Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximillian Largo in Never Say Never Again (1983)

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Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximillian Largo, billionaire businessman and SPECTRE terrorist

Monte Carlo, Spring 1983

Film: Never Say Never Again
Release Date: October 7, 1983
Director: Irvin Kershner
Costume Designer: Charles Knode

Background

1983 was the year of the dueling James Bonds. Roger Moore continued as the canonical 007 in Eon Productions’ Octopussy, while Bond emeritus Sean Connery surprised audiences by starring in Never Say Never Again, an “unofficial” reimagining of Thunderball released 40 years ago next month by Jack Schwartzman’s Taliafilm.

Never Say Never Again resulted from a two-decade effort by producer Kevin McClory, who had collaborated with Ian Fleming and screenwriter Jack Whittingham on an original Bond screenplay in the late 1950s. When Fleming published a novelization of their unproduced screenplay as Thunderball in 1961, McClory and Whittingham sued and settled out of court, albeit with a string of conditions that ultimately maintained Eon’s rights to the story for up to ten years after the release of their own cinematic adaptation of Thunderball, released in 1965.

By the mid-1970s when McClory announced his plans to produce his own version of the story, both Whittingham and Fleming had died, and Connery had hung up 007’s shoulder holster—presumably for good—after reluctantly returning to the iconic role in Diamonds are Forever. After more legal and production hurdles, the end result released in October 1983 was Never Say Never Again, titled in reference to Connery reprising his role after twice saying he would never play Bond again. (While Moore turned 55 during the production of Octopussy, it’s Never Say Never Again that focuses more on Bond’s advancing age… despite Connery actually being three years younger than Moore and looking considerably more fit than the last time Connery starred as the “official” Bond in Diamonds are Forever a dozen years earlier.)

Not being produced by Eon meant many signature elements were missing, like the James Bond theme, the opening gunbarrel, and a familiar cast portraying 007’s allies at MI6. However, Bond still received his briefing from M (Edward Fox), flirted with Miss Moneypenny (Pamela Salem), and received his equipment from an uncharacteristically jolly Q (Alec McCowen) before jetting off to the Bahamas to investigate a missing nuclear warhead… just as he had in Thunderball.

Never Say Never Again globe-hops with more ferocity than Thunderball, and it’s not long before Bond arrives in southern France, tracking the enigmatic billionaire Maximilian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and his girlfriend Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger). Bond literally gets his hands on Domino at a Villefranche-sur-Mer massage parlor, where he learns that Largo is hosting a charity ball that night across the border in Monte Carlo. Good thing Bond packed his tuxedo!

Largo: Do you enjoy games, Mr. Bond?
Bond: Depends with whom I’m playing.

If, like me, you spent much of your childhood going over to friends’ house just to watch them play video games, this scene offers the same thrills and more.

An oft-criticized scene from Never Say Never Again pits Bond against Largo during a duel for world domination… in the form of a pixilated video game that Largo invented. Titled “Domination”, the Atari-style game was clearly an attempt to make the story seem fashionable for the 1980s—though it likely seemed dated by the time its first audiences were already out of the theater. A beaming Largo explains that “unlike armchair generals, we will share the pain of our soldiers in the form of electric shocks.” Even after almost passing out from the pain, Bond keeps the game going—is it because he wants to prove a point to Largo, or does he just not want to give $58,000 to a children’s charity?

As September 12 is National Video Games Day (not to be confused with plain old “Video Games Day” observed on July 8), BAMF Style’s inaugural Never Say Never Again post will explore Largo’s creative black tie for the event.

What’d He Wear?

In contrast to the old-school villain that an eye-patched Adolfo Celi portrayed in Thunderball, Brandauer’s yuppified Largo represents the materialism of ’80s excess, whether he’s mashing the buttons of his digital Risk copycat or prancing around the decks of his luxury yacht with a sweater knotted around his neck.

Unlike 007’s classic black tie ensemble, Largo subverts evening-wear conventions at nearly every opportunity when building his wardrobe for the charity ball. “Creative black tie” generously describes Largo’s attire, and its lack of elegance further serves to position him as the villain against the more refined and respectably dressed James Bond.

The ’60s Largo had also dressed in a white double-breasted dinner jacket, but the similarities end there. As opposed to the classic, Casablanca-style evening-wear that Adolfo Celi wore, Brandauer’s dinner jacket is pencil-striped in black against the white ground. The narrow shawl collar is piped with black edges that coordinate with the stripes and the black two-hole buttons—arranged in a 6×2-button double-breasted configuration, as well as two vestigial buttons on each cuff. Typically reserved for suit jackets and sports coats, the single vent also defies evening-wear tradition. Unlike most striped tailoring where the stripes follow the direction of the lapels, Largo’s stripes are angled to “collide” with the edge of his shawl collar.

The tailoring is consistent with early ’80s trends, from the wide shoulders to the shorter length. The jacket has straight flapped hip pockets and a welted breast pocket, in which Largo wears a white silk pocket square with a black “Y”-shaped geometric print on one side.

Largo’s just smiling because he’s playing a game he invented. If he was facing off against me in Cruisin’ USA, he wouldn’t have a chance.

Regardless of the dinner jacket’s color or cut, black tie tradition calls for a white formal shirt and the black bow-tie that informs the dress code’s nomenclature… leave it to Largo to buck both conventions.

Largo’s had it up to here with my criticism of his wardrobe!

Largo’s black formal shirt has the requisite pleated front for evening shirts but an attached wing collar and button-fastened squared barrel cuffs. You could argue that Largo at least follows the “black tie” part, but his white pin-dotted necktie is a straight tie, which he knots with a half-Windsor and initially tucks into his cummerbund.

Largo balances the offbeat upper half of his outfit with a traditional bottom half, even finished with a black pleated silk cummerbund covering his waist and the top of his black trousers. These flat-front trousers have side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms with then-fashionable flare, but I can’t tell if they’re detailed with the black silk side braid that characterizes formal trousers.

Largo’s shoes are also surprisingly understated, as he wears the black calf leather cap-toe oxfords and black socks that are considered acceptable with all codes of men’s evening dress. With that jacket and his sense of showmanship, I would have surprised something like black-and-white spectator shoes, but the all-black oxfords are refreshingly traditional.

“That last round… nearly killed me.”

Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximillian Largo in Never Say Never Again (1983)

How to Get the Look

True, there are many worse looks at today’s red carpet events or proms than Largo’s flamboyant fit for casino night in the early ’80s, but 007 himself still clearly wins the sartorial gold prize for most tasteful evening-wear. Still, if you’re feeling brave and want to inject some Bond heritage into your creative black tie, be my guest…

• White (with black pencil stripe) double-breasted 6×2-button dinner jacket with black-trimmed shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, vestigial 2-button cuffs, and single vent
• Black formal evening shirt with attached wing collar, pleated front, and button-fastened barrel cuffs
• Black (with white pin-dots) tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black flat-front trousers with side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

As the stakes increase, so does the level of pain… rather like life.

The post Never Say Never Again: Largo’s White Striped Dinner Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Peter Falk as Charlie Adamo in Machine Gun McCain (1969)

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Peter Falk as Charlie Adamo, ambitious gangster

San Francisco and Las Vegas, Summer 1968

Film: Machine Gun McCain
(Italian title: Gli intoccabili)
Release Date: April 1, 1969
Director: Giuliano Montaldo
Costume Designer: Enrico Sabbatini

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Born 96 years ago today on September 16, 1927, Peter Falk may be best remembered as the rumpled but indefatigable Lieutenant Columbo (to the extent that his September 16th is also observed as “Wrinkled Raincoat Day”), but Falk spending most of his screen time wearing a handsomely tailored tuxedo in the 1969 Italian crime film Machine Gun McCain illustrates how the Bronx-born actor could clean up well. (And yes, I do plan on writing about Falk’s iconic wardrobe in Columbo someday!)

Released in Italy as Gli intoccabili (translated to “The Untouchables”) and based on the Ovid Demaris novel Candyleg, Machine Gun McCain joins the subject of my prior post as a prime example of poliziottesco, an Italian crime subgenre that emerged during the nation’s violent “Years of Lead” era and typified by corruption, violence, cynicism… and American lead actors. In this case, Falk was joined by his pal and frequent collaborator John Cassavetes, who portrays the eponymous ex-bank robber opposite Falk as gangster Charlie Adamo.

Apropos Falk’s birthday today, we first see Charlie wearing his fine dinner suit during a birthday celebration in his honor, where he meets McCain’s son Jack (Pierluigi Aprà). Charlie brings it back out of his closet while awaiting a visit from Don Francesco DeMarco (Gabriele Ferzetti), who plans on investigating claims that Charlie has been abusing his power as the Mafia’s chief of West Coast operations by expanding into the still-untouchable territory of Las Vegas.

What’d He Wear?

“How lovely to see you! What an elegant tuxedo,” Charlie’s wife Joni (Florinda Bolkan) comments to Don Francesco upon his arrival in San Francisco. “What do you call this, a pair of pajamas?” Charlie grumbles in response, indicating his own dinner suit.

Charlie’s frustration is understandable, as the mafioso looks sharp in his midnight-blue wool-and-mohair tuxedo—again, a far cry from the enduring pop culture image of Peter Falk in Columbo’s wrinkled raincoat, loose tie, and scuffed shoes.

The single-button dinner jacket features a narrow silk-faced shawl collar and soft shoulders, just wide enough to emphasize a masculine silhouette. The sleeves are roped at the sleeveheads and finished with three flat navy-blue cuff-buttons that match the single front button, perfectly positioned at Falk’s natural waist. The ventless back and straight jetted hip pockets are consistent with traditional black-tie tailoring. Charlie dresses the welted breast pocket with a white linen or cotton pocket square, folded to show just a single point.

Charlie wears two formal shirts with his dinner suit. The first is a traditional white cotton evening shirt, distinguished from the other by its narrow-pleated front and a front placket with white mother-of-pearl buttons closing up the front. The shirt has a semi-spread collar and squared double (French) cuffs that he wears with his usual silver-toned links.

Charlie’s black silk bow-tie neatly echoes the color and width of his dinner jacket’s silk-faced shawl collar. This self-tying bow-tie follows the diamond-pointed “butterfly” shape, a somewhat lesser-seen (but always welcome) alternative to the classic butterfly or batwing shapes.

For the last time Charlie wears his dinner suit, he wears yet another plain white cotton evening shirt with a semi-spread collar and squared double cuffs, but this shirt has a plain-woven body (sans pleats) and a dressy covered fly front.

With his untied bow-tie, cigarette, and distressed expression, Peter Falk’s last act as Charlie Adamo looks a little more like we’re used to seeing him between Columbo, Wings of Desire, and his collabs with Cassavetes.

Charlie’s flat-front formal trousers are made from a midnight-blue mohair-blend cloth that matches his jacket, detailed with the requisite silk side-braiding—here two narrow parallel stripes that flank the trousers’ side seam from waist to the plain-hemmed bottoms. He covers the waistband with a black pleated silk cummerbund, a classic element of black tie that defines the break between shirt and trousers under the dinner jacket.

The cummerbund and his oft-buttoned jacket prevent us from seeing more of the trouser waistband—illustrating that he wears these pieces correctly—but the brief we look at Charlie without his jacket on shows that he isn’t wearing suspenders, and thus the trousers are likely either perfectly tailored to fit Falk’s waistband or they’re styled with side-tab adjusters.

Consistent with his understated and classic dinner suit, Charlie doesn’t wear an abundance of garish jewelry, only adding the sole affectation of a silver ring on his left pinky, which appears to be a trio of small diamonds arranged in an eye-shaped setting. On his left wrist, he wears a stainless steel watch on a tan leather strap.

In case you missed the spoiler alert at the top of this post… things don’t go so well for Charlie. At least he goes out in style though—check out the sheen on that tux!

Charlie’s black calf leather cap-toe oxford shoes and black dress socks are classic footwear with black tie.

The Gun

After the McCains carry out their plan to rob the Royal, a distressed Charlie realizes he’ll be a target and arms himself with a blued Colt Python “snub-nose” revolver. Characterized by a ventilated rib along the top of the barrel, the Python was introduced in 1955 as Colt’s entry into the .357 Magnum premium revolver segment, at the time dominated by Smith & Wesson. The Python soon gained a reputation for reliability that followed through its initial fifty-year production timeline.

The first Python revolvers had six-inch barrel lengths and Colt’s newly developed “Royal Blue” finish, though the Python would soon be available in a nickel finish as well as four-inch, three-inch, and 2.5-inch barrels—the latter as featured in Peter Falk’s hands in Machine Gun McCain.

What to Imbibe

Charlie keeps some Courvoisier in his office, which he pours out for himself and Don Francesco, who describes it as “delicious.”

Hey wait, I thought that guy’s favorite drink was Corsican brandy!

The youngest of the “big four” cognac houses, Courvoisier was founded in 1835 in the Parisian suburb of Bercy, where Napoleon Bonaparte had supposedly been inspired to arm his artillery companies with rations of cognac after an 1811 visit. Though Napoleon I was dead for more than a decade by the time Emmanuel Courvoisier began production, his nephew Napoleon III personally requested Courvoisier as “Official Supplier to the Imperial Court” toward the end of his reign as Emperor. In 1951, Courvoisier introduced its now-familiar wide-based bottle with a narrow neck, known as the “Josephine” bottle in tribute to Napoleon’s first wife.

How to Get the Look

Peter Falk as Charlie Adamo in Machine Gun McCain (1969)

• Midnight-blue wool-and-mohair tuxedo:
  • Single-button dinner jacket with narrow silk-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Flat-front trousers with side pockets, double silk-braided side stripe, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton evening shirt with semi-spread collar, narrow-pleated front, front placket, and squared double/French cuffs
• Black silk diamond-pointed butterfly-shaped bow-tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black calf leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Silver pinky ring
• Stainless steel watch on tan leather strap
• White linen pocket square

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Peter Falk’s Tuxedo in Machine Gun McCain appeared first on BAMF Style.

Roger Moore as James Bond in Moonraker (1979). Photo sourced from thunderballs.org archive.

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Roger Moore as James Bond, suave and sophisticated British MI6 agent

Rio de Janiero, Brazil, February 1979

Film: Moonraker
Release Date: June 26, 1979
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Costume Designer: Jacques Fonteray
Tailor: Angelo Vitucci

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy 00-7th of February! To warm up, let’s join James Bond on assignment in Rio de Janiero, his last stop in Moonraker before an unexpected detour into outer space, following both our villain Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) and the overall sci-fi trends of the late ’70s thanks to blockbusters like Star Wars.

Before strapping on a Drax Industries spacesuit, Bond dons a more characteristic suit with the tailored tuxedo he chooses to wear for Carnival, the annual Brazilian festival held every February—scheduled to start at the end of this week.

007 arrives at Carnival with MI6’s local contact Manuela (Emily Bolton), who falls victim to Bond’s old nemesis, the massive and metal-grilled Jaws (Richard Kiel), returning to the series after Kiel’s well-received appearance in The Spy Who Loved Me. Bond manages to elude Jaws until the following morning, when he reconnects with attractive American government scientist Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) on Sugarloaf Mountain and acquaints her with the gargantuan henchman now relentlessly pursuing them:

His name’s Jaws. He kills people.

Anyway, does anyone need a 7 Up?

Or would that be a 00-7 Up?

What’d He Wear?

Throughout the 1970s, Roger Moore’s Bond exclusively wore double-breasted dinner jackets, consistent with that decade’s revival of 1930s fashions when double-breasted evening-wear was prevalent. Each film featured a dinner jacket of a different color: off-white silk in The Man with the Golden Gun, midnight-blue mohair in The Spy Who Loved Me, and black in Moonraker, with a shine that also suggests mohair, a cool-wearing cloth for the Rio heat.

If Bond had hoped his dinner suit would hope him blend in at Carnival, he was rather misinformed as most of the male attendees (aside from those in the parade) sport casual shirts made of linen or floral-printed fabric.

Holly: Have you broken something?
Bond: (assessing his distressed dinner suit) Only my tailor’s heart.

In this case, the tailor in question is Angelo Vitucci of Angelo Roma, the Italian-based tailoring house that Roger Moore became a customer of in the late 1970s after he left England. Vitucci tailored all of Moore’s clothing in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, explaining the similar silhouettes and styles across both film’s wardrobes.

Aside from being constructed of black mohair rather than midnight-blue, Moore’s Moonraker dinner jacket could be a carbon copy of his evening-wear in The Spy Who Loved Me. The satin silk-faced peak lapels are fashionably wide for the era, rolling to a classic 6×2-button configuration, with all buttons—including the three on each cuff—covered in black silk to match the revers. Structured with straight, padded shoulders and a suppressed waist, the ventless jacket also has a welted breast pocket and the requisite straight jetted hip pockets.

Bond attempts to transition his evening suit into something more appropriate for the daytime by taking off his bow tie and letting that disco collar hang free.

Evidently, Bond’s mission kept him occupied all night as our well-tailored agent didn’t have the opportunity to return to his hotel to change into something more appropriate for the morning than his dinner suit, which he dresses down by removing his bow tie and undoing his top shirt button to wear its expansive collar flat over the lapels of his jacket, disco-style.

In their excellent volume From Tailors With Love, Matt Spaiser and Peter Brooker wrote of this moment that “this was emblematic of Bond’s wardrobe in the pre-Dalton era that fashion was more important than dressing for the occasion.” (You can read more of Mr. Spaiser’s expert commentary regarding this outfit at his excellent website Bond Suits.)

Made by legendary London shirtmaker Frank Foster, Bond’s white cotton evening shirt has a front placket framed by pleats on each side. The fashionably wide point collar looks restrained when Bond wears his black silk butterfly-shaped bow tie, but it looks more exaggerated undone and worn flat over his lapels. The two-button “cocktail cuffs” (also known as turnback cuffs) recall a Bond style tradition dating back to Sean Connery’s suits in the first 007 movie, Dr. No, though this would be the last we see of Bond’s cocktail cuffs until revived by Daniel Craig in Spectre.

Featuring Frank Foster’s signature placket, the wide-collared shirt looks proportional and restrained when worn as intended with Bond’s bow tie in place.

For a close-up shot of a captured Bond in the ambulance after the cable car incident, Bond wears a different white shirt with double cuffs fastened by large pearl two-hole buttons.

The tuxedo’s matching flat-front trousers feature a black satin silk waistband, which serves as a self-cummerbund given Bond’s typical distaste for traditional waist coverings and matches the traditional silk braid down each side seam. Consistent with Vitucci’s tailoring preferences, the trousers lack any visible pockets—even the traditional side pockets—and are fashionably flared through the plain-hemmed bottoms, though not as dramatically as some ’70s trousers like the reviled bell-bottoms.

Not worn with suspenders (braces) and evidently lacking side-adjusters or any other support system, Bond benefits from the trousers’ perfect fit that would make his predicament atop the Sugarloaf cable car even more embarrassing if his waistband failed to stay secure through the action.

Holly: “Hang on, James!”
Bond: “The thought had occurred to me.”

If audiences consider James Bond the epitome of a well-dressed man, outfits like this in Moonraker illustrate how comfortably Mr. Bond can break a few menswear “rules” because he knows he can. Black oxfords in patent leather or a well-shined calf leather have long been considered the most suitable footwear to accompany black tie, with exceptions made for formal opera pumps or well-maintained plain-toe derbies.

Whether it was Roger Moore’s personal preference or a tribute to Ian Fleming’s disdain for shoelaces that he passed on the literary 007, Moore’s Bond never wore lace-up shoes with his black tie ensembles. Of course, an elegant dresser like Sir Roger still wore elevated slip-ons crafted from black leather. In Moonraker, these are plain-toe slip-on shoes with raised heels and high vamps decorated with a self-strap across the instep.

..In Bond on Bond: Reflections on 50 Years of James Bond Movies, Moore recalls that he had a neighbor in Italy who was married to Salvatore Ferragamo’s son and was “horrified to see” that Moore’s Bond wore Gucci shoes and belts on screen. “From then on, Ferragamo supplied shoes, belts, and luggage for the films.” Worn with black dress socks, these black leather loafers are thus likely to be Ferragamo.

Product placement deals and the willingness of Moore’s Bond to buck menswear traditions resulted in the short period through the late ’70s when 007 wore digital watches—SEIKO, of course—with everything, including black tie. Purists who already considered Bond’s tasteful Rolex dive watches to be too sporty to accompany his evening-wear likely threw fits when they spied the digital displays of Sir Roger’s SEIKOs popping out from under his shirt cuffs.

Wow, Moonraker really gets me in the mood to kick back with a Seiko and a 7 Up. Anyone else?

For Moonraker, the Japanese watch giant outfitted Moore with a quartz-powered stainless steel SEIKO M354-5019 Memory-Bank Calendar watch (model #SFX003) on a 15mm-wide stainless five-piece bracelet that differs from the standard link bracelet.

The M354-5019 has a black-framed dual LC panel display, measuring 29mm wide and 26mm tall. A calendar across the top of the display shows the month, date, and day of the week, reserving the bottom 2/3rds of the display to show the time, which the user can toggle between a 12-hour or 24-hour indication. Ideal for prospective time travelers, SEIKO programmed the watch so that the calendar could display the calendar of any month within the 80-year period spanning January 1, 1930 through December 31, 2009.

In the midst of escaping from a space-traveling megalomaniac’s faux-ambulance and stricken with the sudden urge to know what day of the week it was when John Dillinger was killed? SEIKO’s got you covered. (And so do I: July 22, 1934 was a Sunday.)

Bond’s SEIKO had been modified by Q Branch with an integrated explosive mechanism that could be triggered by a remote detonator, as 007 would later demonstrate for the audience on the Moonraker launch platform. You can read more about this specific SEIKO and its usage in Moonraker at James Bond Lifestyle.

For the purposes of this post, my friend Ken Stauffer (author of the most recent BAMF Style post and curator of @oceansographer on Instagram) kindly lent me his own “Moonraker SEIKO”, rigged on the Bond-accurate bracelet.

Ken’s Moonraker SEIKO with my own well-loved copy of the source novel.

Moore attended the June 26, 1979 premiere of Moonraker at the Odeon Leicester Square in London wearing a dark double-breasted 6×2-button dinner jacket with an elegant sheen—almost certainly the same tuxedo he had worn on screen or at least a duplicate tailored for him by Angelo Roma.

Co-stars Corinne Clery, Roger Moore (already sporting his ffolkes beard for North Sea Hijack), and Richard Kiel at the Moonraker premiere in June 1979. Photo credit: Harry Myers/REX

How to Get the Look

Lois Chiles and Roger Moore in Moonraker (1979). Photo sourced from thunderballs.org archive.

Even if an evening at Brazilian Carnival and the following day spent sightseeing are hardly appropriate opportunities for black tie, Roger Moore continued blending ’30s-inspired elegance with late ’70s fashionability in his black mohair double-breasted dinner jacket with a long-collared shirt, flared trousers, heeled slip-ons, and digital SEIKO. Truly the man of the moment.

• Black mohair double-breasted 6×2-button dinner jacket with satin-faced peak lapels, satin-covered six-on-two button front, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, satin-covered three-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton evening shirt with large point collar, front placket and pleated bib, and two-button cocktail cuffs
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black mohair flat-front formal trousers with black satin side stripe, black satin fitted waistband, no pockets, and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather self-strap raised-heel loafers
• Black lisle dress socks
• SEIKO M354-5019 Memory-Bank Calendar (SFX003) stainless-cased quartz watch with black-framed date/time digital display on stainless five-piece bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Don’t talk to any strange men, I’ll be back.

The post Moonraker: Roger Moore’s Double-Breasted Dinner Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Alan Ruck and Justine Lupe on Succession, Episode 4.03 (“Connor’s Wedding”). Sourced from Justine Lupe’s Instagram: @mejustinelupe.

Vitals

Alan Ruck as Connor Roy, prospective groom and less-prospective presidential candidate

Jersey City, New Jersey, Fall 2020

Series: Succession
Episode: “Connor’s Wedding” (Episode 4.03)
Air Date: April 9, 2023
Director: Mark Mylod
Creator: Jesse Armstrong
Costume Designer: Michelle Matland

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The Conheads made a strong showing to share how much they appreciated my first post featuring Alan Ruck’s style on Succession, so—in the spirit of Valentine’s Day tomorrow—”let’s just enjoy the sham marriage and the death of romance” as toasted by Connor’s younger half-sibling Roman (Kieran Culkin).

Despite the episode’s matter-of-fact title, the eldest son’s nuptials was hardly the most dramatic event in “Connor’s Wedding”, the third episode of Succession‘s fourth and final season. And despite the fact that the series had been centered around the circumstances of Logan Roy’s mortality since the first episode, Succession still maintained its penchant for masterful storytelling by catching audiences off-guard when the patriarch inevitably died several minutes into the episode.

Of course, had Logan put family before business and foregone his trip to Sweden, he may have spent his last minutes surrounded by loved ones at his son’s wedding and not receiving anonymous chest compressions at 35,000 feet after being dragged unconscious from the cramped toilet of his private plane.

Down at sea level, the Roy children are each respectively handling their grief. Roman, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), and Shiv (Sarah Snook) take some degree of closure as they share their goodbyes to the unconscious Logan via cell phone, but Connor—always the afterthought, even on his own wedding day—received the news after the call ended. His energy immediately redirected from his characteristic fussiness over small details, Connor is only able to muster in response:

Oh, man. He didn’t even like me.

Connor’s failing presidential campaign demonstrates his own self-delusions, but he’s at least farther along his journey of personal realization than his siblings, whom he’d damned as “needy love-sponges” in the previous episode. Logan’s death helps Connor realign his priorities, resulting in a very frank conversation with his bride-to-be Willa (Justine Lupe) about her admittedly pragmatic rationale for marrying him:

You’re young and you’re full of life, and… my father’s dead and I feel old.

After understanding her need for financial security (and perhaps appreciating her honesty about sharing that with him), Connor and Willa finally tie the knot at Liberty State Park. Even though most of the guest list jettisoned in the wake of Logan’s death, the abbreviated audience and Connor’s genuine joy make the wedding a considerably less pitiful event than his desperate proposal to her in Italy.

What’d He Wear?

Connor embraces a creative black tie approach for his wedding attire, anchored by a velvet jacket and straight grenadine tie rather than the traditional dinner jacket and bow tie. Several sources, including the great Instagram account @successionfashion, Trishna Rikhy for Esquire, and Louisa Ballhaus for Robb Report have all identified Connor’s jacket as the Hugo Boss Slim-Fit Tuxedo Jacket (which retails for $645), though an auction listing for the screen-worn jacket describes it as an Emporio Armani product—which would push the price tag closer to $2,000, more expected for the billionaire Roy family, even with the rising costs of Connor’s doomed campaign.

The jacket is made from a dark navy 100% cotton velvet with a diagonal rib, similar to corduroy. The round-bellied peak lapels are faced in black satin silk, matching the button coverings and the jetting straight across the top of each hip pocket. The jacket also has a self-welted breast pocket, double vents, padded shoulders, and four-button cuffs.

As the groom, Connor wears a baby’s breath boutonnière on his left lapel. According to Farmers’ Almanac, baby’s breath symbolize innocence and everlasting love… an ironic choice for this union borne from a less-than-traditional love story.

The new Mr. and Mrs. Connor Roy. (Photo credit: David M. Russell)

Connor wears a white diamond jacquard-print cotton dress shirt by Swedish brand Eton, designed with a spread collar and a fly-front placket that conceals the buttons. The double (French) cuffs are secured with a set of round silver skeletonized gear cufflinks from London jewelry designer Tateossian—hardly seen on screen but described and illustrated in the Heritage Auctions listing.

The color and texture of Connor’s dark navy grenadine silk Paul Stuart tie nicely coordinates with the sporty ribbed velvet jacket, better than such a dramatically textured tie would with a more traditional dinner jacket.

Note the extra layer of white fabric along the shirt’s placket, indicating a covered fly front.

Consistent with black-tie dress code standards, Connor wears black wool formal trousers, detailed by the requisite black silk side braiding that match its silk-faced waistband and the jacket’s lapels. Some of the confusion around who made Connor’s jacket could be explained as the Heritage Auctions listing describes his trousers (not the jacket) as Hugo Boss.

The flat-front trousers have a low rise and plain-hemmed bottoms, which bunch up over his shoes. (For a fix, I’d suggest lifting the trousers by raising the waistband to Alan Ruck’s natural waist and hemming the bottoms to be shorter.)

Black leather oxfords are unimpeachable footwear with formal attire. Connor wears well-shined black calfskin leather oxford shoes from Brioni, the same Italian luxury label that made his half-brother Kendall’s suit in the same episode. Their current iteration retailing at $1,500, these elegant, goat-lined oxfords have a straight cap toe and five-eyelet closed lacing. Connor appropriately wears them with black dress socks that continue the leg line from his trousers.

As mentioned several times throughout, Connor’s entire wedding outfit was auctioned by Heritage Auctions with Willa’s white Ted Baker midi dress as one of many Succession-used lots earlier this year.

Connor and Willa’s wedding attire, as auctioned by Heritage Auctions in 2024.

How to Get the Look

Alan Ruck as Connor Roy on Succession, Episode 4.03 (“Connor’s Wedding”)

Connor Roy pulled his creative black tie wedding apparel together from European luxury brands, perhaps not the best optics for a candidate posturing as an all-American “man of the people,” but an interesting and intentional look regardless.

• Dark-navy diagonal-ribbed cotton velvet single-button dinner jacket with black silk-faced peak lapels, silk-covered buttons, self-welted breast pocket, silk-jetted hip pockets, silk-covered 4-button cuffs, and double vents
• White cotton shirt with spread collar, fly-front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Silver skeleton gear cufflinks
• Dark-navy grenadine silk tie
• Black flat-front formal trousers with silk self-waistband, silk side braid, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calfskin leather cap-toe 5-eyelet oxford shoes
• Black dress socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series, currently streaming on Max. The fourth season recently award the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, with director Mark Mylod and writer Jesse Armstrong each also awarded Emmys for this specific standout episode.

For fans of the show’s style, I recommend following the great Instagram accounts @successionfashion and @successionfits.

The Quote

Mr. Scrooge just happened to be a huge wealth-creator. They don’t mention that in Mr. Dickens’ books, do they?

The post Succession: Connor Roy’s Velvet Wedding Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1974)

Vitals

Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, enigmatic millionaire and eager romantic

Long Island, New York, Summer 1925

Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: March 29, 1974
Director: Jack Clayton
Costume Designer: Theoni V. Aldredge
Clothes by: Ralph Lauren

Background

Today marks the 50th anniversary since the release of The Great Gatsby, directed by Jack Clayton from a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola. This 1974 film was actually the third major adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s romantic Jazz Age novel to be brought to the big screen, following a now-lost silent film in 1926 and a 1949 update starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field, and Macdonald Carey.

The lavish 1974 version stars Robert Redford as the eponymous millionaire who amassed his wealth and flaunts it through riotous parties all in the hopes of reuniting with his erstwhile love, the now-married Daisy (Mia Farrow).

Roaring ’20s standards like “Who?” and “Whispering” filter up from the jazz band out in the garden as Nick Carraway (Sam Waterston) is nervously led by a gun-toting bodyguard into a handsome wood-paneled office, where Nick finally meets the enigmatic host. Jay Gatsby is immediately charming, but his talent for first impressions sizzles out for a very stilted encounter as Gatsby awkwardly explains that he just felt the two neighbors should meet.

Mercifully interrupted by a business phone call (“I don’t give a damn what Philadelphia wants, I said a ‘small town’. If that’s his idea of a small town, he’s no use to us.”), Gatsby recovers his wits enough to ask Nick to join him for lunch the following day.

Though The Great Gatsby received a lukewarm critical reception upon its release 50 years ago this week, it grossed nearly four times its budget and was a major cultural phenomenon, with Nelson Riddle’s Oscar-winning score and Theoni V. Aldredge’s Oscar-winning costume design reviving interest in music and fashions of the 1920s.

What’d He Wear?

In the novel and the 2013 adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jay Gatsby actually makes Nick’s acquaintance while among the guests at this early summer shindig. However, the 1974 film removes this action upstairs to Gatsby’s office where costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge still dressed our host for a Jazz Age party… even if we don’t actually observe his attendance.

Dinner suits were still evolving at the beginning of the 1920s, so many standard aspects now considered requisite of the black tie dress code were still relatively in flux. Robert Redford’s screen-worn black barathea wool dinner jacket is arguably the most ’70s-does-’20s part of his evening ensemble. The ventless dinner jacket is tailored with wide padded shoulders and lapels, coordinating with the front darts to flatter Redford’s athletic physique by crafting a strong and dashing—if somewhat anachronistic—silhouette.

The broad silk-faced peak lapels taper down to the single black horn button that Gatsby leaves undone throughout the scene as he appropriately wears a formal waistcoat underneath his jacket. The sleeves are finished with four-button cuffs that match the single black horn button on the front. The straight hip pockets have wide flaps, likely a concession to 1970s trends though some early ’20s dinner jackets still included pocket flaps before the dress code was refined to eschew them. Gatsby dresses the dinner jacket’s welted breast pocket with an elegantly simple white pocket square, arranged so that a triangle of white linen appears above the pocket.

“How do you do, old sport? I’m Gatsby.”

William Powell wears a contemporary Jazz Age-era tuxedo in the 1930 drama Streets of Chance. While Powell’s dark dinner suit with its black silk low-cut waistcoat and wing collar follows many of the same styling points as Redford’s tuxedo as Gatsby, note the more ’20s-specific details like the smaller collar and more restrained bow tie. Powell’s jacket also has wide lapels like Redford’s but not as broad and without the fuller bellies that were more consistent with ’70s fashions.

Gatsby’s formal waistcoat is made from a black-on-black brocade silk that adds a fancy—but not overly flashy—element to his formalwear. Unlike the high-fastening vest that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Gatsby wore with his tuxedo in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation, Redford’s waistcoat has a lower V-shaped opening—a more conventional style for the black tie dress code. The narrow shawl collar is solid black satin, subtly contrasting against the subdued pattern present throughout the body. Three black buttons are clustered along the front in a single-breasted configuration above the notched bottom.

Gatsby wears his flat gold open-faced pocket watch on a taut gold rope-like chain, strung “double Albert”-style across his midsection, clipped to the right-hand pocket with the watch itself dropped into his left-hand pocket. Later glimpsed more clearly among Gatsby’s personal effects, the watch has a round tan dial with black Arabic numeral hour indices and a second-counting sub-register at the 6 o’clock position.

Through the 1920s, the formal wing collar remained the predominant collar for evening shirts, a carryover from the more formal white tie dress code before it would be supplemented by turndown collars through the early 1930s. Gatsby evidently wears the same white cotton evening shirts with both white tie and black tie, though the soft pleated front makes it considerably more appropriate for the latter’s less formal usage. The front placket is fastened with small diamond studs, showing three between his bow tie and the buttoning point of his waistcoat.

Double (French) cuffs eventually emerged as the preferred sleeve-ends for black tie dress shirts, though Gatsby’s shirt is rigged with single cuffs—now more typically prescribed for white tie. He fastens these with gold ovular links, each mounted with a round red stone.

All this talk about black ties and white ties… let’s look at the tie itself! Gatsby wears a black satin silk bow tie, sculpted in a large butterfly (thistle) shape that harmonizes with his wide peak lapels, though this arrangement may have been ultimately more fashionable during the 1970s production timeframe than the roaring ’20s setting.

Gatsby’s formal trousers follow the enduring style that was carried over from late 19th century white tie standards, albeit with the single silk side braid reserved for black tie rather than the narrower double braid paired with white tie and tails.

Made from black barathea wool to match his dinner jacket, these trousers appear to have a flat front with straight side pockets just behind the braiding and plain-hemmed bottoms that break over the tops of his appropriately formal black patent leather oxford shoes.

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

Gatsby wears a pair of rings throughout The Great Gatsby. In addition to the actor’s personal silver Hopi ring on the ring finger of his right hand, Redford wears an ornate gold pinky ring on his left hand, detailed with a rich dark-green stone that evokes the light at the end of Daisy’s dock.

Gatsby’s pink ring and pocket watch rest on his vanity among his monogrammed brushes.

How to Get the Look

Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1974)

As a self-made millionaire during the Jazz Age, Jay Gatsby dresses fashionably for his parties in the black tie dress code seen as a more youthful (and less formal) alternative to full evening dress, with Theoni V. Aldredge’s costume design blending contemporary 1970s trends with style rooted in the roaring ’20s.

• Black barathea wool single-button dinner jacket with satin-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Black brocade silk single-breasted formal waistcoat with low V-shaped opening, solid satin shawl collar, 3-button front, two pockets, and notched bottom
• Black barathea wool flat-front formal trousers with black satin side braid, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton evening shirt with wing collar, pleated front, and single cuffs
  • Gold ovular cuff links with round red stones
• Black satin silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black patent leather oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Gold open-faced pocket watch on gold chain, worn in waistcoat pocket
• Plain silver ring, worn on right ring finger
• Ornate gold ring with dark green stone, worn on left pinky

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and, of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel.

The Quote

Truth of the matter is… I don’t much like parties.

The post Robert Redford’s Tuxedo in The Great Gatsby appeared first on BAMF Style.

Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Vitals

Don Ameche as Henry Van Cleve, successful businessman

New York City, Fall 1923

Film: Heaven Can Wait
Release Date: August 11, 1943
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Costume Designer: René Hubert

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Born 116 years ago today on May 31, 1908, actor Don Ameche stated during a 1983 interview that his favorite filmmaking experience over what was then a half-century in the movies was appearing in Ernst Lubitsch’s dazzling supernatural comedy Heaven Can Wait, adapted by screenwriter Samson Raphaelson from Ladislaus Bus-Fekete’s play “Birthday”.

Ameche portrays Henry Van Cleve, whom we meet in the afterlife after he dies one day after his 70th birthday. Dignified and distinguished but disillusioned about how he lived his life those seventy years, Henry arrives in the netherworld “where innumerable people had told him often to go” to personally petition to the equally dignified “His Excellency” (Laird Cregar), arguing that he indeed belongs in Hell.

Henry then leads us on a retelling of his entire life, beginning with his birth into considerable privilege on October 25, 1872. Borrowing a storytelling device from Bus-Fekete’s play that would again be used in works like David Nicholls’ novel One Day, we track the progress of Henry’s life by checking him on the same day across multiple years—in this case, his birthday—chronicling his adolescence and relationship with his wife, Martha (Gene Tierney), whose affection he drew away from his cousin Albert (Allyn Joslyn).

By the early 1920s, Henry and Martha have raised their son Jack (Tod Andrews) into a young man who seems to be following his father’s footsteps with a penchant for showgirls. When the middle-aged Henry approaches the Follies girl Peggy Nash (Helene Reynolds) before one of her shows, Lubitsch briefly lets us worry that Henry has fallen back into his own old patterns of infidelity… before he reveals that he instead endeavored to meet the young Miss Nash to pay her $10,000 to keep out of Jack’s life. That evening, Martha gently chides Henry for getting involved in their son’s affairs, but Jack later reveals that he’s glad to be rid of the bothersome Peggy. As they retire to bed, Henry shares his insecurities around his aging—and its effects on his waistline—but Martha confirms that seeing how comfortably he has settled into their life together has finally eased her own insecurities as they approach their 24th wedding anniversary.

20th Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had insisted on the commercially popular Ameche over Lubitsch’s initial protestations, as the role had been originally intended for Rex Harrison or Fredric March, though the director was soon impressed by Ameche’s professionalism and performance. One of the most bankable and highest-earning stars during the 1940s, Ameche later transitioned to appearing mostly on television and the stage until his big screen resurgence in the ’80s via a comedically villianous role in Trading Places (1983) and his sole Oscar-winning performance in Cocoon (1985).

Photographed in brilliant Technicolor by cinematographer Edward Cronjager, Heaven Can Wait remains Lubitsch’s only completed Technicolor film; the director’s final credit, the 1948 Technicolor musical That Lady in Ermine, was completed by an uncredited Otto Preminger after Lubitsch died one week into the production. Heaven Can Wait received three Academy Award nominations, including Best Director for Lubitsch, Best Cinematography for Cronjager, and Best Picture—which it understandably lost to Casablanca. (Another unrelated film titled Heaven Can Wait would also be nominated for an Oscar more than three decades later in the form of Warren Beatty and Buck Henry’s 1978 adaptation of Here Comes Mr. Jordan.)

What’d He Wear?

Henry dresses for his quiet evening with Martha in a traditional smoking jacket, fashioned from a brilliant dark-blue floral jacquard silk with the requisite shawl collar, turnback cuffs, and frog-style fastening. Developed from the robes-de-chambre that gentlemen adopted as smoking became a more prevalent postprandial activity through the 19th century, smoking jackets were intentionally crafted from fabrics like silk and flannel that would absorb smoke while protecting the wearer’s clothing underneath it.

Henry’s smoking jacket boasts a broad shawl collar and wide turnback cuffs faced in a solid dark-navy matte silk crêpe, coordinating with the dual dark blue tones patterning the body of his jacket. Given their purpose for elegant leisure, smoking jackets ranged from the loose unstructured comfort of robes to the more tailored refinement associated with dinner jackets and evening-wear; Henry’s ventless smoking jacket aligns with the latter with its straight shoulders and roped sleeveheads.

The jacket has straight hip pockets detailed with navy silk jetting that matches the collar, cuffs, and front closure. This decorative silk-braided “frog” toggle fastening originated centuries earlier in China during the Song dynasty, and it remains a fixture of traditional Asian garments like women’s cheongsams and men’s mandarin-collar coats.

Henry’s white cotton evening shirt represents the fashions of early 20th century formalwear, characterized by a stiff detachable collar and heavily starched bib and single cuffs. These shirts were known as “boiled shirts” as they were designed with any parts that showed to be so heavily starched that they needed to be placed in boiled water to remove the starch prior to cleaning.

The two front studs with their shining green semi-spheres are purely vestigial, as these old-fashioned dress shirts buttoned up the back and then had the collar attached to the neckband with functional studs through buttonholes on the front and back. Rather than the standing or wing collars often worn with formal evening tailcoats and white ties, Henry wears a turndown club collar—defined by its rounded edges—as gentlemen would also wear with long ties at the time.

Henry’s butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie is made from a midnight-blue silk to coordinate with the blue tones in the rest of his outfit.

Henry wears a dark-blue waistcoat with a fancy tonal jacquard silk pattern, echoing the spirit of his smoking jacket but with a slightly different pattern against a darker blue ground. The single-breasted waistcoat has a V-shaped neckline that tapers to four covered buttons at the waist and has four welted pockets.

Henry wears the same dark midnight-blue evening trousers prescribed for the formal “white tie” dress code, characterized by the double silk-braided galon down each side seam. These flat-front trousers have side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms, which break over the tops of his black patent leather shoes.

The gold pinky ring on Henry’s right hand has a shining blue stone. His only other accessory are his tortoise-framed pince-nez, the old-fashioned eyeglasses consisting solely of two round lenses connected by a bridge and held in place by pinching the nose—as “pincer nez” is literally French for “to pinch the nose”. Like many pince-nez wearers during this style’s heyday around the turn of the 20th century, Henry keeps his attached to a cord that he wears around his neck.

How to Get the Look

Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Henry Van Cleve’s silk smoking jacket, stiff collar and boiled shirt, and pince-nez was already mostly outmoded by the roaring ’20s setting of this scene in Heaven Can Wait, let alone a century later, as Don Ameche models an elegant example of tailored leisure-wear from a bygone era.

• Dark-blue floral jacquard silk dinner jacket with broad navy silk crêpe shawl collar, single silk-braided frog-style toggle fastening, straight jetted hip pockets, navy silk crêpe turnback cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton dress shirt with stiff detachable club collar, starched bib (with two green studs), and single cuffs
• Midnight-blue silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Dark-blue jacquard silk single-breasted 4-button waistcoat with four welted pockets
• Midnight-blue wool formal flat-front trousers with side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather shoes
• Gold pinky ring with blue stone
• Tortoise-framed pince-nez eyeglasses on neck-cord

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Heaven Can Wait: Don Ameche’s Blue Silk Smoking Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

John Cazale as Fredo Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974)

Vitals

John Cazale as Fredo Corleone, insecure mob family sibling

Lake Tahoe, Fall 1958

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

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Born 89 years ago today on August 12, 1935, the late John Cazale racked up perhaps the most impressive screen batting average during his brief but significant film career. After more than a decade acting in theater, Cazale made his feature film debut as the weak-willed Corleone sibling Fredo in The Godfather (1972), a role he reprised to great acclaim two years later in The Godfather Part II (1974).

Cazale made one more film for Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation (1974), before he again teamed with Al Pacino as a pair of hapless bank robbers in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). The Deer Hunter (1978) was Cazale’s next film and his fifth and final big screen credit prior to his death from lung cancer in March 1978 at the age of 42.

As this is the 50th anniversary year of The Godfather Part II, considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all time, let’s use Cazale’s birthday as an opportunity to celebrate his remarkable performance as the doomed Fredo Corleone.

The movie chronicles parallel stories in the history of the Corleone family, beginning with young Vito (Robert De Niro) emigrating from Sicily after the turn of the 20th century and establishing what would become a criminal empire opposite a 1950s timeline centered around his enterprising son Michael (Al Pacino) leading the family while his older but less decisive brother Fredo watches jealously from the sidelines.

What’d He Wear?

The Godfather Part II continues its preceding film’s examples of starting with a family celebration, in this case a party for Michael’s son making his first Holy Communion. In the years since we last saw him, Fredo evidently started modeling his appearance after his late father by having grown a mustache and dressing in black tie… despite the soiree’s clearly less formal dress code that ranges from sport jackets to suits; even the ostensible host Michael wears a gray dupioni silk suit rather than a tuxedo.

A sartorial stride in his continued desire to be noticed (for better or worse), Fredo eschews the classic black, midnight, or off-white dinner jackets by dressing for the party in an eye-catching plaid dinner jacket. The style emerged in the United States at the end of the 1940s and raged through the ’50s as seen on the pages of Life and the newly launched Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine. Despite advocates as distinguished as King George VI (according to The Black Tie Blog), the delicacy of evening-wear tradition made plaid dinner jackets a sartorial gamble, lest the wearer look less like a gentleman and more like a tacky half-a-wiseguy who ran afoul for “banging cocktail waitresses two at a time!”

Made from a dupioni silk that shines in both the afternoon sun and evening lights, Fredo’s dinner jacket has a predominantly black ground, horizontally striped in rust-red stripes that alternate between sets of two narrow bar stripes and wider rust stripes bordered in beige bar stripes along the top and bottom. The faint white vertical bar stripes run perpendicular to this pattern, creating a checked effect.

Though the jacket’s plaid print may be too garish for some, it is handsomely cut with its self-faced shawl collar tapering to a single button positioned below John Cazale’s natural waist. Consistent with men’s evening-wear conventions, the jacket is ventless with a welted breast pocket and straight jetted hip pockets. The straight shoulders are structured with padding, framed by roped sleeve-heads to craft a profile that builds up Fredo’s chest and shoulders to give him an artificially stronger silhouette. The sleeves are finished with three recessed black cuff-buttons that match the single button on the front.

Creative black tie is typically considered tasteful when only one element differs from tradition, so Fredo balances the flash of his plaid dinner jacket with the typical white shirt, solid silk bow tie, and black formal trousers. His white evening shirt—as characterized by the broadly pleated front—has a semi-spread turndown collar, front placket presenting two gold-trimmed squared black studs, and double (French) cuffs fastened with gold squared links that frame center-mounted amber stones. The black silk bow tie is of the double-ended diamond-pointed style that was prevalent through the ’50s.

Fredo wears the classic black formal trousers prescribed for evening-wear, defined by the black satin silk braid running along each outer side seam. Though the triple-pleated black silk cummerbund appropriately covers his waistband, the full-fitting trousers appear to have single pleats in accordance with ’50s tailoring. The trousers’ side pockets have straight vertical openings positioned just behind each seam, and the bottoms are plain-hemmed.

The angles captured on screen never clearly show Fredo’s shoes, though we can at least see that they are appropriately black leather. Patent leather oxfords are an infallible accompaniment to black tie, so let’s give Freddie enough credit to assume he’s wearing those.

Fredo wears his usual pair of rings: an etched gold ring with a small ruby stone on his right pinky and a larger gold ring with a black-filled square face on his left ring finger. In later scenes, he wears a plain stainless steel watch with a simple round off-white dial and black leather strap, though the wristwatch spied under his left shirt cuff in these scenes appears to be flashier with a diamond-studded case encircling a black dial.

How to Get the Look

John Cazale as Fredo Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974)

Ever desirous to be noticed, Fredo dresses for attention at his nephew’s Communion party by not only wearing black tie (when all the other men are in suits and sport jackets) but a flashy black-and-rust plaid silk dinner jacket that shines in the Lake Tahoe sunlight.

• Black, rust, and white-checked dupioni silk single-button dinner jacket with self-faced shawl collar, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton evening shirt with semi-spread collar, wide-pleated front, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold-trimmed, black-filled square studs
  • Gold square cuff links with amber stones
• Black silk diamond-pointed bow tie
• Black single-pleated formal evening trousers with on-seam side pockets, satin side braid, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black silk triple-pleated cummerbund
• Black patent leather oxford shoes
• Gold pinky ring with ruby stone
• Gold ring with large black-filled square surface
• Stainless steel wristwatch with diamond-studded case encircling black dial on black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

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

The post The Godfather, Part II: Fredo’s Plaid Dinner Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in The World is Not Enough (1999).
Photo by Keith Hamshere/Sygma via Getty Images.

Vitals

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, sophisticated English spy

Baku and Istanbul, December 1999

Film: The World Is Not Enough
Release Date: November 8, 1999
Director: Michael Apted
Costume Designer: Lindy Hemming
Tailored by: Brioni

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

On the 00-7th of November, today’s post celebrates Pierce Brosnan’s third and penultimate movie as James Bond—The World Is Not Enough—which premiered 25 years ago tomorrow on November 8, 1999 at the Fox Bruin Theater in Los Angeles.

With most of Ian Fleming’s original material already adapted by the end of Timothy Dalton’s tenure, Brosnan’s Bond films relied on original storylines with nods to earlier works in the franchise. In the case of The World Is Not Enough, this applies to the title itself—the English translation of the Bond family coat of arms (“Orbis non sufficit”) mentioned in the novel and film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Bruce Feirstein crafted the original screenplay for The World Is Not Enough, centered around Bond’s assignment to protect heiress Elektra King (Sophie Marceau) from Renard (Robert Carlyle), an international terrorist who had kidnapped her years earlier. As the stakes of his mission grow, he recruits the help of an old enemy-turned-friend Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) and the improbably named—and improbably cast—nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards).

A hallmark of the Bond franchise are its aspirational sequences that highlight both the danger and elevated lifestyle of James Bond’s missions, exemplified in The World Is Not Enough as he strides into a swanky casino in an exotic locale, clad as usual in an impeccable tuxedo with a Walther holstered under his arm and a dry martini in his hand. After a Bollinger-soaked romantic interlude with an impossibly beautiful woman, Bond’s back on the trail of his dangerous foe, who only narrowly escapes as Bond saves the life of yet another impossibly beautiful woman following a gunfight.

What’d He Wear?

Whether you’re planning your style “to have Christmas in Turkey” or simply looking to elevate your black tie game, The World Is Not Enough demonstrates a timeless examples of sophisticated black tie that remains as fashionable today as it was a quarter-century ago.

Bond dresses to have Christmas in Turkey.

Lindy Hemming designed the costumes for all four of Brosnan’s Bond films, establishing a continuity that, according to Pete Brooker and Matt Spaiser in From Tailors With Love, gave “a James Bond actor a consistent sartorial identity throughout all his films” for the first time since Sean Connery. Hemming’s costumes for Brosnan prioritized style and sophistication, focusing on tailored suits—less likely to look dated than casual wear—and enlisting the services of renowned Italian fashion house Brioni.

In his excellent analysis for Bond Suits, Spaiser observes that the midnight-blue cloth on 007’s tuxedo was a cool-wearing blend of wool and mohair provided by William Halstead. The cut follows Brioni’s Roman silhouette with straight, padded shoulders, roped sleeveheads, clean chest, and suppressed waist.

“When I think of an evening suit, I think of a peak lapel,” Hemming explained to Brooker and Spaiser for From Tailors With Love. Following this direction, Hemming would equip Brosnan’s Bond exclusively in dinner jackets with peak lapels, making him the only Bond actor to wear the same style of dinner jacket lapel across multiple films. All of these jackets have silk-faced peak lapels that roll to a single cloth-covered button, as well as a welted breast pocket and straight jetted hip pockets. Brosnan’s ventless jacket in The World Is Not Enough features midnight grosgrain facings on the lapels that matches the silk covering the single front button and the four buttons decorating each cuff.

The matching midnight mohair-and-wool evening trousers are styled with a darted front, on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms as well as the requisite grosgrain side galon extending from the fitted waistband to the bottoms.

The black tie dress code requires dressy shoes, with black leather oxfords considered the most traditional footwear. Bond’s polished cap-toe Church’s oxfords from are most prominently—if not exactly clearly—seen as he kicks Elektra’s security chief Sasha Davidov (Ulrich Thomsen) in the face. Naturally, Bond also wears black dress socks that maintain the dark leg-lines of his trousers into his shoes.

Bond’s white dress shirt from Turnbull & Asser has a poplin body for comfort, but the parts that show when he wears his jacket buttoned—the spread collar, double (French) cuffs, and bib-style front—are all woven in a stiffer marcella (piqué). His round cuff links are gold with mother-of-pearl settings, matching the four studs he initially wears up the front. When Bond gets dressed again after his tryst with Elektra, he foregoes the studs and merely uses the shirt’s built-in mother-of-pearl buttons, leaving the top few undone.

Note the small hole next to the second button on Bond’s shirt. This would accommodate the studs he was wearing earlier, which would be pushed through the buttonholes on both sides of the shirt. Since he was merely getting dressed (and not dressing up) after his romp with Elektra, there was no need for the showy formality of studs and he used the shirt’s built-in buttons instead.

Bond wears a butterfly-shaped bow tie made from a midnight horizontal-ribbed silk, neatly mirroring the grosgrain silk facing his lapels.

Upon stepping into Zukovsky’s casino, Bond dons a pair of x-ray glasses that allow him to determine which of his fellow patrons are armed and/or clad in provocative lingerie under their evening gowns. Bond Lifestyle reports that a member of the costume team had purchased the screen-worn specs off the shelf at a Scrivens Opticians location in High Street, identifying the model as the Blue MOD No.9048 ANT BLU 50×19. Despite the coincidentally cyanic company name, the light-blue tinted lenses were actually added by the film’s production team.

Pierce Brosnan was the first Bond actor to prominently wear Omega watches for his characterization, specifically sporting an array of blue-dialed Omega Seamaster dive watches through his run. Unlike his successor Daniel Craig, who often cycled between several different Omega models within a single film, Brosnan would wear essentially the same model across his tenure. This tradition began in GoldenEye with the quartz-powered 2541.80.00 until he switched in Tomorrow Never Dies to the automatic Omega Seamaster Professional 2531.80.00 chronometer that he would continue to wear in The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day.

Both the automatic 2531.80.00 and quartz 2541.80.00 Seamaster Professional models were introduced in 1993 and share similar aesthetics and functionality, including the 300-meter water resistance, though the self-winding 2531.80.00 chronometer is powered by the Omega 1120 calibre movement with a power reserve up to 44 hours.

The stainless steel 41mm case is rhodium-plated with a helium release valve pointing out from the 10 o’clock position. The stainless link bracelet matches the case and closes with a deployable clasp. A 12-sided unidirectional rotating bezel with a polished blue ring encircles the blue “wave”-printed dial. Protected by a lightly domed sapphire crystal, this blue dial features luminous non-numeric hour indices, except for a date window at the 3 o’clock position.

You can also read more about Brosnan’s automatic Seamaster at Bond Lifestyle and Omega.

As usual, Q Branch equipped Bond’s Omega with a few gadgets beyond merely telling the time, including bright LED lights emanating from the dial and a grappling hook that he uses to engineer his escape from an ICBM base by firing a small piton with a 50-foot microfilament from behind the screw-down crown.

While infiltrating the aforementioned ICBM base in Kazakhstan, Bond changes out of his dinner suit into a blue cotton uniform issued by the Russian Atomic Energy Agency—supporting his cover identity of nuclear scientist Mikhail Arkov, the same name on the badge he swiftly manufactures in the airplane bathroom en route to the base and clips onto the right side of the uniform jacket. You can read more about this uniform at Bond Suits.

Though Bond swaps out his dressy black oxfords for black patent leather lug-soled boots, he continues wearing the white evening suit from his tuxedo. (A more discerning sentry may have questioned why a nuclear scientist was wearing such a formal shirt with his work uniform, but this was before we had resources like @dieworkwear to keep people on the lookout for these sartorial queues!)

The Guns

The World Is Not Enough was the first movie where Bond’s sidearm was exclusively the Walther P99, which replaced his Walther PPK mid-mission in Brosnan’s previous outing, Tomorrow Never Dies, coinciding with the weapon’s 1997 debut.

Walther designer Horst Wesp conceptualized the P99 to replace the aging 9mm P5 and P88 semi-automatics for German law enforcement. The initial P99 featured a double-action/single-action (DA/SA) trigger with an “Anti-Stress” decocker and an internal striker rather than an external hammer.

Following the P99’s introduction in the 9x19mm cartridge, a .40 S&W model with a slightly longer barrel was added to appeal to American law enforcement—each with double-stack magazines that could carry up to 16 rounds (9mm) and 12 rounds (.40 S&W), though these capacities would be reduced by one round each as the pistol would continue to be refined over its production timeline.

The P99 was overhauled in 2004, with these “second generation” models including the double-action-only P99DAO, a Glock-style P99QA (“Quick Action”), a P99AS reflecting the first-generation’s “Anti-Stress” DA/SA trigger, and the compact P99C. In addition to the all-black P99 models used by Bond, the P99 would eventually be available with a titanium-coated slide, an olive-drab frame, or a desert tan frame.

At the time that The World Is Not Enough was produced and set, Bond would have used a first-generation P99 with 16-round magazines of 9x19mm Parabellum. The P99 continued to be Bond’s standard sidearm through Daniel Craig’s debut film, Casino Royale.

Bond keeps his Walther P99 drawn on Renard.

Given his covert assignments (and the occasional need for an assassination), Bond occasionally equips his P99 with a suppressor, which he attaches when he anticipates killing Renard in the ICBM base. During the subsequent gunfight, he picks up a Makarov pistol from a downed Russian military guard and dual-wields it alongside his suppressed P99.

It makes sense that Bond would have had access to the Makarov in this context, as the “Pistolet Makarova” (PM) had served as the Russian standard sidearm since it replaced the Tokarev pistol in 1951. Nikolay Makarov took inspiration from the Germans’ popular Walther PP and PPK series of pistols, using a similar blowback action and dimensions to craft his design. The pistol fired Boris V. Semin’s new proprietary 9x18mm Makarov ammunition, fed from eight-round box magazines.

Bond supplements the firepower of his suppressed Walther P99 in his right hand with a picked-up Makarov pistol fired with his left.

As the gunfight continues, Bond ups his firepower by picking up a discarded FN P90 to return fire. This distinctive-looking submachine gun—technically classified as a “personal defense weapon” (PDW)—was introduced by the Belgian firearms manufacturer Fabrique Herstal in 1990 to respond to NATO requests for a powerful compact firearm that fired an alternative to 9mm ammunition. Thus, the P90 was developed in tandem with the proprietary 5.7x28mm ammunition, a high-velocity centerfire round ballistically similar to the rimfire .22 WMR cartridge.

The P90’s ergonomic bullpup design includes a futuristic polymer frame that unusually feeds from top-mounted magazines that lay flush with the top of the P90’s frame. These transplant polymer magazines can carry up to 50 rounds of 5.7x28mm, fed through a unique system that rotates each round 90° before chambering it.

BOND

What to Imbibe

Bond begins the evening at the casino with his signature order of a “Vodka Martini… shaken, not stirred,” taking it from the bartender while handing him a stainless Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver taken from a thug he disarms at the bar. Perhaps distracted by the disruption, the barman neglects to garnish Bond’s martini with either the traditional olive or lemon twist, though 007 doesn’t seem to mind.

BOND

After storming into Zukovsky’s office, Zukovsky pours them glasses of Smirnoff Black Label vodka from his personal bar. According to The Whisky Exchange, “This premium variant of Smirnoff is pot-distilled and filtered through seven tons of charcoal in a painstaking production process designed to produce a vodka of rare purity.”

Smirnoff maintains a long association with the Bond franchise, dating back to 1962 when Sean Connery drank it straight and as a martini ingredient in the first-ever Bond movie, Dr. No.

Photo by Keith Hamshere

Bond treats Elektra to another of his favorite alcohol brands when the pair drink Bollinger La Grande Année 1990 champagne in her bed. Every Bond actor since Roger Moore in his debut have enjoyed Champagne Bollinger in a variety of vintages, though the Bond association dates back even further to the 1956 novel Diamonds are Forever, in which Tiffany Case sent Bond a quarter-bottle to drink with the Sauce Béarnaise she prepared for him.

BOND

How to Get the Look

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in The World is Not Enough (1999)

During a sequence that demonstrates the franchise’s signatures from girls and guns to cocktails and casinos, it makes sense that James Bond exemplifies black tie perfection in his sharply tailored Brioni tuxedo.

• Midnight-blue wool-and-mohair Brioni tuxedo:
  • Single-button dinner jacket with grosgrain-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Darted-front trousers with fitted waistband, on-seam side pockets, grosgrain-faced side galon, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White poplin evening shirt with marcella/piqué spread collar, button-up bib, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold-framed mother-of-pearl studs and cufflinks
• Midnight-blue horizontal-ribbed silk butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Black polished leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Black-framed rectangular sunglasses with blue tinted lenses
• Omega Seamaster Professional 300M 2531.80.00 Chronometer rhodium-plated stainless steel watch with 41mm case (with helium escape valve), blue-ringed unidirectional rotating bezel, blue “wave”-motif dial (with luminous hour indices and 3:00 date window), and stainless steel link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

This is a game I can’t afford to play.

The post The World Is Not Enough: Pierce Brosnan’s Midnight Brioni Tuxedo as Bond appeared first on BAMF Style.

Cary Elwes as Thomas Ince in The Cat’s Meow (2002)

Vitals

Cary Elwes as Thomas H. Ince, Hollywood movie mogul

USS Oneida off the coast of southern California, November 1924

Film: The Cat’s Meow
Release Date: April 12, 2002
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Costume Designer: Caroline de Vivaise

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

One hundred years ago this weekend was the mysterious party aboard media tycoon William Randolph Hearst’s luxury yacht that resulted in the death of pioneering filmmaker Thomas H. Ince.

Known a “Father of the Western” with more than 800 producing and directing credits to his name, Ince was celebrating his 44th birthday on Sunday, November 16, 1924 with Hearst’s invited guests aboard the USS Oneida when he reportedly suffered indigestion that led to his death of heart failure three days later. However, Hollywood lore persisted that Ince’s death was actually the result of foul play.

This suggestion was perpetuated at the time by Charlie Chaplin’s valet Toraichi Kono, who claimed to see Ince bleeding from a head wound as he was removed from the yacht. A theory emerged that Hearst himself had actually shot Ince, mistaking him for Chaplin, who was one of his guests for the weekend and who he suspected of maintaining an affair with Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies.

The rumors persisted for generations thanks to the likes of Orson Welles, whose clear disdain for Hearst formed the basis for his groundbreaking 1941 debut feature Citizen Kane. In the late 1960s, Welles shared the tale with then-rising filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who never forgot the scandalous story. Decades later, Bogdanovich brought the material to the big screen when Steven Peros adapted his own play The Cat’s Meow into a screenplay that formed the basis for Bogdanovich’s film of the same name, which starred Kirsten Dunst as Davies, Edward Herrmann as Hearst, Eddie Izzard as Chaplin, and Cary Elwes as the ill-fated Ince.

The real Thomas H. Ince, circa 1922.

What’d He Wear?

On the first night of the weekend, all of the men are clad in conventional black or midnight-blue tuxedoes, though the next evening—Ince’s birthday party—many of the male guests except for Hearst himself have embraced the party atmosphere and the warmth of the southern California sea in their off-white dinner jackets. The Cat’s Meow is set in late 1924, about a decade before white dinner jackets rose to wider acceptance as warm-weather evening wear, though one could argue that Hollywood has always been fashionably ahead of style trends.

Much to Ince’s ultimate misfortune, the party’s appreciation for white dinner jackets also extends to Charlie Chaplin, dressed in an almost identical ivory dinner jacket—differing only with its neo-Edwardian cuff sections.

Ince wears an ivory tropical worsted wool dinner jacket with a ventless back and wide, padded shoulders, emphasized with roped sleeve-heads. The peak lapels are faced in satin silk, though many style experts and black tie code purists insist that white dinner jackets look best with self-faced lapels, aligning with the less formal contexts where they are accepted. His lapels roll to a single sew-through button, which matches the two smaller buttons decorating each cuff. (An extreme close-up of the end of Ince’s left sleeve shows three buttons place very close to the edge, though this is likely an insert shot using a different jacket.)

The straight hip pockets have jetted openings, and Ince dresses the welted breast pocket with a white silk display kerchief.

The black tie dress code grew increasingly popular in the early 20th century as a less formal offshoot of the elegant white tie and tails, though obviously styled with black neckwear that gave the code its nomenclature. For Ince, this means a self-tying black silk bow tie in a classic butterfly (or thistle) shape.

Certain elements of white tie dress code were adapted for black tie, including white evening shirts with all of the parts that show woven in a stiff marcella (piqué). For Ince, this means a marcella front bib and double (French) cuffs—the pair of small round studs on the bib and rectangular cuff links are gold-framed with black onyx facings. Ince attaches a detachable stiff white wing collar to the neckband, secured with gold studs on the front and back.

White dinner jackets are typically paired with the same dark formal trousers worn with a matching tuxedo, made from either black or midnight cloth and styled with silk galon down the sides. Ince’s black wool evening trousers are reverse-pleated with side pockets and double black satin galon down the side seams to the plain-hemmed bottoms. He holds them up with white silk suspenders (braces) that have gold-toned adjusters and white leather ears that connect to buttons along the inside of the waistband, though he generally keeps his waist covered with a wide black silk cummerbund without the traditional pleats.

Ince’s shoes are the black patent leather oxfords considered among the most formal footwear, naturally worn with black dress socks.

Ince refreshes himself while talking to Margaret Livingston (Claudia Harrison), his mistress for the weekend and the Utah-born actress who would later famously co-star in F.W. Murnau’s 1927 masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.

Hearst, his dozen guests, and the birthday boy himself accessorize for Ince’s birthday dinner in festive party hats that often reflect their professions or passions. For example, Chaplin sports a black bowler hat, in keeping with his iconic Tramp character, while Ince dons a decorative cowboy hat that nods to his reputation as the “Father of the Western”. Ince’s black hat is adorned with a wide black-and-white double-checked band, with fringed edges woven in shiny silver.

Already similarly dressed to Chaplin in his ivory dinner jacket, Ince unknowingly seals his fat by donning the derby that Chaplin had discarded during his conversation with Marion—thus giving a crazed Hearst reason to suspect that the man in his Walther’s sights is the same comedian who had been pursuing his own mistress.

Chaplin’s black bowler hat has the festive touch of a silver band, though Ince playfully choosing to put the hat on while talking to Marion gives Hearst reason to believe he’s actually shooting Chaplin when he takes aims at the back of Ince’s head.

Ince wears a gold ring on each hand, including an ornate ring with a black stone on his right pinky and a plain wedding band signifying his marriage to Elinor Kershaw on his left ring finger.

Wristwatches were still newly en vogue by 1924, when Ince is depicted sporting a gold watch on his left wrist. Strapped to a thin gold bracelet, this elegant timepiece has non-numeric hour indices positioned within a ring along the outer edge of its round champagne dial, which also has a seconds-counting sub-register at the 6:00 position.

While I suspect it may actually be a post-1920s timepiece, can anyone ID Ince’s watch?

How to Get the Look

Cary Elwes as Thomas Ince in The Cat’s Meow (2002)

One drawback of the uniformity of black tie dress code is that it could be very easy for your host to mistake you for the man sleeping with his mistress and, thus, shoot you in the head. To prevent this, make sure any cuckolding third parties present at your upcoming functions don’t plan on wearing the same festive apparel as you… and definitely don’t put on their distinctive party hat!

• Ivory worsted single-button dinner jacket with satin-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • White silk pocket square
• White cotton formal shirt with detachable wing collar, marcella front bib (with two studs), and marcella double/French cuffs
  • Gold-framed black-faced studs
  • Gold-framed black-faced rectangular cuff links
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black wool reverse-pleated formal trousers with side pockets, double side galon, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black flat silk cummerbund
• White silk suspenders with gold adjusters and white leather hooks
• Black patent leather oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Black cowboy hat with black-and-white checked band and silver-fringed edges
• Gold pinky ring with black stone
• Gold wedding band
• Gold wristwatch with round champagne dial (with non-numeric hour indices and 6:00 sub-register) on thin gold bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You know, partnerships of any kind are based on two things: trust and sharing.

The post The Cat’s Meow: Cary Elwes’ White Dinner Jacket as Thomas Ince appeared first on BAMF Style.

Fred Astaire in The Towering Inferno (1974)

Vitals

Fred Astaire as Harlee Claiborne, charming con artist

San Francisco, Summer 1974

Film: The Towering Inferno
Release Date: December 14, 1974
Director: John Guillermin
Costume Designer: Paul Zastupnevich

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The Towering Inferno was released 50 years ago this week—released in Canada on December 14, 1974, two days before its Los Angeles premiere and wider release across the United States on December 16th.

Despite his prolific career primarily known for singing and dancing in musicals like Top Hat (1935), Holiday Inn (1942), and Funny Face (1957), Fred Astaire received his sole competitive Academy Award nomination for his performance as Harlee Claiborne, an aging con man with a heart of gold. On the day that the titular fire erupts in the new Glass Tower, Harlee has begun a flirtation with one of its residents, Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones), escorting her to the dedication party in its top-floor “Promenade Room”, 135 floors and nearly 1,600 feet above the ground.

Though set on the fourth of July, the red sash that Astaire’s character knots around the waistband of his rented dinner suit adds a dash of festivity also appropriate for yuletide style analysis.

Harlee takes a moment to appreciate his tuxedoed appearance.

What’d He Wear?

Long considered one of Hollywood’s most stylish men, Fred Astaire likely had considerable influence on how his character would be dressed on screen, working with costume designer Paul Zastupnevich to ensure that Harlee Claiborne’s on-screen finery would align with how Astaire would dress off screen. Though Harlee’s tuxedo is canonically a rental from Tuxedo Junction (per the receipt flashed on screen), the screen-worn dinner suit identically matches what Astaire wore the following year during the 1975 Academy Awards, where he was honored with a nomination for his performance in The Towering Inferno.

Anjelica Huston, Jack Nicholson, and Fred Astaire during the 1975 Academy Awards ceremony. Photo by Ron Galella.

Astaire’s black dinner jacket has an elegant sheen, suggestive of a wool-and-mohair blend that would be an elegant cloth for staying cool during an event on the fourth of July. The fashionably wide peak lapels are faced in black silk with the added detail of a black velvet collar. The welting along the top of the breast pocket is also faced in black silk, echoing the lapel facings and covered buttons.

The jacket’s two-button front, hip pocket flaps, and long single vent are unconventional for a traditional dinner jacket, which typically has a single button, jetted hip pockets, and either no vent or a double vent. While rented dinner jackets are often tailored like suit jackets—making this choice plausible within the context—it’s still surprising that a sartorially meticulous dresser like Astaire would approve the choice. The sleeves are finished with three covered buttons on each cuff.

Harlee wears a pale-ecru evening shirt with a crimped front placket that’s flanked by ten narrow pleats on each side. The long point collar and single cuffs are double-ply cloth with a fancy tonal striping. Two gold-framed ruby studs shine from the top two buttonholes of his placket, though he fastens the third visible buttonhole with a traditional mother-of-pearl button. The studs match the gold-framed ruby links securing each single cuff.

While proportional to his long shirt collar and—to a lesser extent—his jacket’s broad peak lapels, Harlee’s large butterfly-shaped black silk bow tie most reflects the exaggerated fashions of the 1970s.

The tuxedo features matching black formal evening trousers detailed with the requisite black silk galon down each side seam to the fashionably flared plain-hemmed bottoms. Apparently styled with single pleats, the trousers rise to Astaire’s natural waistband where an extended tab closes through a hidden hook closure.

Rather than a conventional cummerbund or waistcoat, Harlee wraps a burgundy sash around his waist, knotted on the left side. “With a 31-inch waist and rapidly losing weight during dance rehearsals, this was, Astaire claimed, the most adaptable solution,” Josh Sims writes in Men of Style of Astaire’s decades-long preference for light-wearing waist sashes over more restrictive belts.

The burgundy silk sash around Astaire’s waist matches the lining of his dinner jacket, best seen when he dramatically pulls off the jacket to extinguish the fire that has overtaken one of the guests coming off the express elevator—much to Tuxedo Junction’s chagrin, I’m sure.

Whoever taught Harlee how to dress formally completed the lesson from head to toe, as he furbishes his feet with black patent leather opera pumps. Also known as “court shoes”, these low-vamp wholecut slip-ons with their black grosgrain bows remain among the most formal footwear a man can wear—rarely seen today even with the full white tie dress code. Naturally, Harlee wears black dress socks to maintain formal continuity between his pants and his pumps.

The all-gold watch on Harlee’s left wrist features a champagne dial and a unique gold double chain-link bracelet. Like the gold ring shining from his right pinky, this watch was likely from Astaire’s personal collection.

How to Get the Look

Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones in The Towering Inferno (1974)

Though portraying a penniless con man, Fred Astaire still can’t help but to wear his “rental” tuxedo with a characteristic panache exemplified by the burgundy silk sash knotted around his waist. Smartly tailored for the slender entertainer, the black tie ensemble features plenty of character from the jacket’s velvet collar and silk-faced breast pocket to the ’70s-flared trouser bottoms over the tops of his patent leather pumps.

• Black wool-and-mohair single-breasted 2-button dinner jacket with black velvet collar, silk-faced peak lapels, silk-welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and long single vent
• Black wool-and-mohair single-pleated formal trousers with silk side galon and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Ecru evening shirt with fancy-striped long point collar, crimped front placket with narrow pleats, and fancy-striped single cuffs
• Black silk wide butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Burgundy silk waist sash
• Black patent leather opera pumps with black grosgrain bows
• Black dress socks
• Gold pinky ring
• Gold wristwatch with round champagne dial on gold double chain-link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

We’ve got a fire. And if it was caused by anything you did, I’m going to hang you out to dry and then I’m going to hang you!

The post Fred Astaire’s Tuxedo in The Towering Inferno appeared first on BAMF Style.

Maggie Smith in Death on the Nile (1978)

Vitals

Maggie Smith as Miss Bowers, dependable nurse and traveling companion

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 90th birthday of prolific English actress Dame Maggie Smith, who died three months ago in September 2024. Born December 28, 1934, Smith was a two-time Academy Award winner for her performances in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and California Suite (1978), later endearing herself to modern audiences for her roles in the Harry Potter film series and on Downton Abbey.

BAMF Style readers familiar with my appreciation for Agatha Christie novels and their screen adaptations may not be surprised to learn that I became a fan of hers following her appearances in the lavish Anthony Shaffer-penned adaptations of Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun, both of which starred Peter Ustinov as the fastidious Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Smith appears among the ensemble cast of Death on the Nile as Miss Bowers, the steadfast yet sharp-tongued personal nurse and traveling companion to the septugenarian socialite Marie Van Schuyler (Bette Davis). A kleptomaniac, Mrs. Van Schuyler so envies the pearls worn by newlywed heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) that she insists upon taking Miss Bowers on the same Egyptian river cruise as the newlyweds, hoping for an opportunity to swipe Linnet’s necklace.

When Linnet is murdered in her cabin, her missing pearls land Mrs. Van Schuyler on the list of suspects… as well as Miss Bowers, who maintained a personal grudge against the Ridgeway family for having ruined her family’s standing, forcing her into a life of servitude under ungrateful masters like the irascible Mrs. Van Schuyler.

What’d She Wear?

Anthony Powell received his second of three Academy Awards for his costume design, which included Miss Bowers’ menswear-informed wardrobe. While neither the book nor film outwardly speculate on Miss Bowers’ sexuality, she is portrayed with masculine tendencies—if not outwardly queer-coded—as suggested by one of the many barbed exchanges between Miss Bowers and her employer:

Miss Bowers: My mother was a lady!
Mrs. Van Schuyler: A disposition she failed to pass on to you.

While the women all don evening gowns for dinner, Miss Bowers joins the tuxedo-clad gents in her own unique black tie ensemble. Unlike the white tie and tails famously sported by Marlene Dietrich in Morocco, released several years before Death on the Nile was set, Bowers’ evening-wear wouldn’t quite be qualified as cross-dressing as elements like the skirt and shoes reflect that her execution has clearly been adapted for a woman.

In his gray collared sweater incongruously worn with a bright-red woolen tie, Jim Ferguson (Jon Finch) could stand to take a few lessons in how to properly dress for the evening from Miss Bowers. To Finch’s left is the late Olivia Hussey, who died yesterday at age 73.

Miss Bowers’ black dinner jacket has silk-faced notch lapels that roll to a link-button front, a fancy and smart alternative to traditional button closure. On Miss Bowers’ jacket, this consists of a black silk-covered button on the right side of the garment that connects with a short but heavy thread to a similar button on the reverse side, which pulls through the buttonhole on the left for a symmetrical appearance that reduces overlap and supports her more androgynous elegance by avoiding any gendered button direction.

The narrow shoulders are padded with roping at the sleeve-heads, and each sleeve is finished in a wide black silk cuff decorated with three small silk-covered buttons. In addition to the straight jetted hip pockets, the jacket has a welted breast pocket that Miss Bowers dresses with a rotation of black-on-white patterned pocket squares.

Miss Bowers wears a light-cream silk evening shirt with a tall, stiff white wing collar attached to it. The shirt has the requisite front pleats, flanking a placket that Bowers fastens with four round, black-rimmed diamond studs which match the links on her double (French) cuffs. She wears a traditional black silk butterfly-shaped bow tie, which is appropriately a self-tying model as looks best with a wing collar.

Miss Bowers wears a cream-colored waistcoat (vest), cut lower on Smith’s figure than a man’s waistcoat would be worn. There are five black-finished nickel buttons in the traditional right-over-left direction, with the lowest button positioned over a pointed extension that echoes the V-shaped opening. The waistcoat presumably has pockets, as Bowers wears a pocket watch strung “double Albert”-style across the garment, with its chain pulled through a hole next to the second buttonhole.

For those who don’t pay attention to button direction, the most decidedly feminine aspect of Miss Bowers’ black tie ensemble would be her replacing the trousers with a black pleated knee-length skirt. Consistent with the efficient nurse’s sense of practicality, the skirt features hand pockets with vertical openings set-in along the foremost pleat on each side.

Like Poirot, Miss Bowers accompanies her black tie kit with the especially formal black patent leather pumps detailed with black grosgrain ribbons over the toes, though Bowers wears the high-heeled variation typically preferred by women. Her stockings are sheer black silk.

Perhaps for consistency with the “pince-nez” eyeglasses described by Agatha Christie in the source novel, Miss Bowers keeps a thin gold-framed monocle on a tan leather cord around her neck. With this outfit, it hangs to just above the V-shaped opening of her waistcoat.

How to Get the Look

Maggie Smith in Death on the Nile (1978)

• Black single-breasted dinner jacket with silk-faced notch lapels, link-button front closure, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, and black silk cuffs with three silk-covered buttons
• Cream silk evening shirt with pleated front, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • White detachable wing collar
  • Black-trimmed diamond studs and cuff links
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Cream single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with hip pockets
• Black pleated knee-length skirt with set-in hand pockets
• Black patent leather high-heeled pumps with black grosgrain bows
• Black sheer silk stockings

Do Yourself a Favor and…

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

The post Death on the Nile: Maggie Smith in Menswear-informed Black Tie appeared first on BAMF Style.

Richard Gere as “Dixie” Dwyer in The Cotton Club (1984)

Vitals

Richard Gere as Dixie Dwyer, mob-connected movie star and jazz trumpeter

New York Spring, Winter 1928 to Winter 1931

Film: The Cotton Club
Release Date: December 14, 1984
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Milena Canonero

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Fraught with almost as much deadly drama behind the scenes as depicted on screen, Francis Ford Coppola’s contentious crime epic The Cotton Club was released 40 years ago last month in December 1984. From a story by Coppola, William Kennedy, and Mario Puzo, the story centers around the real-life titular Harlem nightclub that operated during Prohibition, which was first enforced across the United States 105 years ago today on January 17, 1920. The movie was received about as well as Prohibition itself, with both Oscar and Razzie nominations, four-star ratings and dead financiers.

The Cotton Club blends actual gangsters like Owney Madden and Dutch Schultz and popular musicians like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington with fictional characters inspired by real-life figures. Richard Gere stars as “Dixie” Dwyer, a jazz musician destined for stardom as a matinee idol who shares biographical traits with the actor George Raft and alliteratively named trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke. Dixie finds himself vying against Schultz for the affections of Vera Cicero (Diane Lane), a vivacious singer reminiscent of nightclub owner “Texas” Guinan—who also inspired Gladys George’s brassy character in The Roaring Twenties.

The cast also includes a young Nicolas Cage as Dixie’s deranged brother Vincent—inspired by the Prohibition-era gunman “Mad Dog” Coll—and Gregory and Maurice Hines as tap-dancing brothers inspired by the real-life Nicholas brothers who performed at the Cotton Club during their youth.

What’d He Wear?

The Cotton Club was Francis Ford Coppola’s first collaboration with four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Milena Canonero, who would later design the costumes for Coppola’s films Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) and The Godfather Part III (1990). Canonero received a BAFTA Award nomination for her work on The Cotton Club, bringing the Prohibition era to life through the clothing.

As the stylish and confident multi-instrumentalist Dixie Dwyer, Richard Gere frequently wears tuxedoes for his performances, whether at a dingy jazz club or bringing down the house at the famous Cotton Club. From the sequences set in the late 1920s through the early ’30s, Canonero evolves Dixie’s black tie kit to reflect what was most fashionable at the time.

1920s: Single-Breasted Dinner Jacket

Though still a struggling musician when we meet him in 1928, Dixie pulls together a smart three-piece dinner suit anchored by a black wool single-breasted dinner jacket. Perfectly tailored for Gere, the ventless jacket follows a timeless style with silk-faced peak lapels that roll to a single-button closure over his natural waist. The sleeves are roped at the shoulders and finished at each cuff with three black plastic or horn buttons. In addition to the jacket’s straight flapped hip pockets, Dixie dresses the welted breast pocket with a white linen pocket square. He also frequently wears a white carnation through the buttonhole in his left lapel.

Vera’s two romantic rivals—Dutch Schultz and Dixie Dwyer—each attend the Cotton Club wearing black single-breasted, peak-lapel dinner jackets with wing collars and black waistcoats, though Dixie sports a white carnation as opposed to Dutch’s red boutonnière—perhaps hinting at the blood Dutch loves to spill vs. Dixie’s purer motives.

Waistcoats and cummerbunds are the most acceptable waist coverings with black tie, the latter developed as a cooler-wearing alternative. Since we typically see Dixie sporting his black tie during chilly New York winters, he would be comfortable in his full-backed black waistcoat, which also allows him to pull off his jacket and tie without looking too undressed during late night jam sessions at Harlem jazz clubs.

Evening waistcoats typically have a lower opening than those worn with business suits, typically in either a V-shape—as worn by Dutch Schultz (James Remar)—or the rounder U-shape worn by Dixie. Dixie’s single-breasted waistcoat has a narrow shawl collar that frames its U-shaped opening which drops below mid-chest, enhancing the bib-like effect of his stiff white shirtfront. Four black buttons close the front above a dramatic notched bottom.

Per its nomenclature, Dixie’s waistcoat appropriately keeps his waist covered for a smooth transition to his black wool trousers. These forward-pleated trousers feature the requisite black silk galon down each side seam to the plain-hemmed bottoms, which break over the tops of his black leather lace-up shoes.

Dixie evidently wore his own dinner suit for his Hollywood screen test.

The only element of Dixie’s black tie ensemble that varies through these late 1920s-set sequences is the tie itself. First, he wears a black silk diamond-ended bow tie before transitioning to the butterfly-shaped one which resembles the one he would also wear with his double-breasted dinner jacket. Since he always wears wing collars that keep the tie fully exposed, Dixie smartly wears self-tying neckwear that lack the adjusters or clips of pre-tied bow ties.

Dixie prefers the most formal-looking variation of the white evening shirt, styled with a neckband to attach a collar, a stiff front bib rather than the pleats which detail the front of many evening shirts, and single cuffs rather than double (French) cuffs. Indeed, the details are more consistent with shirts often worn with full “white tie” evening dress rather than black tie.

Dixie always opts to wear a stiff white wing collar, which attaches to the neckband with gold studs—one through the back, and one through the front—as seen when he wears the collar undone during the jam session where he’s recruited to play Dutch’s party. He also wears two silver-trimmed black onyx squared studs on the shirt’s front bib. Often, studs and cuff links match, but Dixie foregoes this convention by wearing round gold links.

Though sun-protective eyewear had existed in various forms for centuries, modern sunglasses emerged during the early 1920s, standardized at the end of the decade when Foster Grant developed injection molding technology that resulted in the first inexpensive mass-produced sunglasses. Worn on the beaches of both American coasts, sunglasses became associated with Hollywood stars like actors and musicians. Likely the latter appealed to Dixie, who wears his round tortoise-framed sunglasses even while playing night gigs indoors.

Through these sequences set in the late ’20s, Dixie sports the same taupe fedora and woolen knee-length overcoat with his tuxedo as he does with lounge suits. Made from a heavy dark-gray herringbone tweed, the coat has swelled-edge peak lapels that roll to a double-breasted front in a 6×3-button arrangement. The tailored coat has a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and an additional flapped ticket pocket on the right side, and the sleeves are finished with four “kissing” cuff-buttons. The ventless coat has a half-belted back, secured with a button at each end of the belt.

The Dwyer boys’ night out at the Cotton Club, sporting topcoats over their tuxedoes.

After Dixie begins attaining some degree of success, he begins wearing a gold ring that swells out to show a black onyx facing, shining from his right ring finger.

Dixie accompanies Vera on trumpet as she croons “Am I Blue?” to her nightclub audience. This is actually after his return from Hollywood, so he’s wearing a different dinner jacket, which you’re about to read about…

1930s: Double-Breasted Dinner Jacket

Dixie returns to New York in 1930 after reaching some degree of Hollywood stardom with a leading role in the gangster movie Mob Boss. He strides through Vera’s new club wearing the newly fashionable double-breasted dinner jacket, waving his hand to fans in a half-salute not unlike Paul Muni’s similarly dressed character in Scarface (1932).

There are Scarface parallels everywhere for those with the eyes to see. While Gere’s mannerisms and double-breasted dinner jacket echo Paul Muni in the title role, Dixie Dwyer’s character was arguably inspired by George Raft—standing to Muni’s right in the Scarface screenshot.

Like Dixie’s earlier dinner jacket, the cloth is also a smooth black wool with black satin-faced peak lapels, though all the buttons are also covered in the same black silk. The lapels roll to a square 4×2-button double-breasted arrangement, which Dixie often wears with both buttons fastened. The straight shoulders are slightly wider than his previous jacket, consistent with early ’30s tailoring, and the sleeves are finished with three-button cuffs. The jacket otherwise follows the same details, including the appropriately ventless back, straight flapped hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket. Dixie continues his practice of decorating his jacket with both a white linen pocket square and white carnation through his left lapel.

Dixie’s white evening shirt appears similar to the ones he wore in the earlier sequences, also with a wing collar buttoned to the neckband and silver-trimmed black studs up the stiff front bib. He never removes the dinner jacket on screen, so I can’t discern if the sleeves are finished with single or double cuffs. His black self-tying bow tie is in the traditional butterfly (thistle) shape.

The full wrap of a double-breasted dinner jacket negates the need for an additional layer of waist covering, so Dixie likely foregoes a cummerbund or waistcoat as he properly keeps his dinner jacket buttoned anytime he is on screen. This also covers many details of the trousers, though we can tell they have the requisite silk-striped side galon and are finished with plain-hemmed bottoms.

Backstage at the Cotton Club, we get a good look at Dixie’s black patent leather cap-toe oxfords, naturally worn with black dress socks. Especially with patent leather uppers, non-brogued black oxfords are traditionally acceptable footwear with black tie.

Fellas, that’s when you know she really likes you.

He also swaps out his original brass rectangular-cased watch on a dark leather strap for a dressier all-gold watch with a long tonneau-shaped case and beige dial on a gold expanding band.

Dixie’s outerwear also evolves to be dressier, with a black silk top hat, gray dress gloves, and a fur-collared charcoal wool coat. This knee-length coat features a shawl collar of soft dark-brown fur, rolling to a 6×2-button double-breasted front. The set-in sleeves are finished with four-button cuffs, and the coat features a welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets.

Dixie and Vera are framed with his Mob Boss poster—featuring Dixie himself aiming a pistol in Vera’s direction—between them.

For his return to New York after the release of Mob Boss, Dixie wears a cream silk scarf printed with black squares filled with small black dots.

How to Get the Look

Richard Gere and Diane Lane in The Cotton Club (1984)

Even before finding fame, Dixie Dwyer approaches the black tie dress code with smart, formal sensibilities, opting for the dressiest stiff-fronted evening shirt and appropriately wearing a self-tying bow tie with his wing collar. And whether sporting a single-breasted dinner jacket in the roaring ’20s or a fashionable double-breasted dinner jacket in the early ’30s, he always complements his evening-wear with a white carnation and pocket square.

• Black wool single-breasted/single-button or double-breasted/4×2-button dinner jacket with satin-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton evening shirt with detachable stiff wing collar, stiff front bib (with two black-faced silver square studs), and single cuffs (with round gold links)
• Black silk butterfly/thistle-shaped bow tie
• Black patent leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• Black silk top hat
• Charcoal wool knee-length overcoat with dark-brown fur shawl collar, 6×2-button double-breasted front, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Cream silk scarf printed with dot-filled black squares
• Gray dress gloves
• Gold ring with black onyx setting
• Gold dress watch with tonneau-shaped case, beige dial, and gold expanding band
• White linen pocket square

FYI: Prop Store has auctioned a black double-breasted Bermans & Nathans dinner jacket claimed to be Gere’s screen-worn jacket from the 1930s scenes. Indeed, the overall appearance is similar to Dixie’s costume, but—in addition to the missing bottom right vestigial button (which is a common casualty after decades of storage)—the pocket flaps are silk-faced, the buttons are uncovered, and the sleeves are finished with four (rather than three) buttons. The tag is clearly printed “COTTON CLUB” (with “R. GERE” seemingly added later in purple ink), so it’s possible that this jacket was indeed tailored for the film but worn by a different character and mistaken for Dixie’s jacket due to the similarities with this one.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post The Cotton Club: Richard Gere in Prohibition-era Black Tie appeared first on BAMF Style.

William Holden in The Towering Inferno (1974)

Vitals

William Holden as James Duncan, commercial real estate developer

San Francisco, Summer 1974

Film: The Towering Inferno
Release Date: December 14, 1974
Director: John Guillermin
Costume Designer: Paul Zastupnevich

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Born 107 years ago today on April 17, 1918, charismatic actor William Holden was one of the biggest stars of the 1950s with landmark performances in Sunset Blvd. (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

Though his screen presence continued into the next decade, Holden revitalized his career as the grizzled lead in Sam Peckinpah’s violent revisionist Western The Wild Bunch (1969), which led to several prominent roles through the 1970s—including Clint Eastwood’s artful romance Breezy (1973) and his final Oscar-nominated turn in Sidney Lumet’s media satire Network (1976).

Between those films, Holden joined the star-studded ensemble of The Towering Inferno (1974), Irwin Allen’s fiery follow-up to The Poseidon Adventure that earned eight Academy Award nominations—including Best Picture. And what better way to celebrate this fire-sign icon’s April 17th birthday than spotlighting his standout wardrobe in a disaster epic that quite literally turns up the Aries heat?

Set on the Fourth of July in San Francisco, the action unfolds among the 138 stories of the fictional Glass Tower—billed as the tallest building in the world at nearly a third of a mile high.

Holden stars as James Duncan, the skyscraper’s ambitious developer, hosting a lavish dedication party on the 135th floor when the titular fire breaks out. Desperate to impress Senator Gary Parker (Robert Vaughn) for a new contract, Duncan initially resists evacuation after architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) warns him of the danger—until SFFD battalion chief Michael O’Halloran (Steve McQueen) makes the call for everyone to get out.

What’d He Wear?

Pittsburgh-born costume designer Paul Zastupnevich returned after his Oscar-nominated work on Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure to dress The Towering Inferno’s cast—outfitting everyone from gala guests to firefighters.

In step with the flashier trends of mid-1970s formalwear, most of the male characters wear creative spins on black tie—from Richard Chamberlain’s brown velvet jacket with a ruffled shirt to Robert Wagner’s bold blue tuxedo. Only Robert Vaughn’s Senator Parker and Fred Astaire’s Harlee Claiborne stick to classic black tuxedos, though even their looks are touched with distinguishing flair.

As James Duncan, William Holden commands the screen in a show-stopping and sharply tailored dinner jacket made from moiré silk in a rich crimson-red. Often described as “watered silk”, moiré is characterized by its rippling, wavy finish—a result of the calendering process that gives the fabric a flame-like sheen, in this case foreshadowing the predicament of Duncan and his guests. His wide Parisian-style cran necker lapels—including the collar—are fully faced in a contrasting black satin silk, matching the hip pocket flaps and button coverings. These fashionably broad lapels and the jacket’s long double vents concede to trends of 1970s tailoring without yielding to excess. The sleeves are finished with three cuff-buttons, also covered in black satin to match the two buttons on the front.

Though the fancy silk suiting and context clearly distinguish this as a dinner jacket, it follows the design of business tailoring with its two-button front, flapped hip pockets, and long double vents.

In contrast to the brash fabric of Duncan’s dinner jacket, Holden sports a more subdued evening shirt than the frills worn by his co-stars Chamberlain and Vaughn. The white cotton shirt has a narrow-pleated front, flanking the placket that Duncan wears with three black spherical studs showing above the waistline. He fastens the squared double (French) cuffs with ornate gold rectangular links that each frame a black center stone.

Only the shirt’s long point collar nods to ’70s fashion, though it harmonizes with the width of Duncan’s lapels and his oversized butterfly-shaped black satin bow tie.

Duncan anchors the look with solid black trousers, though these appear not to be traditional formal trousers as they lack the usual silk galon down each side seam. These flat-front trousers are otherwise appropriate for black tie with their self-suspended waistband (no belt) and plain-hemmed bottoms. The slight flare through the bottoms aligns with ’70s fashion and complements the overall silhouette. Black cotton lisle socks continue the leg-lines into Duncan’s plain black calf leather loafers. The lack of a waist covering like a cummerbund or waistcoat maintain the lessened formality of his creative approach to black tie.

Middle-aged though he may be, Duncan’s style proves he hasn’t lost touch with the times. This is evident not only in his evening wear but also in his accessories—particularly his eyeglasses: square-shaped with thick black plastic frames, detailed by two silver hinge pins on the front of each temple and three pins in a rearward “V” along the wide arms.

How to Get the Look

William Holden with Faye Dunaway and Jennifer Jones during a promotional shoot for The Towering Inferno (1974)

In The Towering Inferno, William Holden’s red moiré dinner jacket shows how to turn up the heat in black tie—daring but dignified, it’s ideal for anyone expanding beyond the basics with style still intact.

• Crimson-red moiré silk single-breasted 2-button dinner jacket with black satin silk-faced collar and cran necker lapels, black satin silk-flapped straight hip pockets, black silk-covered 3-button cuffs, and long double vents
• White cotton evening shirt with long point collar, narrow-pleated front and placket, and squared double/French cuffs
  • Black studs
  • Gold ornate rectangular cuff links with black center stones
• Black satin silk larger butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Black flat-front trousers with beltless waistband and subtly flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather loafers
• Black cotton lisle socks
• Black square-framed eyeglasses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

We’ve got a fire. And if it was caused by anything you did, I’m going to hang you out to dry and then I’m going to hang you!

The post The Towering Inferno: William Holden’s Red Silk Dinner Jacket appeared first on BAMF Style.

Hugh O’Brian in Ten Little Indians (1965)

Vitals

Hugh O’Brian as Hugh Lombard, romantic adventurer

Austrian Alps, Winter 1965

Film: Ten Little Indians
Release Date: September 10, 1965
Director: George Pollock
Wardrobe Credit: John McCorry

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

American movie and TV actor Hugh O’Brian was born 100 years ago today on April 19, 1925.

During World War II, the teenage Hugh Krampe followed his father’s footsteps and joined the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming the youngest drill instructor in the branch’s history. While a young recruit at Camp Pendleton, Hugh participated in a boxing match refereed by none other than John Wayne, who was shooting a film nearby. More than three decades later, the two actors’ paths would cross again when Hugh appeared in Duke’s final film, The Shootist (1976), portraying the last character that John Wayne would shoot on screen.

After his discharge from the Marines, Sgt. Krampe embarked on an acting career initially marred by misspellings. When a program incorrectly spelled his name as “Hugh Krape”, the young actor decided to avoid even more embarrassing clerical errors and took his mother’s maiden name O’Brien as his last name; when even this was misspelled as “O’Brian”, the re-christened actor shrugged and stuck with it. It was thus as Hugh O’Brian that he rose to fame portraying the title character in 229 episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp on ABC, establishing himself as a strapping and charismatic leading man.

O’Brian was a substantial enough star by the mid-1960s to command the “Tony Danza treatment” when he was cast in British filmmaker Harry Alan Towers’ first of three increasingly ill-advised adaptations of Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel And Then There Were None; Christie had named one of the ten strangers Philip Lombard, though O’Brian’s casting evidently prompted someone to rechristen the character as Hugh Lombard.

(Perhaps after the Krape/O’Brien fiascos, it was the actor’s way of reaffirming his identity! Or maybe Harry Alan Towers just preferred the name “Hugh” to “Philip”, as this renaming would remain in place for Oliver Reed’s subsequent portrayal of Lombard in 1974. Lombard became “Philip” again when Frank Stallone assumed the role in 1989.)

Arguably the strongest of Towers’ three versions, the 1965 movie reverted to Christie’s second original title, Ten Little Indians, and updated the setting from a secluded island off the English coast on the eve of World War II to the present day at an isolated mansion high in the snowy Alps. (While exteriors were indeed photographed in Austria’s Ziller Valley, the mansion interiors were filmed at Kenure House in Rush, Ireland.)

All of Towers’ adaptations would retain the “happy ending” of the 1943 play and 1945 film, playing up a romance between the adventurous Mr. Lombard and the young woman hired to be the mysterious Mr. Owen’s secretary, Vera Claythorne—shortened to the two-syllable Ann Clyde for Shirley Eaton’s characterization opposite O’Brian in Ten Little Indians.

What’d He Wear?

On the first night that the eight strangers and two married staff gather for dinner at the invitation of the absent U.N. Owen, all of the gentlemen—save for the butler—dress in stylish black tie ensembles. Hugh Lombard wears a three-piece tuxedo that likely belonged to Hugh O’Brian in real life, as the distinctive details align with evening-wear he was often photographed wearing off-screen through the early 1960s.

Hugh O’Brian wears a three-piece tuxedo—which he would later wear on screen in Ten Little Indians—to an event in Los Angeles, circa 1962. Photo by Earl Leaf.

Though O’Brian was often photographed wearing the tuxedo off screen, I’ve yet to find color photography confirming whether the suiting was black or the midnight-blue often reserved for men’s evening-wear, appearing “darker than black” under artificial light.

The single-breasted dinner jacket features the requisite silk facing on its peak lapels, though these buck convention by covering both the collar and revers, while leaving the lapel edges in the self-fabric—an inversion of earlier dinner jackets that piped just the edges in silk. (For another example of creative black tie with fully silk-covered lapels, see my last post about William Holden’s red moiré silk dinner jacket in The Towering Inferno.)

Silk-trimmed detail continues through the rest of the jacket, including straight silk welting over the hip pockets and the elegantly bound edges following the sides and top of the welted breast pocket, where Lombard wears a white pocket square. The sleeves are each finished with a single button and a narrow silk-faced turnback cuff—a neo-Edwardian flourish that made a comeback in the early ’60s, as seen on some of the dinner jackets that Anthony Sinclair tailored for Sean Connery to wear as James Bond.

Lombard and Ann Clyde develop their bond over dinner, amused by the “ten little Indians” before realizing that they are intended to be two of the ten.

The lapels roll to a low single-button front which Lombard wears open, showing the matching single-breasted waistcoat (vest). Unlike the matching waistcoat of a conventional business suit, this waistcoat follows the low-fastening style preferred with formalwear, as it mostly serves the purpose to elegantly cover his waistband and the top of his trousers. The silk trim around the edges of the waistcoat continues the spirit of his dinner jacket with its contrast-edged lapels and silk-cuffed sleeves. The three closely spaced buttons are also covered in silk, echoed the by pocket jettings, and the full back is lined in a lighter-colored satin silk.

An array of men’s black tie ensembles during the first night, including Lombard and the judge (Wilfrid Hyde White) modeling how three-piece tuxedoes can be adapted for both younger and older gentlemen, while the general (Leo Genn) and Dr. Armstrong (Dennis Price) sport traditional double-breasted dinner jackets and the stodgy detective Blore (Stanley Holloway) wears an unsurprisingly conventional shawl-collar dinner jacket.

The matching flat-front trousers have the usual galon along the sides, split into two silk lines following the seams in front of the side pockets down to the plain-hemmed bottoms. The trouser waistband is appropriately fitted to be worn without a belt, though Lombard keeps his waistcoat on so we can’t clearly determine if they’re self-suspended or supported by suspenders (braces). Lombard’s well-shined black leather lace-up shoes are likely patent leather oxfords, the most conventional choice for black tie.

As the stakes increase after the first guest’s death, Lombard burns a mysterious photo that may hold a clue to his real identity.

Lombard’s white shirt has a narrow tonal textured stripe, a fashionable detail through the ’60s also occasionally modeled by Connery’s 007. The shirt has a front placket with conventional buttons rather than studs which, in addition to the lack of pleats or flourish, suggests a dress shirt that could also be worn with suits or blazers rather than the evening shirts reserved specifically for black tie. Lombard fastens the double (French) cuffs with dark squared links, and the spread collar frames his small black satin silk butterfly-shaped bow tie.

The Gun

After Mike Raven (Fabian) dies by poisoning on the guests’ first night together, Lombard recognizes the potential danger and pulls the Webley .38 Mk IV revolver from his suitcase to hide in his nightstand. Though this iteration of Lombard is clearly American like Hugh O’Brian himself, this World War II-era British service revolver nods to the story and character’s English origins.

Lombard unpacks his Webley revolver.

The revolver emerged during the interwar era as a scaled-down version of the venerated top-break .455 Webley revolvers, redesigned to accommodate 200-grain .38 S&W ammunition after British government trials determined that sidearms could be equally as effective with a smaller cartridge. (One would be forgiven for being confused by the nomenclature, as the original run of .455 Webley revolvers followed a Mk I through Mk VI naming system though the .38/200 variant was only introduced as the “.38 Mk IV”.)

When RSAF Enfield’s similar No. 2 Mk I revolver was swiftly adopted by the military in 1932, Webley & Scott responded by suing the British government. Enfield contested the suit by claiming that the design originated with their designer Captain Henry C. Boys, but Webley had the last laugh when they were contracted during World War II to produce enough .38/200 revolvers when Enfield manufacturing capabilities could not match the British Army’s wartime demands.

How to Get the Look

Hugh O’Brian in Ten Little Indians (1965)

Echoing his stylish portrayer Hugh O’Brian, Lombard blends old-fashioned black-tie decorum with hip 1960s sensibilities that includes unique details like silk trim along his narrow-lapeled dinner jacket and its matching waistcoat and trousers.

• Black or midnight-blue wool three-piece tuxedo:
  • Single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced collar and peak lapels, silk-edged welted breast pocket, silk-welted straight hip pockets, and single-button silk-faced turnback cuffs
  • Single-breasted silk-edged waistcoat with silk-covered three-button front, silk-jetted side pockets, and light satin-finished full back
  • Flat-front trousers with fitted waistband, on-seam side pockets, double silk side galon, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White tonal-striped shirt with spread collar, button-up front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Dark squared cuff links
• Black satin silk butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Black patent leather oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• White pocket square

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Ten Little Indians: Hugh O’Brian’s Three-Piece Tuxedo as Lombard appeared first on BAMF Style.

Ricardo Cortez in Midnight Mary (1933)

Vitals

Ricardo Cortez as Leo Darcy, sociopathic gangster

New York, Spring 1933

Film: Midnight Mary
Release Date: June 30, 1933
Director: William A. Wellman
Costume Designer: Adrian (gowns)

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

When Midnight Mary was streaming on the Criterion Channel last year, I was impressed not just by the well-tailored costumes worn by its male characters on both sides of the law but also the amount of dialogue within this 74-minute pre-Code classic dedicated to discussing menswear, whether that’s a a lawyer’s butler modeling his new dressing gown or an underworld mook fishing for positive feedback about his new tuxedo only to receive conflicting criticism about the length of his jacket.

The movie centers around the titular Mary Martin (Loretta Young), whose hard life as an orphaned young girl led to her acquaintanceship with the smooth-talking gangster Leo Darcy (Ricardo Cortez) by her late teens. One of the most popular actors of pre-Code Hollywood, Cortez died 48 years ago today on April 28, 1977.

Born Jacob Kranze (or Krantz) in New York City, the actor worked prolifically as a romantic lead through the silent era, when the studios changed his name to capitalize on the “Latin lover” trend epitomized by Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro. After the advent of sound, Cortez distinguished himself as the first actor to portray Sam Spade in a 1931 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. His acting career slowed after the late 1930s, during which time he directed “seven” program pictures for 20th Century Fox. He ultimately left show business altogether and worked as a Wall Street stockbroker in the decades before his death at the age of 76.

After briefly leaving Leo for slick lawyer Tom Mannering Jr. (Franchot Tone) and then serving time in prison for her role in one of Leo’s previous robberies, the eponymous Mary returns to Leo—just as he always told her she would. They celebrate their renewed romance for a night on the town with Leo’s henchmen, though the men barely have their coats off when Mary runs into Tom as he leaves the club, prompting a jealous brawl between the two men that leaves Leo knocked to the ground and swearing deadly revenge on his romantic rival.

What’d He Wear?

Leo dresses appropriately for an evening out in the twilight of the Prohibition era, clad in the black-tie dress code that had grown increasingly common in the years since World War I ended. As was common with actors of this era, Cortez almost certainly wore his own dinner suit as it matches an identical black tie kit that he briefly wore during his first scene in Torch Singer opposite Claudette Colbert, released just two months after Midnight Mary.

After learning that his goons killed the wrong man, Leo resolves to murder Tom himself and retreats into his room to change. When Mary attempts to stall for time by asking what he’s doing, Leo coolly responds that “I’m gonna change my clothes, honey, it’s nearly morning… you wouldn’t expect me to call on swell people without a morning coat.”

Leo’s dark dinner jacket is likely tailored from either black or midnight-blue wool, the latter favored for appearing even “blacker than black” under the artificial lighting typical of evening affairs requiring a tuxedo. The design incorporates period-specific details (like the straight gorges) with longstanding black-tie conventions, such as the satin-faced peak lapels, single-button fastening, ventless back, and straight jetted hip pockets. Leo dresses the welted breast pocket with a plain white pocket square. The sleeves are finished with four-button cuffs, with all buttons left uncovered like the front closure.

Cortez’s penchant for pairing his tuxedoes with white formal waistcoats—seen in both Midnight Mary and Torch Singer, to name a few—dates to the early years of black tie, when gentlemen were navigating this less formal alternative to full evening dress. White waistcoats were requisite with white tie and tails, so some men naturally extended them to black tie, a practice that remained fashionable through the 1920s and ’30s until wartime austerity and increased standardization of the dress codes resulted in the still-current preference for darker waistcoats or cummerbunds.

Likely made from cotton piqué like a traditional full-dress waistcoat, Leo’s white waistcoat features a low-fastening V-shaped opening framed by a squared-bottom shawl collar. Three closely spaced fabric-covered buttons fasten the overlapping front between the chest opening and the narrowly notched bottom. Designed more for form than function, the ornamental backless waistcoat is secured by white straps around the neck and waist in lieu of a full back.

Turndown collars emerged during the interwar era to further distinguish black-tie attire from the stricter formality of white tie. While many men carried over the wing collar from full evening dress into the roaring ’20s, turndown collars gained popularity through the ’30s, aligning with both the rise of attached-collar shirts and the growing separation between black tie and white tie. Though some modern black-tie looks still feature wing collars—usually pre-attached to shirts—the classic 20th-century image of black tie remains a turndown collar, modeled by icons like Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, and every iteration of cinematic James Bond.

Leo’s white cotton evening shirt follows this standard, styled with a point collar, double (French) cuffs, and a widely pleated front that sets it apart from business shirting. His black silk self-tied bow tie is a traditional butterfly (thistle) shape but with pointed ends that add a sharp, refined flair.

Leo’s trousers would be made from the same dark wool fabric as his dinner jacket, styled with a long rise that extends even higher in the back for the split “fish-mouth” with a button on each end to accommodate suspenders (braces). The double reverse-pleated trousers also have two pairs of suspender buttons along the top of each side on the front of the trousers, where Leo attaches the dark leather hooks of his tricolor-striped suspenders. The requisite silk galon along the side seams are split into double stripes, flanking the vertical pocket openings and continuing down to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Leo wears the typical black leather oxford shoes and black dress socks that maintain the formality and color scheme of black tie.

Leo pulls on a dark wool double-breasted knee-length overcoat, styled with a 6×2-button double-breasted front and the peak lapels that typically accompany double-breasted tailoring. Like his dinner jacket beneath it, the coat has four-button cuffs. He also wears an all-black fedora with a black grosgrain band.

Leo’s dress watch has a rectangular case and light-colored dial, fastened to Cortez’s left wrist on a dark brown leather strap.

Leo’s wristwatch is best seen earlier in Midnight Mary, when he’s clad in loungewear like this silk robe and cravat.

The Gun

Leo’s crew typically carries Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammer semi-automatic pistols, specifically late-production models with spur hammers rather than the earlier rounded hammers. Leo himself carries at least two on this evening, with one in a shoulder holster and another in his trouser pocket.

While kissing him to distract him from his deadly intentions, Mary slips Leo’s tan leather shoulder holster off of his left arm, tossing it onto his bed. Moments later, he’s leaving the room in a renewed rage—either forgetting or not caring that he left a loaded pistol in the holster now discarded next to where he threw his moll…

There are worse ways to go than pre-Code Loretta Young plugging you with your own .38.

As its name suggests, the Model 1903 Pocket Hammer was one of two pistols introduced by Colt that year, alongside the better-known Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless—so named for its shrouded hammer, in contrast to the exposed hammer of the Pocket Hammer. Both pistols—along with the larger M1900, M1902, and M1905—were designed by John M. Browning, whose influence would culminate in the M1911.

Mechanically, the Model 1903 Pocket Hammer evolved from the M1902 Sporting Model, sharing Browning’s short-recoil, single-action operation that would later define the M1911. The Pocket Hammer visually diverged from its predecessor with serrations milled along the back of the slide, rather than the front as on the M1902. The Pocket Hammer design further evolved with the transition from round to spur hammers around 1910.

Measuring 7.75 inches long and weighing just under two pounds, the Pocket Hammer fed from a seven-round box magazine chambered in .38 ACP. First introduced with the M1900, Browning’s .38 ACP cartridge measures 9x23mm, slightly larger but less powerful than the contemporary 9x19mm Parabellum that remains standard today. While now largely obsolete, the .38 ACP saw popularity in the early 20th century, chambered not only in Colt pistols but also in select British handguns like the Webley & Scott self-loading pistol and the Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver. Though superseded by the higher-pressure .38 Super in the late 1920s, .38 ACP experienced a minor resurgence when it was found to function reliably in surplus Spanish pistols originally chambered for the similar 9x23mm Largo.

Colt produced just over 31,000 Model 1903 Pocket Hammer pistols before discontinuing the model in 1927—closing the chapter just as the .38 ACP era faded into history.

How to Get the Look

Ricardo Cortez in Midnight Mary (1933)

Leo Darcy’s dark tuxedo and white waistcoat—almost certainly from actor Ricardo Cortez’s own closet—reflects how contemporary fashions of the 1930s could be incorporated into classic black tie without interfering with the dress code’s standards that have remained inflexibly in place for at least a century.

• Black or midnight-blue wool single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• White cotton evening shirt with point collar, wide-pleated front, and double/French cuffs
• Black silk diamond butterfly-shaped bow tie
• White cotton piqué backless evening waistcoat with square-ended shawl collar, 3-button single-breasted front, and notched bottom
• Black or midnight-blue wool double reverse-pleated long-rise trousers with fish-mouth back, suspender buttons, on-seam side pockets, double silk side galon, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather oxford shoes
• Black ribbed dress socks
• Black wool double-breasted 6×2-button overcoat with peak lapels and 4-button cuffs
• Black felt fedora with black grosgrain band
• Rectangular-cased dress watch with white rectangular dial on smooth dark-brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, included on the third volume of TCM Archives’ “Forbidden Hollywood” pre-Code home video releases.

The Quote

That sap mean anything to you?

The post Midnight Mary: Ricardo Cortez’s 1930s Tuxedo appeared first on BAMF Style.