra, multi-talented entertainer facing retirement

Los Angeles, Summer 1971

Series: Sinatra: All or Nothing At All
Air Date: April 5-6, 2015
Director: Alex Gibney

Background

Born December 12, 1915, Frank Sinatra had recently turned 55 when he started talking seriously with close friends about retirement. For more than 30 years, the entertainer had enjoyed a landmark career, beginning with his days as a pop idol, then a career downturn in the early ’50s that was reinvigorated by an Oscar win for From Here to Eternity and a series of concept albums for Capitol Records that launched him to massive success.

Throughout the ’60s, Sinatra evolved from one of the most popular entertainers in the nation to one of the most influential entertainers across the world. He had founded his own record label with Reprise Records, been a confidante of a sitting U.S. President (before their famous falling-out), and continued to prove his success on the charts with songs like “My Way” (despite his resentment for this particular tune.)

Like so many successful 55-year-old Americans, Ol’ Blue Eyes decided to hang up his tilted hat and retire, with his final performance to be June 13, 1971, at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Alex Gibney’s 2015 HBO documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All was framed around the singer’s hand-chosen setlist for the concert, and how the eleven musical milestones Sinatra selected essentially told the story of his life to that point.

(Of course, Sinatra’s “retirement” was short-lived and he would be back in the recording studio within two years, never ceasing to work until his death in May 1998 at the age of 82.)

What’d He Wear?

“For me, a tuxedo is a way of life,” Sinatra once stated, according to Bill Zehme’s The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’. “The costume empowered them, enlarged them,” Zehme writes of FS and his Rat Pack pallies, who regularly took the stage in black or midnight blue dinner suits, eschewing less formal lounge suits and particularly daytime colors like gray or brown.

Perhaps representative of Sinatra’s struggle between maintaining his classic repertoire and appealing to new audiences, his black tie kit for the 1971 farewell concert blends the emerging fashion trends of the ’70s with his time-tested philosophy toward evening dress.

Sinatra shares a laugh with fellow Rat Packer Sammy Davis Jr. on the night of his retirement concert in L.A. While FS has incorporated the era trends into his usual dinner suit, Davis has totally embraced the new fashions by eschewing classic evening wear in favor of a formal Nehru jacket.

Through the ’60s, Sinatra was a customer of Beverly Hills tailor Sy Devore, who also catered to his stylish singing pals like Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Elvis Presley, though Devore’s death and Sinatra’s ascension to his “Chairman of the Board” reputation led to his taking his business to more conservative clothiers like Brooks Brothers, Carroll & Co., and Dunhill, before ultimately heading across the pond and into shops of reputable British cutters like Cyril Castle.

Made from a high-quality midnight-blue wool, the single-breasted dinner jacket has an elegant black silk-faced shawl collar that rolls to a single black plastic 2-hole sew-through button at a position that coordinates with the then-fashionably lower rise of trouser waistbands. The single vent and the flaps over the hip pockets belong more on a business suit or lounge suit than a dinner jacket. Sinatra dresses his welted breast pocket with a subdued white folded linen pocket square, rather than one of his more colorful kerchiefs in red or his favorite color, orange. The straight, wide shoulders build up the singer’s famously lean physique, roped at the sleeveheads and finished with two plastic buttons on each cuff.

“He never wore a cummerbund, always a cinched-up vest,” observed Zehme. His black formal waistcoat can be glimpsed following the low-fastening lines of his dinner jacket during the 1971 concert, only seen in greater detail in behind-the-scenes photography of Sinatra in his dressing room before the concert. Stripped of his jacket, we see the black backless waistcoat, essentially two silk panels that flare down each side of the torso, fastened behind the back of the neck and around the back of his waist with an ornamental button-closure in the front that would be covered by the buttoned dinner jacket.

Sinatra, photographed for LIFE magazine just minutes before taking the stage during his 1971 retirement concert. He preferred waistcoats to cummerbunds, always sporting low enough vests that the lines could barely be glimpsed under his jacket.

“My basic rules are to have shirt cuffs extended half an inch from the jacket sleeves,” Sinatra explained. Unlike Dino, who favored casual button-down shirts even with his tuxedoes, FS invariably sported traditional white cotton evening shirts meant to be worn with black tie. Sinatra’s shirts were detailed with pleated bibs, which ranged from frilly pleats as found on his shirts through the ’50s as seen in Pal Joey and when accepting his Oscar to more irregular diagonal pleats made for him by Nat Wise of London (now Anto Beverly Hills) in the ’80s.

This 1971 evening shirt has more traditional narrow pleats and a long point collar that appears to be the shirt’s only concession to the era’s trends. The double (French) cuffs emerge neatly from the ends of his sleeves, showing just a flash of the mother-of-pearl cuff links that echo the pearl-esque shine of three clear plastic buttons up the front placket of the shirt.

The massive wings of Sinatra’s black satin silk bow tie date it the most to the early ’70s, proportionally compatible with the shirt’s large collar but dwarfing the more moderate width of the jacket’s lapels.

“Trousers should break just above the shoe,” Sinatra prescribed, adding the guidance that the wearer should “try not to sit down because it wrinkles the pants. If you have to sit, don’t cross your legs.” The entertainer follows his own advice, gently perching himself on a stool but never outwardly sitting, thus maintaining the integrity of his matching midnight-blue dinner suit trousers, detailed with the signature black silk stripe down the side of each leg.

The plain-hemmed trouser bottoms cover the tops of his black patent leather kicks, which appear to be inside-zip boots rather than his signature slip-on pumps with straight grosgrain bows. The boots are a surprising concession to early ’70s fashion for a sartorial traditionalist like Sinatra, but they retain his preferred gleam.

“Shine your mary janes on the underside of a couch cushion,” Sinatra also advised, which his road manager Tony Oppedisano explained was the singer’s actual practice before heading on stage. “You know why he did that? When he was a kid, he’d do it at home and his mother would smack him. He knew nobody else was ever gonna smack him for it.”

FS “sits” for his appropriately somber rendition of the ballad “I’ll Never Smile Again”.

Sinatra keeps his jewelry and accessories to a minimum, with only his usual gold signet ring shining from his left pinky. Zehme writes that this ring “bore the ancient Sinatra family crest, forged in the old country, a crowned griffin with shield.”

Using his right hand to steady the mic, Sinatra snaps the fingers on his left hand—which he also dresses with his usual pinky ring—as he keeps the beat to Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.

What to Imbibe

Frank Sinatra’s preference for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey has been so mythologized that the brand has even marketed a special “Sinatra Select” bottling. However, on the night of his prospective swan song in L.A., Thomas Thompson reported for LIFE:

He was making small talk and a frog crept into his voice. Someone noticed it. “You want something to drink, Frank?” There is always someone there to fetch for him. “Yeah… thanks… I’d like a vodka.” The man started out. Frank stopped him. “Either that or a cup of hot tea.” The man hurried away. Frank stopped him once more. “Better get booze. Forget the tea.”

Thompson later reports that, after the vodka arrived, “Frank squeezed half a lemon into it and took a long drink.” Zehme recounted the story in The Way You Wear Your Hat, contextualizing that Stolichnaya was Sinatra’s vodka of choice, always enjoyed on the rocks unless it was the driving spirit of a very dry martini. Given that the Chairman didn’t throw the drink back in his face, the nameless gofer from Thompson’s article likely poured the correct Stoli.

How to Get the Look

Frank Sinatra during his 1971 retirement concert in L.A., as seen in the 2015 documentary Sinatra: All or Nothing at All

Frank Sinatra cycled through tuxedoes of varying style, color, cloth, and detailing throughout more than a half-century of superstardom, though the most enduring look remains the dark shawl-collar dinner jacket, which could be appointed to suit the contemporary trends as seen when Ol’ Blue Eyes wore it with a wide-winged bow tie and patent leather boots for his farewell concert in 1971.

• Midnight-blue wool single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and single vent
• White cotton evening shirt with large point collar, narrow-pleated bib (with mother-of-pearl studs), and double/French cuffs (with mother-of-pearl cuff links)
• Black satin silk oversized butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Black silk low-fastening backless formal waistcoat
• Midnight-blue wool flat front formal trousers with black silk side stripes and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather inside-zip ankle boots
• Black silk dress socks
• White linen pocket square
• Gold signet pinky ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the two-part HBO documentary, available on DVD and currently streaming on Netflix.

The Quote

Having been a saloon singer all my life, I’ve become an expert on saloon songs: the kind of things that cause men to cry in their beers.

The post Frank Sinatra’s 1971 Retirement Concert Tuxedo appeared first on BAMF Style.

Jack Lemmon as Stanley Ford in How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

Vitals

Jack Lemmon as Stanley Ford, comic strip artist and dedicated bachelor

New York City, Summer 1964

Film: How to Murder Your Wife
Release Date: September 20, 1965
Director: Richard Quine
Wardrobe: Izzy Berne & Marie Osborne

Background

On what would have been the birthday of one of my favorite actors—Jack Lemmon, born February 8, 1925—I want to revisit his style in the first of his filmography that I had ever seen, the swingin’ ’60s comedy How to Murder Your Wife which, as the title implies, balances black comedy with classic screwball elements.

Lemmon stars as Stanley Ford, a successful newspaper cartoonist whose spun his success writing the daily adventures of super-spy “Bash Brannigan” into an enviable bachelor lifestyle, complete with a swanky Lenox Hill townhouse and his devoted valet Charles (Terry-Thomas), whose daily duties include cleaning up after Stanley’s latest romantic conquests, providing reassurance and advice, and ensuring that a “properly chilled” vodka martini awaits Stanley at the end of each day.

Stanley remains committed to the fruits of bachelordom, so any impending marriage among his circle of male friends presents like a funeral, scored by a mournful dirge right up until the moment that the stag party’s bella donna della giornata pops out of a cake. On this particular evening, the latter is a beautiful Venetian-born stripper (Virna Lisi) who so impresses the inebriated Stanley that she wakes up beside him the next morning… as the new Mrs. Ford. As a hungover Stanley realizes what has happened, he tries to unstick the sticky situation, which is made all the worse as he learns that his new wife can’t understand any language except for her native Italian.

Charles: Good God. Doesn’t speak English? And yet, on the other hand, if one will go around marrying persons who pop out of cakes, it’s bound to be, well, rather catch as catch can, isn’t it, sir?

Stanley attempts to adjust to marital bliss, much to Charles’ dismay, as the one-time bachelor pad shows increasing evidence of Mrs. Ford’s feminine touch… and Stanley’s waistline shows increasing evidence of her Italian cooking. Amidst all this, Stanley has maintained his usual pattern of incorporating his real life into the comic strip—now renamed The Brannigans in reference to Bash following his creator’s example—but the time has come to “kill” Mrs. Brannigan. Of course, Stanley can’t write anything that he hasn’t already proven he can act out himself, so he sets out to procure the “goofballs” and the access to the “gloppita-gloppita machine” that Bash would need to drug and then dispose of his wife.

The new Mrs. Ford is understandably alarmed after spotting her husband’s very public depiction of her demise.

The scene is set during a wild cocktail party at the Fords’ home, where the real Mrs. Ford—we never do learn her name!—passes out after Stanley spikes her champagne with barbiturates. As his wife sleeps, Stanley assumes his Bash Brannigan persona, dresses a mannequin to resemble his wife, and indeed discards her into the concrete mixer on a construction site behind their home. Once the real Mrs. Ford wakes, she finds her sleeping husband hunched over a comic strip that disturbingly details and celebrates her demise, so she leaves that night… inspiring a wave of suspicion to fall on Stanley once friends and neighbors realize his wife has seemingly vanished while his plan for her perfect murder has been distributed in 463 newspapers across the country.

What’d He Wear?

Stanley dresses for social evenings in a fashionably appointed midnight-blue dinner suit with a subtle sheen suggesting mohair or silk woven with the wool construction. As Bash Brannigan’s contemporary-in-espionage James Bond was illustrating on the big screen, a well-tailored tuxedo was considered a must for a slick ’60s secret agent.

Stanley’s single-breasted dinner jacket has a narrow shawl collar, self-faced and detailed with ornate black neo-Edwardian embroidery along the edges.

Note the unique detailing of Stanley’s dinner jacket, from the embroidery along the edges of his self-faced lapels to the narrow velvet gauntlets turned back from each sleeve cuff.

The ventless jacket has straight flapped hip pockets but no breast pocket. The straight, padded shoulders are heavily roped at the heads, and the cuffs are finished with narrow velvet “turnback” gauntlets and two black two-hole horn buttons that match the single button on the front.

Stanley joins Judge Blackstone (Sidney Blackmer) at their mutual friend’s bachelor party. Note the judge’s traditional black tie kit—with silk-faced shawl collar and pocket square—contrasting against the younger Stanley’s more fashion-informed variation.

Stanley’s white cotton evening shirt has a point collar, a pleated front bib, and squared double (French) cuffs, fastening the placket and cuffs with squared gold studs and links, respectively. He enlists Charles’ help to finish dressing, including knotting his black self-tying bow tie, which presents a perfect butterfly—or “thistle”—shape.

Stanley’s preferred waist covering is a black silk cummerbund that departs from tradition by lacking pleats, instead resembling a solid sash that closes over itself on the right side. Based particularly on this later detail, I believe the cummerbund is integral to the trouser design, built into the top of the trousers rather than being a separate piece worn atop them.

Stanley finishes tying his bow tie as his dutiful valet awaits behind him with his dinner jacket.

The rest of the matching midnight-blue flat front formal trousers coordinate with the jacket, specifically with the black velvet trim dressing it down more than the traditional silk. The side pockets slant gently forward, with a thin black velvet braid following the line of the pocket opening down to the side seam, extending down each straight leg to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Though he doesn’t wear them for the stag party, Stanley holds up his trousers during the cocktail party at his home with a set of charcoal tic-checked suspenders (braces) that passes through brass-toned adjuster hardware and connects to buttons inside the trouser waistband via black leather hooks.

After a long night of cartooning and quasi-murdering, Stanley strips down to his shirt sleeves and untied bow tie, but the state of his cummerbund suggests that it’s built into the top of his trousers.

Stanley appoints his dinner suit with black patent leather derby shoes, fastened with short lace panels that appear to be tied with black ribbon-like tassel through two sets of lace eyelets. Derbies are less formal than oxfords, but the patent leather uppers, plain-toe style, and celebratory lacing make these particular shoes’ case as the appropriate footwear with Stanley’s creative black tie. His thin black dress socks reveal that Stanley knows when to playfully experiment with black tie tradition and when to restrict himself to classic taste.

Stanley’s patent leather shoes have sturdy enough soles to help the inebriated cartoonist maintain some balance during the wild stag party… at least until he tries stepping away from the wall.

Strapped to his left wrist on a black leather strap, Stanley wears a handsome gold dress watch with a round silver dial sparsely detailed with non-numeric hour markers.

Stanley’s friend and lawyer, Harold Lampson (Eddie Mayehoff), observes the effect that “goofballs” have on his own wife.

Stanley takes a break from the cocktail party to slip into his Bash Brannigan persona, donning a black felt short-brimmed trilby and black leather gloves. The hat serves the dual duty of providing a villainous characterization for his subsequent comic strip… and shielding the wearer’s face so that the audience can’t tell as easily when it is or isn’t Jack Lemmon who’s scaling the side of his building with a mannequin of his wife or dropping her off from the bucket of the gloppita-gloppita machine.

A hat and gloves transform Stanley Ford into Bash Brannigan.

What to Listen to

The movie’s score, composed by Neal Hefti, consists of smooth bossa nova-infused instrumentals that set the scene for cocktail parties and evenings of quiet hedonism. Cy Coleman’s 1960 album Playboy’s Penthouse also seems apropos for Stanley Ford’s bachelor lifestyle. Enjoy a sampling of both albums!

How to Get the Look

Jack Lemmon as Stanley Ford in How to Murder Your Wife (1965)

Stanley Ford’s creative-informed approach to black tie suggests a man familiar enough with the “rules” of evening dress to find tasteful ways of bending them, whether through alternative trim or uniquely integrated detailing.

• Midnight-blue wool-blend single-button dinner jacket with embroidery-trimmed shawl collar, straight flapped hip pockets, 2-button cuffs with narrow velvet gauntlets, and ventless back
• White cotton evening shirt with point collar, pleated front bib, and square double/French cuffs, worn with squared gold studs/cuff links
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Midnight-blue wool-blend flat front formal trousers with integrated black silk cummerbund, gently slanted side pockets, black velvet side braiding, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather tassel-laced derby shoes
• Black dress socks
• Gold dress watch with round silver dial on black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. Much of the comedy is dated—to say the least—but Lemmon is always watchable, in my opinion. YMMV.

The post Jack Lemmon’s Bachelor Tuxedo in How to Murder Your Wife appeared first on BAMF Style.

Simon MacCorkindale as Simon Doyle in Death on the Nile (1978)

Vitals

Simon MacCorkindale as Simon Doyle, newlywed honeymooner

Egypt, September 1937

Film: Death on the Nile
Release Date: September 29, 1978
Director: John Guillermin
Costume Designer: Anthony Powell

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today would have been the 70th birthday of Simon MacCorkindale, the English actor whose breakthrough role was in Death on the Nile, the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s murder mystery of the same name.

The novel has been adapted again, this time by Kenneth Branagh, who directed and starred as eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in the movie that was finally released yesterday after years of delay due to COVID-19 and allegations against Armie Hammer, who played the same role originated by MacCorkindale.

The story follows a love triangle from England to Egypt, where the glamorous Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) spends her honeymoon with the charming, if simple, Simon Doyle (MacCorkindale). The duo’s union wasn’t quite so simple, as Simon had been first engaged to Linnet’s erstwhile friend Jacqueline de Bellefort (Mia Farrow), who made up for her lack of wealth with boundless energy. (Casting Chiles and Farrow as best friends may have been a nod to their characters in The Great Gatsby four years earlier.)

The Doyles’ idyllic honeymoon is soon ruined by Jackie stalking them through Egypt’s ancient landmarks, though she’s hardly Linnet’s only enemy as the paddle steamer gliding up the Nile seems to consist almost exclusively of people with their own reasons to despise the haughty heiress. It’s hardly a surprise when Linnet is found dead in her cabin, and all evidence points to Jackie as the shooter… though her former friend has an airtight alibi after she was witnessed shooting Simon in the leg during a drunken argument the prior evening, seemingly incapacitating him and rendering her into constant supervision until the following morning.

Unluckily for our murderer—or murderers—famed detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) and the dapper British agent Colonel Race (David Niven) are among the many suspects aboard the Karnak and are prepared to use their combined “little gray cells” to solve the case in this lavish mystery that won the late Anthony Powell his second of three Academy Awards for Best Costume Design.

What’d He Wear?

After we meet “Simple Simon”, the new Mrs. Doyle evidently went to some extent to expand his wardrobe into something more befitting the husband of a cereal heiress with Corn Crisp/Choo-Chew merger money to burn. Simon thus embarks on their honeymoon with a full complement of lightweight casual-wear, summer suits, and evening attire to stylishly meet any occasion while celebrating his new marriage.

Agatha Christie’s novel provides little description of Simon’s evening attire at sea that gets ruined by blood and nail polish (not necessarily in that order), aside from the fact that he was indeed wearing trousers, socks, and shoes, so costume designer Anthony Powell stretched his creative muscles to dress Simon in the semi-formal style as eye-catching as it was short-lived: the white mess jacket.

Jackie continues pestering Simon in the ship’s lounge.

The evening mess jacket evolved in the early 1930s as American gentlemen—traditionally more inclined toward informality than their English counterparts—sought a comfortable alternative to conventional black tie in tropical settings and borrowed the cropped comfort of military mess dress. Similar waist-length jackets had already been long in use, such as the shortened “spencer” developed during the Regency period or the single-breasted coat known as the “Eton jacket” as part of the underclassmen’s uniform at Eton College.

“The white mess jacket represented the first radical change in male evening wear and received such broad national acceptance that it was immediately adopted for the uniforms and orchestra members,” wrote Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man, highlighting how the mess jacket soon fell out of vogue as class-conscious gents sought to separate their appearance from those that served them. It was likely this desire for differentiation as well as the search of a more universally flattering fit that led to the introduction of the white dinner jacket shortly after the mess jacket had debuted in Palm Beach. (You can read more about the history and how to correctly fashion a mess jacket at Gentleman’s Gazette.)

Evening mess jackets typically follow the styling of dinner jackets with peak lapels or shawl collars, but Simon’s cream tropical wool mess jacket bucks this tradition with its broad notch lapels. With all respect to Anthony Powell and his deservedly Oscar-winning costume design, this detail more suggests the influence of late ’70s trends than interwar fashion, but it could also suggest that Simon Doyle—as nouveau riche as it gets—wouldn’t be as well-versed in tasteful evening attire, even with a socialite like Linnet on his arm.

Simon’s mess jacket has a single link-button closure, consisting of a traditional flat pearl button on the right side that’s sewn to a second identical button connected to a short white thread shank on the inside. This unique fastening was indeed a fixture of single-breasted mess jackets, meant to be either fastened normally through the outward-facing button or with the inside link button through the left buttonhole to symmetrically present two buttons where the jacket closes. Consistent with his inexperience dressing so formally, Simon forgoes both methods of fastening by wearing the mess jacket open, showing the inner button hanging freely.

The happy honeymooner. Note the double-ended link-button.

The mess jacket’s defining trait was also its downfall, as Apparel Arts bemoaned in 1934 that it required wearers to have “the figure of an Adonis” to truly flatter. Luckily, the lean, 5’11” Simon MacCorkindale possessed the physical characteristics most ideal for mess jacket adoption.

Simon’s jacket is shaped with front and back darts that taper the lines toward a pointed hem on the front and back; the front darts begin at mid-torso and extend to the bottom, while the back darts curve in from each sleeve, nearly matching the seams along the back of each sleeve. The sleeves are roped at the heads and finished with a “swelled” band around each otherwise unadorned cuff.

Shots from around the lounge, showing the pointed hem of Simon’s mess jacket and the seams that shape the back.

Simon wears the same type of evening shirt as he had with his full dinner suit, constructed of cotton with a starched piqué (marcella) bib and squared single cuffs, rather than double (French) cuffs, fastened with silver hexagonal diamond-faced links that match the three smaller diamond studs up the placket. Simon attaches a stiff wing collar to the shirt, worn with the wings behind his black silk self-tied thistle-shaped bow tie.

As Simon attempts to resist getting pulled into an argument with his former fiancée, note the contrast between his “pure white” evening shirt and the creamier cast of his off-white mess jacket.

Although mess jackets were essentially to be treated as shorter dinner jackets, Simon’s black formal trousers curiously lack the black satin side braid that characterizes formal trousers. He nonetheless wears the traditional black silk cummerbund, triple-pleated with the pleats opening upward. The full width of the cummerbund, which appears to close over itself toward the back of the left side, provides generally adequate coverage of Simon’s waist line to provide an elegant transition between the jacket’s short bottom and the top of the trousers without showing his shirt.

Simon’s trousers have double forward pleats, plain-hemmed bottoms, and side pockets. A gold chain loops from under the left side of the cummerbund and into Simon’s left pocket, where it presumably connects to a key. Simon keeps a handkerchief in his right-hand pocket, which he uses to clutch his leg after Jackie fires at him. (Highlight for spoiler: After he actually shoots himself in the leg, he pulls the white kerchief that he’d been wearing as a pocket square to catch the now-genuine blood, having discarded the gun with the previous hankie.) In the novel, this is described as a “coarse” white handkerchief from Woolworth.

Simon holds his trousers up with a set of white silk suspenders, which pass through gold-toned adjusters  and have white leather double “ears” that hook them onto buttons along the inside of the trouser waistband.

Dr. Bessner (Jack Warden) recruits Jim Ferguson (Jon Finch) as his reluctant nurse while tending to Simon’s wound. With the patient dressed down to this degree, we can see the relationship between his shirt, suspenders, cummerbund, and trousers.

Though low opera pumps (court shoes) remained considered the most formal footwear with any evening dress, they were increasingly being eclipsed by lace-up oxfords, particularly with black patent leather uppers that bridged the formality cap between business oxfords and evening shoes. Simon wears black patent leather oxfords with a cap toe and five sets of eyelets for the round laces.

Simon re-ties his patent leather oxfords. Normally going barefoot in a public lounge would be gauche, but… IYKYK.

Simon’s thin black dress socks appear to be a widely ribbed silk, held up with a set of black garters. Though often considered old-fashioned or associated more with women (thanks in part to an enduring wedding tradition), sock garters had indeed been widely integrated in men’s under-garmenture around this time, both self-supported—like Simon’s—or as a more involved system that traversed much of the wearer’s lower half to maintain order.

Simon’s simpler self-supporting sock garters consist of a white-trimmed black fabric strap worn around the calf, adjusted through a gold-toned buckle and secured to a black leather patch that buttons onto the tops of his socks. (The increased advent of elastic in socks and other garments reduced the need for men’s garters as the 20th century went on.)

Sock garters!

What to Imbibe

“I’m dying for a Manhattan! Aren’t you?” Simon asks Linnet, who cautiously responds: “All right… seeing we’re on our honeymoon.”

We never do see if Simon gets his Manhattan, but the following evening finds Jackie throwing back shot after shot of Gordon’s gin while telling a captive Rosalie Otterbourne (Olivia Hussey) the “three-hanky story” of her life before reaching into her purse to confront her former fiancé once and for all…

The Gun

Jackie makes a considerable display of the fact that she’s traveling armed, showing Poirot that she carries “a mere tiny thing, but it’s lethal.” The firearm in question is an almost miniature Sharps Pepperbox pistol, chambered in .22 Short as established by dialogue and the imprinted text atop the quad-barreled frame.

Both Jackie and Rosalie react with shock and horror as Jackie fires her .22 in Simon’s direction.

“Pepperbox” is a generalized firearms term for a weapon—usually a handgun—with multiple barrels, resembling early pepper shakers. The weapons grew popularity throughout the early 19th century as an alternative to single-shot handgun technology, allowing shooters to carry sidearms loaded with more than a single round. Following the development and standardization of revolvers, the “pepperbox” philosophy was revived as a sturdy design for pocket pistols, echoing earlier derringers.

A particularly popular model was the four-barreled Sharps Pepperbox, introduced in 1859 by the same inventor of the legendary Sharps rifle. These pistols are loaded by sliding the four-barrel mechanism forward, inserting a rimfire cartridge into each barrel, and sliding it closed. The single-action operation functions by pulling the hammer before each shot with a revolving firing pin that rotates to fire each shot. The barrels could be slid open to unload at any time, as seen when Poirot is explaining how Simon opened the weapon to replace a spent cartridge with an unfired one before tossing it into the Nile.

Simon works the sliding four-barrel mechanism of Jackie’s Sharps Pepperbox, replacing a spent cartridge with an unfired .22 Short round.

Colonel Race explains that Jackie’s pistol is a .22-caliber which—combined with the brass frame—establishes it as a Sharps Model 1A, the first series of pepperbox pistols produced after the model was introduced in 1859. The Sharps Pepperbox would evolve through .30- and .32-caliber models before it was discontinued in 1874.

Though both are chambered for .22-caliber ammunition, the screen-used Sharps Pepperbox differs from Jackie’s pair of “dainty” pistols described in the novel, where each is described as “a small pearl-handled pistol… a kind of toy,” distinguished by “ornamental work” and the engraved initials J.B… as well as a “clip” that refers to the magazines used to feed ammunition in a semi-automatic pistol.

How to Get the Look

Simon MacCorkindale in Death on the Nile (1978)

The white mess jacket may have only been en vogue for gents vacationing in warm locales through the early 1930s, so—unless you want to be mistaken for a waiter—it may be best to preserve that style for the history books. Of course, if you have a time machine, a fashionable restaurant gig, or merely a desire to channel that elegant bygone era, feel free to consider the mess jacket for your summer evening soiree!

• Cream tropical wool mess jacket with wide notch lapels, single link-button closure, welted breast pocket, banded cuffs, and pointed front and back hem
• White cotton formal shirt with detachable stiff wing collar, marcella/piqué bib with front placket, and marcella/piqué single cuffs
  • Silver hexagonal diamond studs and cuff links
• Black silk self-tied butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black double forward-pleated trousers with side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White silk suspenders with gold hardwaree and white leather double-ears
• Black silk pleated cummerbund
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black silk dress socks
• Black sock garters

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Agatha Christie’s original novel. I’ve rarely seen this movie streaming in full quality across any services, so I was delighted to see it had arrived on the Criterion Channel this month!

The post Death on the Nile: Simon MacCorkindale’s White Mess Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly on Reilly: Ace of Spies, with Jeananne Crowley, Laura Davenport, and Celia Gregory, who portrayed Reilly’s three wives.

Vitals

Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly, shrewd British agent and anti-Bolshevik

New York City and Berlin, Fall 1924

Series: Reilly: Ace of Spies
Episode: “The Trust” (Episode 10)
Air Date: November 2, 1983
Director: Martin Campbell
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Although there’s little consensus on the details of his life—including his birth name—the famous adventurer who would eventually known as Sidney Reilly is said to have been born on March 24, though even the year is a question of debate; he may have been born Georgy Rosenblum in Odessa in 1873, or he may have been born Sigmund Rosenblum to a wealth Bielsk family in 1874. His escapades as a British agent during the Russian Revolution cemented his self-aggrandized reputation as the “Ace of Spies”, establishing a legend that would inspire no less than Ian Fleming when developing the character of his fictional agent James Bond.

The opportunistic Reilly—as he had rechristened himself during his initial service for Special Branch in the late 1890s—never missed a chance to build his wealth or reputation, crafting a legend during his lifetime that would live well beyond his ostensible execution by the Soviets in 1925. A household name by the end of the decade, Reilly was the subject of multiple books, including Ace of Spies, written by the son of R.H. Bruce Lockhart, the Scottish-born diplomat who had worked with Reilly in the infamous “Ambassadors’ Plot” attempt to overthrow the fledgling Bolshevik government in 1918 and resulted in both men being sentenced to death in absentia. Robin Lockhart’s book was adapted into Reilly: Ace of Spies, a stylish twelve-part miniseries that originally aired in ITV across the fall of 1983.

The tenth episode “The Trust” begins a year before Reilly’s demise, when he’s living in the United States, no longer officially in the British Secret Service’s employment as he independently attempts to raise funds that would continue his ongoing battle against the Bolsheviks, who are now firmly in control of Russia. Back in Moscow, the OGPU has organized “The Trust”, a covert counterintelligence program aimed to lure enemies like Reilly and the fiery Boris Savinkov back to Russia, where they can be captured, questioned, and executed.

The real Sidney Reilly and Nelly “Pepita” Bobadilla on their wedding day, May 1923. The series depicts their meeting a year and a half later to condense events for narrative purposes.

Reilly continues working behind the scenes, playing a hand in the controversial “Zinoviev letter” specifically intended to divert the British from engaging in a treat with the Bolshevik government. He grows his operation by auctioning his wealth of Napoleonic art and artifacts and hiring a seductive new assistant Eugenie (Eleanor David) and even enlists the help of his ex-wife Nadia (Celia Gregory) and her new husband to take a meeting with Henry Ford and gain access to his “unlimited funds”. Once Eugenie proves less than loyal in several ways, Reilly sails to Berlin, where he meets the spirited actress Pepita Bobadilla (Laura Davenport), whom he would eventually marry.

I’d previously written about how the ending of No Time to Die suggested to me some parallels of how Sidney Reilly met his end (and I’d suggest not reading on if you’re not already familiar with how Daniel Craig’s final Bond movie concluded!)

Both the fictional Bond and the real Reilly had left the British secret service and, after lives of womanizing, were looking to settle down with their latest romantic partner when called by an irresistible impulse—if you’ll permit a phrase cribbed from Anatomy of a Murder—to one final vendetta against their most prolific enemy. While the cinematic Bond does call upon MI6 before his venture against the evil Safin, Reilly had reportedly instructed his wife Pepita before returning to Russia that “whatever you do, don’t bring the service into it,” as detailed in her segment of his published memoir, Adventures of a British Master Spy.

Each respective agent thus embarked on a nearly independent and undeniably dangerous mission in which each respective agent sacrificed his life for an arguably greater good: Bond to ensure the destruction of Safin’s “poison garden” island and Reilly to expose the Trust for its true nature.

What’d He Wear?

Perhaps unremarkable on its own, Reilly’s dinner suit in “The Trust” marks the sartorial culmination of his adventures across the first quarter of the 20th century depicted in Reilly: Ace of Spies, beginning with his period-specific full evening dress (white tie) in the first, fifth, and sixth episodes, followed by a notch-lapel dinner jacket, and finally this peak-lapel dinner jacket that was both contemporary to the episode’s 1924 setting while also marking the approximate time when the modern black tie dress code was standardized.

Reilly’s black wool dinner jacket has broad satin-faced peak lapels that elegantly roll to a single-button closure at the waist, positioned just to cover the black formal waistcoat he wears beneath it. The ventless jacket has roped sleeve-heads, jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket that he dresses with a rakishly crimped white linen kerchief.

In 1924, English gentlemen like Reilly may have still been expected to wear full evening dress in public, but a more intimate evening like this fundraising summit hosted by his ex-wife—and in New York, rather than London—would have been the appropriate occasion for the Ace of Spies to sport a fashionable dinner jacket and black tie.

Reilly’s evening shirt may be the only part of the outfit more rooted in black tie’s origins than its modern execution, particularly the well-starched detachable wing collar that fastens to the shirt via metal studs on the front and back of the neck. The white cotton shirt has a reinforced marcella bib that offers a crisp presentation between the jacket lapels, detailed with three shining diamond studs. The sleeves are finished with single cuffs, which also fasten with cuff links like the double (French) cuffs more traditionally worn on black tie shirts, as the formality of single cuffs are more typically reserved for full evening dress.

Apropos the implications of the “black tie” dress code, Reilly wears a black silk bow tie in a classic butterfly (or “thistle”) shape.

As he meets with fellow anti-Bolshevik revolutionary Boris Savinkov in Berlin, note the distinguished graying increasingly appearing across Reilly’s hairline, suggesting both natural aging—as Reilly had just turned 50—as well as the result of stress from constant fundraising and his dangerous vocation.

Reilly wears a black formal waistcoat (vest) with a low-fastening V-shaped front, designed to almost completely disappear behind the buttoned jacket. Unlike some formal waistcoats—which are more vestigial and connect in the back merely with straps at the shoulders and waist—Reilly’s waistcoat has a full back, finished in a black satin to echo the lapels, tie, and trouser striping.

Reilly’s dinner jacket effectively hides his waistcoat throughout “The Trust”, so it can only be seen on its own during a brief vignette in the following episode “The Last Journey” when shooting billiards with his boss, Mansfield Smith-Cumming (Norman Rodway).

Reilly’s black formal trousers have the black silk side braiding requisite to black tie, likely held up with suspenders (braces) and finished with plain-hemmed bottoms that break over his black leather oxford shoes.

Reilly escorts his new girlfriend—and future wife—Pepita through the streets of Berlin.

The video quality of my copy of Reilly: Ace of Spies prevents in-depth distinction of specific details, specifically on dark, low-contrasting garments, but we can tell Reilly layers outdoors in a black wool Chesterfield-style single-breasted overcoat, black leather gloves, and a white self-striped silk dress scarf.

Reilly confronts the treacherous Eugenie upon returning home after an assassination attempt.

Reilly wears a gold tank-style watch with a square white dial on a brown leather bracelet. Wristwatches were still an emerging fad among men in the early 1920s, especially those of the now middle-aged Reilly’s generation, but—given his passion for aviation—he likely adopted the practice from early military pilots who were among the first to regularly sport wrist-strapped timepieces.

The Guns

Returning to his Long Island home after his meeting with Henry Ford, Reilly discovers the brutal Russian agent Monkewitz (Forbes Collins) on his tail. Riding high after the evident success of his meeting with Ford, Reilly sighs, stubs out his cigar, and asks his driver: “Where’s the Thompson?”

The driver reaches over onto the passenger seat and hands back to Reilly a Thompson M1921A submachine gun, identifiable as this period-correct earlier model by the lack of a Cutts compensator on the muzzle. Reilly racks the bolt, checks the distance between his car and Monkewitz, and signals to his driver: “Let’s get on with it.”

Reilly then swings himself out the left rear window, aiming the Thompson rearward and engaging Monkewitz—who also wields a Thompson—in a running gun battle reminiscent of the bootleggers from the same roaring decade. Alternately known as the “Chicago typewriter” for its involvement in the Jazz Age beer wars, this submachine gun revolutionized the firearms scene upon its development earlier in the decade, offering the powerful .45 ACP ammunition at a quick rate of fire from high capacity magazines like the 50-round drum affixed to Reilly’s Thompson. Though the “Tommy gun” had yet to be popularized by American gangsters by the fall of 1924, it had already found success in the hands of the Irish Republican Army earlier that decade.

Reilly illustrates that, had spying for the British not panned out, he could have had a successful career working for Al Capone.

Reilly safely returns home, confronting Eugenie with the knowledge that she had indeed double-crossed him. We next see Reilly’s Daimler parked in a remote clearing in the woods, with Eugenie walking through the early morning mist a few steps of Reilly. “Here,” he stops her, a few yards shy of Long Island Sound. She partially disrobes and walks out into the sound in just her sheer nightdress. Once she’s up to her waist in the water, Reilly raises his right hand and aims a small blued pistol that fires a single, fatal shot into the base of Eugenie’s spine.

Reilly at his most cold-hearted, carrying out the early morning execution of a secretary—and lover—who has betrayed him.

We don’t see much of this compact pistol, though we discern that certainly smaller than the anachronistic Browning Hi-Power that Reilly had shown to Eugenie earlier in the hour and obviously not the Luger that had been stated to be his preferred sidearm in several episodes.

When I had first researched the firearms of the series for my contributions to IMFDB, I deduced that the pistol was likely the same small Beretta that “The Plugger” had handled in the previous episode (“After Moscow”) and which Reilly’s stalwart colleague Captain Hill would load in the next one (“The Last Journey”). If so, the pistol’s profile and more exposed barrel indicate the earmarks of a .25-caliber Beretta from the era, possibly a Beretta Model 1919 or Beretta 418 as Ian Fleming had written as the first issued sidearm of the literary James Bond.

What to Imbibe

To the tune of shelling and automatic gunfire outside their Berlin hotel, an aloof Sidney Reilly is joined by Pepita Bobadilla for post-prandial drinks in the lounge. A waiter brings Reilly a small cup of coffee and a snifter of cognac, then looks between Reilly and Pepita until the former acknowledges her presence and lowers his newspaper to address her.

Reilly: I imagine you’d like something to drink.
Pepita: (taking his newspaper) I’ll have a glass of milk.
Reilly: Anything in it?
Pepita: Brandy and a raw egg.

A bewildered Reilly nods the waiter away before setting out to better acquaint himself with his lovely companion. The scenes offers two alternatives for after-dinner drinks and, while Pepita’s choice is… interesting, I’ll have what Reilly’s having.

How to Get the Look

Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly in Reilly: Ace of Spies (Episode 10: “The Trust:”)

Writing of classic black tie style in Style and the Man, Alan Flusser explains that “the one combination that tends to look better balanced is the wing collar with the single-breasted peaked-lapel dinner jacket,” citing the harmonious “drama” between the sharp points tipping the ends of the jacket lapels and shirt collar. Such style as worn by Sam Neill’s Sidney Reilly in 1924 would look just as natty nearly a century later, presuming the wearer would be able to sport an authentically detachable wing collar rather than one of the mass-produced modern attached-collar alternatives.

• Black wool single-button dinner jacket with wide silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, and ventless back
• White cotton evening shirt with detachable starched wing collar, stiff marcella bib with diamond studs, and single cuffs
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black low-fastening full-backed formal waistcoat
• Black wool formal trousers with silk side braiding and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather oxford shoes
• Black wool single-breasted Chesterfield-style overcoat
• White self-striped silk dress scarf
• Black leather gloves
• Gold tank watch with square white dial on brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

I also recommend Andrew Cook’s Ace of Spies: The True Story of Sidney Reilly and Richard B. Spence’s Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly, both published in 2002 and seeking to work through the many myths to learn the truth about this secretive but significant agent of the early 20th century.

The Quote

You tried to kill me.

The post Sam Neill’s Peak-Lapel Dinner Jacket as Sidney Reilly appeared first on BAMF Style.

Paul Muni as Tony Camonte in Scarface (1932)

Vitals

Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, ruthless Italian-born bootlegger and mob enforcer

Chicago, Summer 1929

Film: Scarface
Release Date: April 9, 1932
Director: Howard Hawks

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Several years ago, I published a high-level overview of the various black tie ensembles across the male cast of the original 1932 version of Scarface, adapted from Armitage Trail’s pulp novel of the same name, which had been inspired by the then-contemporary exploits of the infamous Al Capone.

Now, after eight more years of learning, I want to focus specifically on the evening-wear worn by the eponymous Tony Camonte, portrayed by Paul Muni—who was born on this day in 1895—as Tony’s tuxedo had long been one of the driving sartorial influences in my choice to have a double-breasted dinner jacket made for my wedding, which will be one month from today.

If you’re familiar with the 1983 remake with Al Pacino but haven’t yet seen the pre-Code original, you may be surprised by just how similarly the plots align: an impulsive gangster named Tony violently rises through the ranks of the era’s prevailing crime organization, lusting after both his boss’ blonde girlfriend… as well as his own sister, who generally spurns his incestuous advances in favor of Tony’s slick young protégé. The resulting tension and violence results in a high-caliber showdown at Tony’s fortified home, where the violent gangster dies, mocked by his own repeated affirmation that “the world is yours.”

The 1930s version reveals that Tony had taken his motto, “the world is yours”, from the global offerings of real-life travel agency Cook’s Tours. Little would Tony realize that, for him, orbis non sufficit.

At the time, Hollywood’s cinematic output was in a time of transition as filmmakers still sought to tell mature stories despite the growing oversight of the Production Code passed by Will H. Hays’ Motion Picture Association that sought to censor elements considered unacceptable for general audiences. Howard Hughes, the aviation pioneer who was producing Scarface and was never one to follow the rules, reportedly sent director Howard Hawks a memo regarding Scarface: “Screw the Hays Office. Start the picture and make it as realistic, as exciting, as grisly as possible.” Luckily for audiences at the time, Hawks complied, but it was controversial movies like Scarface that resulted in a three-decade enforcement of the Production Code beginning in 1934.

One of my favorite sequences in the 1932 version depicts Tony’s consolidation of power over the course of one night. Tony and “the boys”—including his loyal right-hand man Guino Rinaldo (George Raft) and his dimwitted “seck-a-tary” Angelo (Vince Barnett)—are enjoying a production of the melodramatic 1922 play “Rain” when they receive a tip that rival gang leader Gaffney (Boris Karloff) has emerged from hiding. Still in their tuxedoes, Tony’s crew loads up with their newfound Thompson submachine guns and head to a bowling alley on the North Side, where Tony rains down enough .45-caliber firepower to put his enemy out of business for good.

In celebration, Tony’s crew continues the party at the Paradise No. 2 nightclub, entering triumphantly to the strains of Gus Arnheim’s orchestra playing “St. Louis Blues”. Confidently riding on his own success, Tony spies his spineless boss Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) dining with the platinum blond Poppy (Karen Morley) and decides it’s time to make a few moves for his personal life as well, seating himself at their table and demoting Johnny to a third wheel within his own relationship. Poppy’s shifting allegiance is signaled when she prepares a cigarette and chooses Tony’s match over Johnny’s lighter… indicating who truly lights her fire and sealing Johnny’s choice to rid himself of both a pesky employee and a romantic rival.

Mel Thompson’s artistic rendition of this scene depicts Paul Muni with a debonair, William Powell-style mustache. I love this drawing so much that I purchased a print of it to hang in my home—and you can too!

Tony and Poppy grow close on the dance floor to the tune of “Some of These Days”, but their flirtation is interrupted when Tony spies his younger sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak) dancing with an anonymous man, igniting Tony’s jealousy as the man goes home with a dented jaw… and Cesca gets dragged back to the Camonte family home with Tony, where she deflates his ego by calling out and condemning his incestuous desire.

“I don’t know what it was with Hughes and incest,” screenwriter W.R. Burnett later recalled of producer Howard Hughes’ icy reception to his initial script, which resulted in a rewrite by the prolific Ben Hecht who “turned the Capone family into the Borgias of Chicago, incest and all,” according to Mark A. Vieira in Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934).

Siblings, eh?

The dejected Tony nearly gets assassinated by a carful of gunmen as he leaves the house, though the action snaps him back into action and gives Tony enough adrenaline to pull together the two men he can trust most—his pal Guino and his barber Pietro (Henry Armetta)—to entrap the boss he rightly suspects of having double-crossed him.

What’d He Wear?

About a half-century after the tuxedo sprung to popularity following a meeting between Tuxedo Park member James Brown Potter and the Prince of Wales, black tie attire had evolved from a “semi-formal” dress code reserved for intimate dining at home or private clubs into the designated men’s evening-wear of the roaring ’20s, an era that balanced its decreasing sense of decorum with an emphasis on style. The lessened uniformity from full evening dress meant a more widely acceptable variance in dinner jacket styles, with wearers choosing between shawl collars or peak lapels (notch lapels were swiftly vanquished), silk lapel facings in grosgrain or satin, and—as the code grew more accepted—even single- and double-breasted models, the latter ushered into fashion by Edward, then Prince of Wales (and later, after his abdication, Duke of Windsor.)

Tony stands apart among his crew as the only reveler to sport a double-breasted dinner jacket, with the sweeping 4×1-button front collaborating with its wide shoulders and roped sleeveheads to craft an imposing silhouette apropos a rising gangster celebrating his violent success. The arrangement of four buttons in a “keystone” formation with only the bottom row fastening was popularized at the time as the “Kent” configuration due to its contemporary adoption by Prince George, the Duke of Kent. Tony’s four front buttons and each trio of cuff buttons are left uncovered.

Amid a sea of henchmen in nearly identical black single-breasted dinner jackets, wing collars, and white pocket squares, Tony the boss stands apart in his double-breasted jacket, turndown collar, foppishly floppy pocket square, and white boutonnière.

Another change with the onset of the 1930s was the amelioration of dinner suits crafted from a midnight blue cloth rather than true black. Alan Flusser explains in Dressing the Man that this shift was the result of dark blue retaining its richness under artificial light, as opposed to black appearing somewhere on the rust-to-green spectrum. The color of Muni’s screen-worn tuxedo in Scarface may be lost to history, though Tony already embracing a fashion-forward double-breasted dinner jacket suggests that he may be equally inclined to adopt the newly fashionable midnight blue suiting.

Tony’s ventless dinner jacket has straight jetted hip pockets, which had by now eclipsed flapped pockets as the more formal standard for black tie. He dresses the welted breast pocket with his usual colorfully Deco-checked silk kerchief, rakishly dangling from his pocket with more panache than the usual folded or puffed pocket square. Tony had attended Rain with a white carnation pinned to his left lapel, which he removed at some point before his arrival at Paradise No. 2.

The world isn’t quite yours yet, Tony.

Though shirts with soft pleated fronts were being normalized particularly with double-breasted dinner jackets at the time, Tony still wears a more formal evening shirt with a stiff front bib detailed with two spherical pearl studs closely spaced above the jacket’s buttoning point. Additionally, the shirt maintains the link-fastened single cuffs, rather than double (French) cuffs, that remain de rigueur with full evening dress. The most “modern” aspect of Tony’s evening shirt is the long, sharp point collar that foretells the more dramatic spearpoint collars that would be popularized over the following decade during the “Golden Age” of menswear.

Tony himself fares better this evening than his clothes and car.

Per the dress code’s nomenclature, Tony wears a black silk bow tie in the traditional “butterfly” (thistle) shape, albeit with a pointed end that typically signifies a self-tying tie. That Tony would wear a self-tying bow tie is almost beyond question, though it’s made especially clear after his car accident when he wears the tie loosely knotted.

In the process of stealing his boss’ girlfriend, Tony grows furiously distracted by the sight of his sister dancing with another man.

The full wrap of a double-breasted dinner jacket doesn’t require waist coverings like the evening waistcoat or cummerbunds prescribed for single-breasted models, but this guidance doesn’t stop Tony Camonte from layering a white cotton marcella waistcoat neath his jacket. The waistcoat smartly fastens low enough that it wouldn’t be seen under his buttoned jacket and has a short vent on each side. Though the Prince of Wales had also helped usher in acceptance of the backless waistcoat in warmer climates by this point, Tony’s vest appears to be of the more traditional full-backed variety.

A narrow shawl collar follows the outline of the horseshoe-shaped opening, meeting at the waist where four cloth-covered buttons are closely spaced above the sharply notched bottom. The waistcoat has two narrowly welted pockets at hip level, with a chain hanging from the left pocket suggesting where Tony either keeps his watch or keys.

A little worse for wear after Lovo’s men try to send him on a one-way ride, Tony strips down to his waistcoat as he confers with the only two men he can trust: Guino Rinaldo (George Raft) and his barber Pietro (Henry Armetta).

Even when Tony has his jacket removed in Pietro’s shop, we barely see enough of the trousers to discern their pleats, but we can be almost certain that he wears them held up with suspenders (braces) that remain covered by his waistcoat.

Tony’s formal trousers would be made from the same black or midnight blue wool as his dinner jacket, detailed with the requisite satin braid striped over each leg’s side seam down to the plain-hemmed bottoms, which break over the tops of his black patent leather cap-toe oxfords. Oxfords were and remain the most acceptable—and arguably practical—black tie alternative to the exquisitely formal slip-on opera pumps, particularly when crafted with high-quality black patent leather uppers.

As Guino’s gunshots ring out behind him, the victor strolls to retrieve his spoils.

Now that he is “going in for jewelry,” as Poppy observes, Tony regularly wears a pinky ring that gleams from his right hand in every scene despite Tony’s proud insistence that it was a “bargain”.

Old vs. new. In his wing collar, Johnny Lovo resembles the old-fashioned “mustache Petes” who were replaced during the 1930s mob wars by younger gangsters like Tony, representing modern mafiosi in his voguish double-breasted dinner jacket, turndown-collar shirt, and flashy pinky ring. (That said, one could argue that Tony’s match is considerably more analog than Johnny’s modern lighter… but that may be a commentary that Tony doesn’t need any fancy gadgetry to, ahem, light Poppy’s fire.)

Rather than swapping for a more formal homburg—the chosen headgear of his slow-witted lackey Angelo—Tony continues wearing his everyday fedora, made of black felt with a black grosgrain ribbon.

The gangsters’ range of headgear includes Angelo’s homburg, Guino’s light-colored fedora with the bow aftward against the band, and Tony’s all-black fedora.

My Wedding Tuxedo

As I mentioned, Tony's double-breasted dinner jacket had long informed my wish to have something similar in my wardrobe. I had tracked down a black vintage dinner jacket that served adequately when I played a bit part in a community theater production of State of the Union, but I knew I'd need something more intentional for my wedding. In addition to Scarface, I was influenced by other cinematic evening-wear like those worn by Roger Moore's James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me and Matt Bomer's tuxedo in the 1930s-set Amazon series The Last Tycoon.

Yours truly, trying on my wedding tuxedo for the first time in March 2022. There are still a few alterations to be done, but to answer any other questions: yes, I'll have a [slight] haircut and professional styling in time for the wedding one month from now, and yes I'll have a bow tie, pocket square, and boutonnière for the day.

Working with the team at Surmesur Pittsburgh, I selected a dark navy cloth, a shade lighter than midnight blue. Surmesur has made many several single- and double-breasted suits for me before, so—in addition to my measurements—they know my preferences for a 1930s-style cut with wide shoulders, roped sleeveheads, and wide peak lapels. I had the lapels faced in a black silk to match the cloth covering the buttons, the gauntlet cuffs, and the dress stripe down the sides of the trousers. Our wedding color is burgundy—as will be presented by the bridesmaids' dresses, the groomsmen's ties, and my pocket square—so I also had the suit lined in a rich dark red paisley, which also presents on the reverse-side of the gauntlet cuffs.

The shirt is a lightweight white cotton with a miniature nailhead weave, detailed simply with a plain front and shaped double (French) cuffs, which I'll fasten with monogrammed cuff links. The black silk twill bow tie will be of the self-tying variety (of course), though I'll have a pre-tied backup at the ready in case of any snafus. I selected a few instances where I'm willingly "breaking the rules" of black tie with a pair of plain-toe single-monk shoes in black calf.

Finally, the watch I've chosen to wear for the day is a vintage gold Omega Constellation on a black leather strap, an heirloom purchased in the early 1960s in my fiancée's family and which I was honored to be given last year.

How to Get the Look

Paul Muni and Ann Dvorak in Scarface (1932)

Styled during a transitional period for black tie, Tony Camonte blends burgeoning fashionable elements like a double-breasted dinner jacket, long-pointed shirt collar, and printed pocket square with old-fashioned pieces like the shirt’s stiff front bib and single cuffs and the redundant white waistcoat, finding an individuality within the dress code more sophisticated than its wearer.

• Black wool tuxedo:
  • Double-breasted 4×2-button dinner jacket with wide silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Pleated formal trousers with side pocket, silk side stripes, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton marcella single-breasted evening waistcoat with low-fastening 4-button front, cutaway notched bottom, and shallow hip pockets
• White cotton evening shirt with point collar, plain front with two pearl studs, and single cuffs
• Black satin silk bowtie with pointed ends
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black silk dress socks
• Black wide-brimmed fedora with black grosgrain band
• Pinky ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie or the Deluxe Scarface Gift Set which offers both the 1932 and 1983 versions as well as collectible lobby cards and featurettes on both discs.

In my earlier post about Scarface‘s black tie kits, I also waxed poetic on my pre-Code crush Ann Dvorak, though it wasn’t until recently that I read in depth about her fascinating life and unique personality in Christina Rice’s richly researched biography, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’ Forgotten Rebel.

The Quote

Tony: I just finish up tonight. Now I play a while.
Lovo: You get your own table, Camonte.
Tony: Why is that?
Lovo: This is a table for two.
Tony: (winks at Poppy) Well, maybe you get another table, huh, Johnny?

The post Paul Muni’s 1932 Tuxedo in Scarface appeared first on BAMF Style.

Al Martino as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather (1972)

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Al Martino as Johnny Fontane, down-on-his-luck crooner

Long Island, New York, Summer 1945

Film: The Godfather
Release Date: March 14, 1972
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Anna Hill Johnstone

Background

Today in 1927, Al Martino was born in Philadelphia to two Italian immigrants from Abruzzo, the same southern Italian region from which much of my family hails. Following his U.S. Navy service during World War II, the singer began earnestly following his career in entertainment. Twenty years after his first single, “Here in My Heart”, reached #1 in the U.S. Billboard and UK Singles charts, Martino joined the cast of The Godfather as Johnny Fontane, an Italian-American crooner whose early career parallels that of Martino’s contemporary Frank Sinatra.

“When Johnny was first starting out, he was signed to this personal service contract with a big bandleader, and as his career got better and better, he wanted to get out of it. Now, Johnny is my father’s godson, and my father went to see this bandleader and he offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go. The bandleader said ‘no.’ So, the next day, my father went to see him, only this time with Luca Brasi. And, within an hour, he signed a release for a certified check of $1,000…,” Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) explains to his girlfriend Kay (Diane Keaton), in an incident said to be inspired by the Mafia’s role in easing Sinatra out of his contract with Tommy Dorsey. “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse… Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.”

His arrival heralded by excitedly screaming teeny-boppers and autograph-seekers, Johnny Fontane arrives at a Corleone family wedding, though his attendance has a two-fold purpose, knowing that Sicilian tradition—one invented for the story, it’s said—dictates that the Don can’t refuse a favor request on his wedding day. After having his arm twisted to sing the contemporary hit “I Have But One Heart”, Johnny asks for his godfather’s influence in securing him a role in a “new war picture” that would guarantee his comeback… another biographical detail echoing Sinatra’s salvation from a career slump by his Oscar-winning performance in From Here to Eternity. Much to the entertainment of his colleagues, Don Vito (Marlon Brando) takes the opportunity to mock Johnny’s self-pity before assigning the task to his capable consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall).

Vito: You spend time with your family?
Johnny: Sure I do.
Vito: Good. (with a look at his philandering son Sonny) ’cause a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.

Though as much as art imitated life, life would again imitate art through Al Martino’s own quest to secure the role of Johnny Fontane, which author Mark Seal chronicles in Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather. Martino’s campaign reportedly began after fellow crooner Vic Damone exited the role in 1970, working to convince Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, Mario Puzo, and Al Ruddy to cast him, before taking a page straight from Puzo’s text. According to Seal, no severed horse’s heads were required as “Martino said he went to the crime boss Russ Bufalino and asked him to intervene. When the official cast list was announced, the role of Johnny Fontane was his. The answer to how he got the role, Martino said, was simple: ‘I went to my godfather!‘”

As this is the 50th anniversary year of The Godfather as well as the month of my own wedding, it feels appropriate to celebrate Al Martino’s birthday by analyzing the loud suit that Johnny Fontane wears for his appearance at Connie’s wedding reception at the sprawling Corleone estate in Long Island.

What’d He Wear?

There’s something undeniably 1970s about Johnny Fontane’s attire for the Corleone family wedding, his cream silk suit, ruffled pink shirt, and oversized bow tie providing a garish contrast to the staid black wool tuxedoes and wing collars worn by the old-school mobsters. It’s the sort of look that one might find when rifling through your parents’ prom photos—or your own, not to disparage BAMF Style readers who lived through the disco decade!

Johnny’s cream-colored suiting is slubbed with a sheen indicative of raw silk. The suit is undeniably a lounge suit rather than a dinner suit or tuxedo, though he dresses it up in a creative black tie manner.

Johnny may have but one heart, though he certainly has many ruffles.

Tailored to flatter Al Martino’s broad-shouldered frame with front darts that shape and pull in the waist, the single-breasted suit jacket has notch lapels of a substantial breadth, rolling to two cream-colored buttons that match the suiting. The notch lapels and two-button front are enough of a deviation to signify that Johnny isn’t wearing a traditional black tie jacket, though the distinction is further made by the jacket’s single vent and wide flaps over the hip pockets.

Johnny dresses his welted breast pocket with a unique pocket square that’s all black on one side, with the reverse showing a magenta pink within the black rolled edges of the silk. The scheme echoes the same coloring of his oversized butterfly-shaped bow tie, which presents as black silk but with magenta-lined reverse peers out from where the tie has been folded over itself.

“You can act like a man!”

While already dressed loudly, especially in contrast to the Corleones, the most flamboyant aspect of Johnny’s attire is arguably his pale pink ruffled shirt. The ruffles flourishing Johnny’s front placket and pleats are detailed with a subtle black trim that harmonizes with the black-and-pink bow tie and pocket square. We also find ruffles along the outer edges of the shirt’s double (French) cuffs, which Johnny holds in place by ornate detailed gold links, each with a gleaming diamond framed in the center.

Ruffles had been reawakened from their Regency-era height during the Peacock Revolution that began in the swinging ’60s, sartorially characterized by colorful challenges to menswear tradition. Though perhaps anachronistic to see on a men’s dress shirt in the ’40s, Johnny’s ruffles—on a pink shirt, no less—visually communicate what Don Vito sees Johnny’s effete weakness.

Johnny also wears a hefty ring on the third finger of his right hand, almost wide enough to fill the space between his knuckle and the rest of his hand, with a shining square-cut diamond.

It must’ve been hard for the Don to buy Johnny’s down-on-his-luck sob story with that diamond staring back at him.

As the matching trousers are part of a lounge suit rather than a dinner suit, they lack any silk side braiding, instead plainly detailed with a flat front, side pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs). Through the trouser belt loops, he wears a cream belt that matches the suit but contrasts against the leather of black lace-up dress shoes.

Johnny arrives with a straw Panama hat in his hand that harmonizes with the summer cloth and setting, though he discards it as he makes his way to the reception, with the hand ending up in the hands of one of his dark-suited escorts.

How to Get the Look

Al Martino as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather (1972)

Compared to the conservatively dressed Corleones, Johnny Fontane isn’t doing his reputation from the Don as “a Hollywood finocchio” any favors by showing up in a pink ruffled shirt to his daughter’s wedding, paired with a cream silk suit and oversized bow tie rather than a proper tuxedo, but his attire presents an immediately obvious visual contrast between the celebrity and the crime family… at least until Fredo Corleone would slip into his own bold dinner jacket several years later in The Godfather, Part II.

• Cream-colored raw silk suit
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale-pink evening shirt with wide collar, ruffled front pleats, and ruffled double/French cuffs
  • Round gold cuff links with diamond center
• Black silk butterfly-shaped bow tie with magenta reverse
• Cream leather belt
• Black leather lace-up dress shoes
• Square-cut diamond ring

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series and read Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel that started it all.

The Quote

Oh, Godfather, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do…

The post The Godfather: Johnny Fontane’s Cream Silk Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.

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

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Ernest Borgnine as Mike Rogo, a tough New York detective

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

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

Background

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

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

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

What’d He Wear?

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

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

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

Mike and Linda toast to the new year!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Get the Look

Ernest Borgnine in The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

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

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

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

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

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

Roger Moore and Kristina Wayborn in Octopussy (1983)

Vitals

Roger Moore as James Bond, British government agent

Udaipur, India, Spring 1983

Film: Octopussy
Release Date: June 6, 1983
Director: John Glen
Costume Designer: Emma Porteous
Tailor: Douglas Hayward

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy 00-7th of April! Easter weekend feels like the appropriate occasion to celebrate the debonair Roger Moore’s evening-wear for James Bond’s memorable “egg hunt” in his penultimate 007 adventure—the provocatively titled Octopussy, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this June.

Expanded from one of Ian Fleming’s short stories of the same name, Octopussy sent Mr. Bond to India for the first time. During his first night in Udaipur, he tracks down Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) to the casino where he’s playing his nightly backgammon. Following his, uh, instinct, Bond abandons watching Kamal’s shady backgammon game to join the seductive blonde Magda (Kristina Wayborn) at the bar… striking out almost immediately. He follows her back to the game, where he steps in for a blowhard major to challenge Kamal to a 100,000-rupee round of backgammon… offering a Fabergé egg that he had somehow concealed in his right hip pocket the entire time.

As Bond and his pal Vijay (Vijay Amritraj) end up leading Khan’s assassin Gobinda (Kabir Bedi) on a chase through the streets of Udaipur, Octopussy illustrates how much fun the Bond franchise could have without relying on gadgets as Bond utilizes found items—not even necessarily weapons—to ward off his attackers, ultimately escaping to a hidden MI6 safehouse where it seems like the reliable Q (Desmond Llewelyn) has gotten his new workshop set up in less than a day, having been sent in quickly on Bond’s heels. Returning to his hotel that evening, Bond is surprised to find an invitation to meet the mysterious Magda… and her eyebrow-raising “little octopussy.”

What’d He Wear?

James Bond often wears black tie for gambling, here adequately dressed for the hot climate in an ivory dinner jacket. White and off-white dinner jackets were popularized as warm-weather alternatives during the interwar era, gaining widespread acceptance among gentlemen dressing for equatorial evenings on holiday in the 1930s. In his excellent analysis of the outfit at Bond Suits, Matt Spaiser concludes that the jacket may be either a lightweight plain-weave worsted wool or a linen-and-wool blend.

Like Moore’s other on-screen suits and tailored jackets in the early ’80s (and often off-screen as well), this jacket was made by Douglas Hayward. The peak lapels are self-faced, following convention for white dinner jackets, with a fashionably low single-button stance that proportionally meets the waistband of Bond’s trousers. The single white mother-of-pearl button on the front matches the three on each cuff. The jacket has gently padded shoulders, double vents, straight jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket.

The dinner jacket suffers a considerable tear over the breast pocket from an assassin’s knife, though Bond’s wad of cash saved him from doing any greater damage (“thank God for hard currency!”) Bond hands the jacket over to one of Q’s technicians who sells herself short by calling the seamless repair job “the best we could do”.

Egg-cellent work, 007!

Echoing his lightweight dinner jacket, Bond dresses to beat the heat in a white shirt made of cotton voile, a lightweight, plain-woven fabric characterized by its semi-transparent sheer nature. The sections of the shirt with more than a single layer of fabric appear more opaque—such as the spread collar, front placket, and double (French) cuffs—while the single-layered body of the shirt shows Roger Moore’s skin beneath the fabric. Bond fastens the rounded double cuffs with onyx-filled silver square cuff links.

A more formal evening shirt may have a front bib or pleats that would hide more of the skin from the section that shows when worn with a jacket, but Bond prioritizes comfort over decorum in this instance. (Not that I could blame him, as the several gentlemen wearing belts with their evening-wear in the casino would suggest a culture less bound by the “rules” of black tie.)

The shirt was made by London shirtmaker Frank Foster, who counted Moore among his many celebrity clients and crafted most of the shirts he wore as James Bond.

Bond wears a black silk self-tied bow tie, in the classic butterfly (thistle) shape.

Bond rarely wears the prescribed waist covering like cummerbund or waistcoat with his evening-wear, instead opting for elegant built-in solutions like this black silk waistband around the top of his trousers that closes through two silk-covered buttons on the right side. These black flat-front trousers are otherwise similar to conventional formal trousers with a black satin stripe down the side of each leg, finished with the requisite plain-hemmed bottoms rather than cuffs.

Promotional photo of Roger Moore, Vijay Amritraj, and Desmond Llewelyn in Q’s makeshift Indian laboratory as Bond hands over his damaged jacket for repair.

Bond wears an updated variation of the patent leather pump (also known as a court shoe) that had long been designated the most formal men’s shoe. Likely made by Ferragamo, these black patent leather slip-on shoes retain the basic silhouette of the plain-toe opera pump but with higher vamps each decorated with a plain strip of black grosgrain, a simpler alternative to the traditional grosgrain bow. He wears them with dressy socks made of thin black silk.

While debriefing with Q, Bond is instructed how he can track down the Fabergé egg. “The homing device is compatible with a standard-issue radio directional finder in your watch… if you haven’t lost it,” Q mentions, prompting 007 to pull back his shirt cuff and show off the Seiko G757 Sports 100 watch strapped to his left wrist. After two decades as a cinematic stalwart representing the height of sophistication and style, it’s surprising to see that Bond wears not just a sports watch with his black-tie ensemble but also such an inelegant digital watch… but that’s product placement for you!

This quartz-powered watch has a stainless steel case inset by a black polyurethane mitred-corner “bezel”, shaped like an inverted horseshoe with four retaining screws and “SPORTS 100” printed across the top. The large octagonal LCD display under the crystal consists of an “analog” clock in the upper left corner while the monochromatic digital time display extends across the bottom, complete with day/date functionality. As listed in the upper right corner, the other functions include a timer, alarm, dual timer, and stopwatch. The stainless steel link bracelet closes through a black-finished butterfly-style clasp.

You can read more about the now-rare Seiko G757 at James Bond Lifestyle, which also mentions the Casio AE1200WHD-1A as an inexpensive, modern-day lookalike.

The date suggests Sunday the 16th, which—in the year or so leading up to the film’s June 1983 release—could only have been Sunday, May 16, 1982 or Sunday, January 16, 1983. However, it also shows the time as 7:10 AM! Even if Bond’s watch was still on London time, this would make it 11:40 AM in India, when it’s clearly supposed to be late afternoon or early evening.

While in Q’s lab, a couple of things also catch Bond’s eye, including a Seiko TV Watch that he uses to zoom in on a couple of other things that caught his eye.

Fresh off the success of pioneering the world’s first quartz watch in 1969, Seiko spent the ’70s racing against Casio to develop “computer watches” that would prefigure the modern smartwatch. As each met each other’s challenge with the Casio Databank and the Seiko Data 2000, Seiko finally took a great leap toward capturing the “active couch potato” market with the introduction of a TV that could be worn on the wrist, introduced in October 1982. The timing neatly coincides with production of Octopussy, which had started filming two months earlier and likely used a prototype for the “liquid crystal TV” watch that Bond would wear for the final act.

The wrist-wearing portion of the steel-cased Seiko TV Watch hardly differs in size from the modern Apple Watch with a display measuring 1.5 inches wide by 2 inches tall, consisting of a single-row digital timekeeper along the top with a 1.2″ liquid crystal display (LCD), responsive only to direct external light. As High Techies‘ excellent write-up of the watch explains, “the brighter the light, the clearer the picture.” Of course, there’s no watching TV at all without wiring the watch to the Walkman-sized TR02-01 receiver, shipped with the watch and designed to be worn inside the pocket… “assuming one has a convenient pocket,” of course. Q Branch appears to have modified Bond’s TV Watch to not only not require the wired receiver but also to provide an almost theatrical-quality resolution no doubt clearer than the 32-pixel display would provide in even the best light.

Bond discovers yet another Q Branch innovation that could “allow a man to stop off for a quick one en route,” so to speak.

More traditionally aligned with Bond’s duties as a secret agent, 007 carries his Walther in a tan leather shoulder holster under his left armpit, with a cream-colored nylon strap that loops over his right shoulder to retain the rig.

The Gun

When Bond and Vijay’s “company car” is being chased by a blunderbuss-wielding Gobinda through the streets of Udaipur, 007 naturally reaches inside his jacket to draw his Walther—only it’s not the Walther we’d gotten used to seeing over 20 years!

Instead, Bond was armed in Octopussy with the Walther P5, an updated design introduced by Walther in the late 1970s specifically to replace older, smaller-caliber pistols like Bond’s trusty PPK. Walther was so insistent on their new pistol that it was used not just for Roger Moore’s Bond but also the version of the character portrayed by Sean Connery, making his one-off return to the role in the “unofficial” competitor Never Say Never Again, released later in the year.

Intended to replace pistols like the blowback Walther PP series, the Walther P5 shared much of its mechanical design with the older Walther P38, including that both are recoil-operated pistols chambered for the 9×19 mm Parabellum cartridge as opposed to the smaller .32 and .380 rounds fired through the blowback-operated PP series. The aluminum alloy frame kept the P5 relatively light for its larger size and load, weighing about 1.75 pounds compared to the 1.43-pound PPK. While about 10,000 P5 Compact variations were made, the standard P5 was reasonably sized for Bond to conceal with an overall length of 7.1 inches and a 3.5-inch barrel.

Bond draws his Walther P5.

The P5 gets kicked from Bond’s hands before he has the opportunity to use it. When Bond later tells Q “I’ve also mislaid my PPK” to account for its absence, it’s likely a mistake from the original script that failed to account for the fact that 007 would be carrying a different Walther in Octopussy.

Bond would again be armed with the traditional Walther PPK for the following film, A View to a Kill, and this would remain Bond’s preferred service weapon through the late ’90s when it would be more prolifically replaced by the larger Walther P99.

What to Imbibe

James Bond’s cinematic association with Bollinger champagne began at the start of Roger Moore’s tenure when his 007 ordered a bottle to his hotel room in Live and Let Die. Ten years later, the storied champagne house founded in Aÿ in 1829 remained his preferred bubbly, especially when toasting with lovers like Magda.

While Bollinger may have first appeared in a Bond film in 1973, its association with the character dates back to Ian Fleming’s novels, specifically the 22nd chapter of Diamonds are Forever, when Tiffany Case sends a steak (notably served with Sauce Béarnaise) and a bottle to his stateroom aboard the Queen Elizabeth: “There was a quarter bottle of Bollinger, a chafing dish containing four small slivers of steak of toast canapés, and a small bowl of sauce… Bond filled a glass with champagne and spread a lot of the Béarnaise on a piece of the steak and munched it carefully.”

How to Get the Look

Roger Moore as James Bond while filming Octopussy (1983). Photo sourced from thunderballs.org.

James Bond wears a tastefully distinctive yet traditional warm-weather black tie kit in India, with plenty of character from the cool-wearing cloth of his off-white dinner jacket and voile shirt to the simple silk-adorned elegance of his trousers’ self-cummerbund and updated pumps… only his presumably MI6-issued sporty digital watch seems truly out of place.

• Ivory linen-and-wool blend single-button dinner jacket with self-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and double vents
• White cotton voile shirt with spread collar, front placket, and rounded double/French cuffs
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black flat-front formal trousers with silk waistband (with two-button right-side fastening), silk side stripes, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather pump shoes with black grosgrain vamp strips
• Black silk dress socks
• Tan leather shoulder holster with cream-colored nylon strap
• Seiko G757 Sports 100 stainless steel digital watch with LCD display, timer/alarm/stopwatch functions, and stainless link bracelet with black-finished butterfly-style clasp

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Easy come, easy go!

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