Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in a promotional photo for “Brother’s Keeper, the pilot episode of Miami Vice

Vitals

Don Johnson as James “Sonny” Crockett, Miami-Dade vice detective

Miami, Spring 1984

Series: Miami Vice
Episode: “Brother’s Keeper” (Episode 1.01)
Air Date: September 16, 1984
Director: Thomas Carter
Creator: Anthony Yerkovich
Costume Designer: Jodie Lynn Tillen

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

35 years ago today, the feature-length first episode of Miami Vice premiered, introducing the world to the stylish detective duo of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs.

Written by series creator Anthony Yerkovich, “Brother’s Keeper” established Miami Vice‘s stylized formula of exciting action, flashy fashions, and the latest pop music that would make the show one of the biggest hits of the 1980s and would win the episode two Emmy Awards, one for Robert E. Collins’ cinematography and one for editing.

Another promotional photo of Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson against a touristy backdrop leaning into the Miami setting.

Tubbs, still an NYPD cop bent on revenge at the outset, is introduced first before the setting shifts from the dark, dingy, and dreary New York City streets to the bright, sunny, and colorful world of ’80s Miami. Following the obligatory establishing shots of beaches and blondes, the camera brings us to the central character of James “Sonny” Crockett, bedecked in white linen, pastels, and shades as he takes a drag from his Lucky Strike.

“Hey, shortstop, you wanna crank down the decibels a notch?” Crockett shouts to a nearby break-dancer before turning his attention back to fellow detective Eddie (Jimmy Smits, in his acting debut) as the two vice cops discuss their plan to meet, “close the deal”, and trap Corky, the “little bozo” cartel-connected drug dealer that Crockett spent the previous evening with, trading shots of tequila.

Unfortunately, the “deal” goes bad when Crockett spots a C-4 car bomb strapped under Corky’s Chevy, just a second to late to save his pal from the blast that kills both Eddie and Corky.

What’d He Wear?

Sonny Crockett’s style has been a frequent request from BAMF Style readers—including Mohammad, Jeff, Robin, and Sal, to name a few—dating back to 2013. Given the series’ expansive focus on fashion, an entire blog could be dedicated to Crockett’s style alone! Thus, I figured there was no better place to start when exploring Don Johnson’s signature style as the rugged vice cop than the very beginning.

When we meet Crockett, he is dressed in a white linen suit—not cream, ivory, or off-white, but a stark solid white that looks right at home on the bright sidewalks of Miami… and all the more noticeable when the suit gets dirty after Crockett hits the pavement during the car bombing.

The whiteness of Crockett’s linen suit makes dirt and scuff even more noticeable after Crockett dives to the ground during a car bombing.

The single-breasted suit jacket has broad notch lapels that roll to a low single button. The wide shoulders are built up with padded shoulders, letting the rest of the unstructured linen jacket with its short side vents hang freely and fully on Johnson’s frame, keeping him cool in the warm climate. The jacket has patch pockets on the hips but no breast pocket. Each cuff is finished with a single, lonely-looking vestigal button, the same cream sew-through plastic as used on the front.

Crockett consults with Eddie before their meeting with Corky.

The suit’s double reverse-pleated matching trousers have a medium-low rise that meets the jacket’s buttoning point. In addition to the unused belt loops, the close look we get at Crockett’s trousers reveals a belt prong keeper, the small loop extending from the bottom of his waistband just to the left of his fly which can be folded up to keep the belt in place. The trousers also have slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

White linen suits were hardly novel at the time of Miami Vice‘s debut, but it was Sonny Crockett’s practice of wearing his unstructured suits and sport jackets over T-shirts and henley shirts—often colored in bright pastels—that became a cultural phenomenon.

Crockett’s style would evolve over the course of the series, but this practice was in place from his very first scene as Sonny supplemented his white linen suit with a crew-neck T-shirt in a minty shade of teal green cotton. The shirt has very short sleeves, similar to the classic “muscle shirt” undershirt. While the shortness of these sleeves would keep them from bunching up under the suit jacket like longer T-shirt sleeves, they also expose more of the arm—and thus, sweat and skin oil—to the fabric of the jacket, which could particularly threaten the long-term integrity of the jacket in a warm climate like Miami.

Crockett’s shoulder holster remains a trademark of his style, with the Galco Miami Classic shoulder system still an iconic rig decades later due to its association with Don Johnson wearing it on the series. Galco had started making the fully modular holster with its polymer swivel connector, then known as the “Original Jackass Rig” in 1970 when Galco was conducting business as the Famous Jackass Leather Company. Firearms enthusiast Michael Mann fitted James Caan’s expert criminal character with a Galco Original Jackass Rig in Thief, Mann’s 1981 directorial debut, and his production company sought to obtain another for Don Johnson to wear for Miami Vice.

However, Johnson is not yet wearing the Galco that he would make famous in “Brother’s Keeper”, instead wearing a more traditional shoulder rig in walnut brown leather with a vertical holster for his semi-automatic pistol under his left armpit, suspended by an adjustable strap that hooks over his right shoulder without a magazine carrier as his later Galco would have. The “Brother’s Keeper” shoulder holster system was a more commonly seen rig, similar to the Bianchi X15.

The more famous Galco Miami Classic is easily distinguishable from this holster for its “spider harness” of four straps that all connect to a clover-shaped swivel plate in the center of the back, as opposed to the more conventional holster in “Brother’s Keeper”.

Crockett harmonizes the informality of his T-shirt and suit combo by sporting a pair of casual loafers without socks, in this case a pair of white leather slip-ons perforated with 11 rows of holes down the vamp that serve the dual purpose of ventilation and adding character. Stitched over the vamp is a lightly contrasting grid that neatly separates each hole into its own cell. The shoes have beige rubber soles, leather-trimmed around the tops.

According to a Miami Vice online forum, Sonny Crockett’s shoes were made exclusively by footwear brands that included Charles Jourdan, Sperry, and To Boot and were all part of each episode’s $7,000 wardrobe budget. Our first on-screen look at Crockett began with these unique kicks, which are very hard to find alternatives for:

• Anewsex offers a white leather shoe that, aside from its espadrille-inspired jute sole, is the closest alternative I’d been able to find to the “Brother’s Keeper” shoe.
• The evocatively named Men’s Miami Loafer by GBX captures the spirit of the white ventilated loafers, albeit with fabric uppers rather than leather.

Crockett’s sunglasses falling to the ground prompts him to bend over and spot the C-4 tied to the chassis of Corky’s Chevy just a few seconds too late to save Eddie’s life.

In sunny Miami, having a snappy pair of sunglasses is essential…particularly for a clothes horse like Sonny Crockett. Though he would later wear Ray-Bans and Revos over the course of the series, the pilot episode finds Crockett wearing a pair of oversized Carrera 5512 sport aviator sunglasses with a black matte plastic frame, brown tinted lenses, and gray arms modified by the production team to obscure the Carrera branding.

Our first look at Sonny Crockett.

Corky’s last words are bragging to Eddie about his own gold Rolex: “Check it out, Eddie. Twelve grand cash. I was gonna spring eighteen for the Presidential, but it just screams ‘dealer’ if you know what I mean.”

That said, Sonny Crockett appears to be fully embracing his character’s cover as a dealer by wearing an all-gold Rolex Day-Date on the iconic “President” bracelet developed specifically for the Day-Date… though a closer look at the timepiece reveals that it isn’t a genuine Rolex President but instead a replica mocked-up to protect the production team from putting an expensive luxury watch in harm’s way as Crockett was fielding gunfights, car chases, and fistfights every week. Eagle-eyed viewers noted in the same forum cited above that Johnson can often be seen having to re-clasp the watch, an uncharacteristic trait of a true Rolex and perhaps a symptom of this first watch being an imitation.

As the show evolved, Crockett would dress his wrist with a variety of watches, including “a two-tone Rolex Datejust on a Jubilee bracelet, a Zenith El Primero-driven Ebel Sport Classic Chronograph in yellow gold and latterly an Ebel 1911 BTR Chronograph also in yellow gold,” according to Alan Seymour’s comprehensive article for Revolution.

Sonny’s Rolex tribute watch gets plenty of screen time in “Brother’s Keeper”.

Credited with creating a signature style that influenced menswear for much of the ’80s, Jodie Lynn Tillen was tapped to design costumes for Timothy Dalton’s second and final film as James Bond, Licence to Kill (1989). Dalton, who had prepared for the role by reading and studying Ian Fleming’s original novels, had resisted Tillen’s wish to dress him in the brighter pastels that she had made fashionable via Sonny Crockett, so the result attempted to blend Bond’s traditional tailored aesthetic with the baggy fits contemporary to the late ’80s and is often considered one of the lower points of 007’s on-screen style.

The Gun

Among the discrepancies with the rest of the show present in “Brother’s Keeper” is Sonny Crockett’s sidearm. The detective would famously carry the short-lived Bren Ten for the first two seasons, but he carried a SIG-Sauer P220 in the pilot episode.

Crockett keeps his SIG P220 holstered during a visit home for his young son’s birthday party. In fact, I believe he even wears the holstered weapon when he falls asleep next to his son!

SIG-Sauer introduced the P220 in 1975, primarily to replace the aging SIG P210 as the Swiss Army’s designated service pistol. The P220 has been offered in a variety of calibers, including .45 ACP and 10mm as well as discontinued versions that were chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum, 7.65x21mm Parabellum (.30 Luger), .38 Super, and 9mm Steyr. It would eventually form the basis for an influential line of SIG-Sauer pistols that would include the P225, P226, and P228.

The innovative P220 gained attention around the world, soon also adopted by the Japanese and Danish militaries and imported into the United States as the slightly modified Browning BDA until 1980. While it hasn’t been confirmed, a Miami Vice-focused Wiki page posits that Don Johnson had in fact carried the Browning BDA in “Brother’s Keeper” as opposed to a European-made P220, though IMFDB describes the pistol as a SIG-Sauer product (“the European model with the heel-clip magazine release.”)

In the following episode, “Heart of Darkness” (Episode 1.03), Crockett started carrying the chromed Bren Ten that would become his signature weapon. Once the Bren Ten was discontinued, the production team did not want to arm the fashionable Sonny Crockett with an out-of-production pistol and thus his sidearm became a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol, first the second-generation Model 645 for the third and fourth seasons before he adopted the new third-generation Smith & Wesson 4506 for the series’ fifth and final season.

How to Get the Look

Don Johnson as Sonny Crockett in the Miami Vice pilot episode “Brother’s Keeper”

While other aspects of Sonny Crockett’s character would evolve over the course of the series, his style of suits and T-shirts with summer-friendly fabrics and colors was firmly established in Miami Vice‘s pilot episode.

• White linen suit:
  • Single-button suit jacket with wide notch lapels, patch hip pockets, vestigal 1-button cuffs, and short double vents
  • Double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops and belt prong keeper, slanted side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Teal green cotton crew-neck short-sleeve T-shirt
• Walnut brown leather shoulder rig with right-hand-draw vertical holster
• White perforated leather loafers with leather-trimmed beige rubber soles
• Carrera 5512 aviator sport sunglasses with black matte plastic frame, brown tinted lenses, and gray branded arms
• Rolex Day-Date “President” yellow gold wristwatch

If you’re looking for a white linen suit to see if the look is right for you, there’s a relatively affordable (and well-reviewed) 100% linen suit offered on Amazon by U.S. Polo Assn., slightly updated with a more contemporary two-button jacket and flat-front trousers.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

The Quote

Five thousand street corners in greater Miami…and Gumby here’s gotta pick ours.

Footnote

I recognize that Miami Vice has a very dedicated fan community, many of whom have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show and its style. I would highly welcome any Miami Vice fans to reach out with any corrections, confirmations, or additional detail to ensure that any future posts focused on Crockett and Tubbs’ style is accurate and informative!

Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro on True Detective (Episode 2.02: “Night Finds You”)

Vitals

Colin Farrell as Ray Velcoro, troubled and crooked Vinci PD detective

Ventura County, California, October 2014

Series: True Detective
Episodes:
– “Night Finds You” (Episode 2.02, dir. Justin Lin, aired 6/28/2015)
– “Maybe Tomorrow” (Episode 2.03, dir. Janus Metz, aired 7/5/2015)
Creator: Nic Pizzolatto
Costume Designer: Alix Friedberg

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

As we get deeper into autumn, let’s crib a fall-friendly look from the second episode of True Detective‘s divisive second season. Even if you weren’t a fan of the neo-noir sophomore season of Nic Pizzolatto’s HBO series, there’s still something undoubtedly fun about Ray Velcoro’s cowboy-inspired take on a detective’s daily attire. (And if you really can’t stand anything but the first season of True Detective, you have less than three weeks left to wait until BAMF Style revisits one of Rustin Cohle’s looks!)

The second episode of the season, “Night Finds You,” includes Ray Velcoro (Colin Farrell) and his new task force partner Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) finding a creepy psychiatrist, Irving Pitlor (Rick Springfield), at his Esalen-like institute during their investigation into the death of Vinci, California city manager Ben Caspere. Following the meeting, Velcoro chases his own leads…and two volleys from a shotgun find his torso at point-blank range to the tune of “I Pity the Fool” by Bobby “Blue” Bland.

What’d He Wear?

Unlike the Western-yoked tweed jackets that Ray Velcoro wears, at least in the earlier episodes of the second season, Colin Farrell wears a more traditional sports coat in a rich mustard brown woolen tweed.

According to Valli Herman in a 2015 Costume Designers Guild article, costume designer Alix Friedberg sourced fabrics from L.A. wholesaler B. Black & Sons to create Velcoro’s vintage-inspired sport jackets that nod to some of the most visually masculine pop culture heroes from Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry to Waylon Jennings and Tom Waits. Men’s fashions in the mid-2010s were at the most dramatic of the latest super-slim trend, but Velcoro’s jackets with their larger fit and wider lapels suggest a silent sartorial rebellion favoring the timeless rather than the trendy.

Velcoro’s two-button sports coat has notch lapels with swelled edges that roll to a two-button front. The jacket has a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and a single vent. The shoulders are padded with roped sleeveheads and three-button cuffs at the end of each sleeve.

Ray Velcoro has little patience for Dr. Pitlor.

Velcoro wears a flannel snap shirt, patterned in a bronze, slate, and ivory shadow plaid and detailed with pointed Western-style yokes that are echoed by the pointed single-snap flaps over the two chest pockets. In addition to the mother-of-pearl button at the collar, Velcoro wears the first snap down the front placket undone for an insouciant effect.

Alternatives:

• Howler Brothers “Gaucho” shirt in Roper tan Thornton plaid cotton/poly (Amazon, $57.85)
• Pendleton “Western Canyon” shirt in brown/gray ombre plaid woolen flannel (Amazon, $127)
• Pendleton “Western Canyon” shirt in taupe/gold ombre plaid woolen flannel (Pendleton, $99-$149)
• Steton “Men’s Y/D Twill” shirt in brown/blue ombre plaid (Stetson, $79.50)

Velcoro takes a life-affirming drag the morning after he took two shotgun blasts to the stomach.

Under the shirt, Velcoro wears one of his usual white ribbed cotton sleeveless A-shirts. Both the undershirt and his brown leather belt get plenty of exposure when Velcoro wakes the morning after he’s been shot in the belly with rubber buckshot. He wears his Vinci PD badge fastened to just the left of the belt’s dulled steel single-prong buckle.

A rude but relieving awakening for Ray Velcoro in “Maybe Tomorrow” (Episode 2.03), as the compromised detective had good reason to think there was no tomorrow for him after he was blasted twice with a shotgun.

Like his fellow TV cowboy cop Raylan Givens, Ray Velcoro balances his sport jackets and boots with classic American jeans, in this case a pair of dark blue denim Levi’s 501® Original Fit button-fly jeans with his knife clipped into his right side pocket. These iconic jeans, which have been essentially unchanged since the most recent design was standardized in 1947, are widely available directly from Levi’s as well as from retailers like Amazon.

The character’s signature dark brown square-toed boots are consistent with the rest of his style, with Friedberg working together with Farrell until they landed on the ideal pair of custom-made cowboy boots from the Stallion Boot Company of El Paso.

For a brief scene in the season’s first episode, “The Western Book of the Dead” (Episode 2.01), we catch up with Velcoro at the wheel of his Charger, sporting this same tweed jacket over a blue denim-like snap shirt with two patch pockets that each close with a mitred-corner flap. Again, no bolo tie; evidently, Velcoro saves those for his Western-yoked jackets.

Classic chambray work shirt in “The Western Book of the Dead” (Episode 2.01)

What to Imbibe

“Night Finds You” includes a scene of Ray Velcoro settled into the oversized booth at his usual watering hole, the darkened Black Rose dive bar, with a bottle of his brew of choice, Modelo Especial.

Modelo Especial was first bottled in 1925 and the Mexican pilsner-style lager is now a leading product of Grupo Modelo. As of 2017, Modelo Especial was the #2 best-selling imported beer in the United States in 2017 and the #7 best-selling beer overall. (Source: USA Today)

How to Get the Look

Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams on True Detective (Episode 2.02: “Night Finds You”)

Ray Velcoro spends much of his duration for the Velcoro PD decked out in Western-yoked tweed jackets, bolo ties, and jeans, but this particular outfit that makes its brief appearance in “Night Finds You” is considerably more accessible for the non-horseback layman with its more traditional tweed sports coat, snap-front flannel shirt, and—perhaps most crucially—lack of a bolo tie.

• Mustard brown woolen tweed single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with swelled-edge notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
• Bronze, slate, and ivory shadow plaid flannel Western-yoked snap-front shirt with two pointed single-flap chest pockets and triple-snap cuffs
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless A-style undershirt
• Levi’s 501 Original Fit button-fly jeans in dark blue denim
• Brown leather belt with dulled steel squared single-prong buckle
• Brown leather square-toed short slip-on roper boots

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the second season of True Detective a chance… but you’d really be doing yourself a favor if you watch season one.

The Quote

Bad habits. Never lost one yet.

David Harbour as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things (Episode 1.07: “The Bathtub”)

Vitals

David Harbour as Jim Hopper, small-town police chief

Indiana, Fall 1983

Series: Stranger Things
Episodes:
– “Chapter Four: The Body” (Episode 1.04, dir. Shawn Levy)
– “Chapter Five: The Flea and the Acrobat” (Episode 1.05, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
– “Chapter Six: The Monster” (Episode 1.06, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
– “Chapter Seven: The Bathtub” (Episode 1.07, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
– “Chapter Eight: The Upside Down” (Episode 1.08, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
Streaming Date: July 15, 2016
Creator: The Duffer Brothers
Costume Design: Kimberly Adams-Galligan (Episodes 1.01-1.04) & Malgosia Turzanska (Episodes 1.03-1.08)

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

With Halloween just around the corner, let’s check in on the strange occurrences—er, stranger things—happening around the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, in the days following Halloween 1983.

Set during the “golden age” of sci-fi and horror, Stranger Things is both an homage to these classic genres as well as its own intriguing standalone story in the spirit of John Carpenter, Stephen King, and Steven Spielberg. The series premiered in July 2016 and, as of October 2019, remains the oldest Netflix original series on the air, having outlasted previous stalwarts like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Narcos that had all preceded it.

Stranger Things immerses the audience in the early ’80s youthful zeitgeist of synthesizers, teenage crushes, and pop culture phenomena like Star Wars that don’t distract Will Byers’ friends too much from trying to find their missing comrade, balancing nostalgia with a genuinely intriguing and original story. A highlight is the emotional, energetic performance of Winona Ryder (who celebrates her 48th birthday today) as Joyce Byers, Will’s desperately devoted mother who refuses to believe her son is dead, even after what is purportedly his corpse is pulled from a quarry. Hawkins’ cynical police chief, Jim Hopper (David Harbour), operates with logic and intuition before emotion, but he avoids dismissing Joyce, sensing that she legitimately believes that her son is still alive after encountering the disgusting monster that tore through her wallpaper into the living room that she had festooned with Christmas lights in hopes of continuing to communicate with her missing son.

Hop’s hunch becomes a lead after he learns that the state took over Will’s autopsy, and the burly police chief sets out to conduct his own undercover mission, settling next to Indiana State Police officer David O’Bannon (Ron Roggé) at the Hideaway, a local watering hole, and guiding their casual conversation over whiskey and Schlitz toward the topic of O’Bannon’s discovery of Will’s “corpse” in the quarry. After O’Bannon stalls, Hop resorts to more drastic measures, pummeling the corrupt trooper against the brick wall outside the pub until O’Bannon admits just enough to lay the groundwork of a conspiracy.

Hopper finds himself knocking out state troopers left and right, having to dispatch yet another officer guarding the coroner’s lab after the chief finds himself tongue-tied trying to lure the officer away without violence. The uniformed troopers are far from his most dangerous antagonist though, taking on the shadowy government figures behind the Hawkins National Laboratory and, ultimately, the predatory “Demogorgon” at the center of Hawkins’ latest catastrophe. It would be too much for Hopper and his slow-witted deputies to handle, but luckily the determined chief finds allies in Will’s young friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), as well as the supernatural stranger “Eleven” (Millie Bobby Brown) whose psychokinetic powers prove to be the strongest asset against the group’s foe, both human- and non-human alike.

What’d He Wear?

In a decade of acid-washed denim, baggy pastel suits, Members Only jackets, and hammer pants, a trendy dresser in the 1980s was often no more than an embarrassing yearbook photo for generations to come… or at least fodder for your kids to raid the back of your closet for their upcoming ’80s party. Yet, Jim Hopper proves that it was possible to dress down during the “Greed decade” without being a neon-lit tribute to tackiness.

Aside from a few vignettes of the police chief at home enjoying one too many beers or bed companions, Jim Hopper spends the majority of the first three episodes in his khaki police uniform, consisting of shirt, trousers, Bill Jordan-style holster by Tex Shoemaker, and Crevo Buck work boots. Chief Hopper’s uniform has become popular among cosplayers, and a thread at The RPF is full of intricate details about Hop’s wardrobe and how to recreate it, all carefully researched by hardcore fans of the show and character.

We first see Hop’s civilian attire of rugged corduroy and flannel when he’s technically off-duty, drinking at the Hideaway to glean information from state trooper David O’Bannon. Hopper doesn’t yet know what his evening—or week, for that matter—will entail, so he’s wisely layered in utilitarian and durable clothes to carry him through whatever adventures are prescribed to make Hawkins a safer place.

…though he has to draw a few guns in his pursuit of a safer Hawkins.

Like so many others in Hawkins, as observed by Nate Rogers for FLOOD, Hopper chooses corduroy outerwear to take on the Demogorgon, specifically a rich chocolate brown medium-waled ventless jacket styled like a heavier version of a classic chore coat with its button-up front and external pocket layout.

It’s a classic style that’s difficult to find new, as most modern corduroy casual jackets tend to be inspired by blazers or trucker jackets, though there are a few of the latter that are similar to Hopper’s first season jacket like these from Elwood Clothing and Trimthread. Farfetch offers this sherpa-lined corduroy “safari jacket” from Ami Paris that takes a fashion-forward spin with its four bellows pockets and covered fly, though Hop would likely balk at the $1,115 price tag.

If you’re seeking to truly crib Hop’s look, your best bet will be searching vintage shops or patrolling sites like eBay and Poshmark in the hopes of finding items like this Banana Republic field coat that—leather collar aside—shares plenty of style details with the off-duty look favored by Hawkins’ chief of police. Outdoors outfitters like Lands’ End, L.L. Bean, and Orvis may also continue to update their selections of barn coats and field jackets.

Flanked by his deputies in a shot channeling Tarantino, Hopper discovers the stash of monster-hunting equipment in Jonathan Byers’ trunk.

Hopper’s brown corduroy chore jacket has four brown sew-through buttons spaced up the front from the waist line to his neck. A set-in pocket over his left breast closes with a single-button flap, and the patch pockets on each hip also close with a single-button flap. Just above the flapped pocket on the right side is a slanted welt that opens into an additional hand pocket. The set-in sleeves close at the cuff through a single button on a short pointed semi tab.

Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) stands with Hopper as he watches Martin Brenner’s henchmen search the Wheeler home.

Hopper wears a cotton flannel shirt in blue and ivory shadow plaid. The shirt has a tan-lined collar and is semi-yoked at the shoulders, though the curved seam doesn’t interrupt the pattern of the shirt across the chest from the front placket to the seams around the set-in sleeves.

The bully Troy Walsh (Peyton Wich) piques Hop’s interest with an off-hand comment about the short-haired girl with special powers.

The shirt has seven blue plastic two-hole sew-through buttons up the front placket, and Hopper leaves the top few undone over his henley undershirt. The two box-pleated chest pockets have single-button flaps rounded at the corners, and the sleeves close at the cuffs through a single button.

Joining forces: Hop and Joyce listen to Jonathan and Nancy’s observations from encountering the Demogorgon.

While blue plaid flannel button-up shirts are plentiful, including these similar options from Burnside and L.L. Bean, Hop’s shirt benefits from the added character of the rounded shoulder seams, the box-pleated pockets, and the tan collar lining seen as he insouciantly wears the shirt only semi-buttoned over his henleys.

By the end of “The Bathtub” (Episode 1.07), Hopper has peeled off his flannel shirt and layers only the corduroy jacket over his henley as he goes off to find the gate into the Upside Down. Back at Hawkins Middle School, Eleven has picked up the chief’s discarded shirt and wears it for warmth throughout the episode, including her disintegration back into the Upside Down at the close of the episode. (In a nice continuity nod, Eleven is still wearing the shirt—though it is now considerably dirtier—in the “Trick or Treat, Freak” (Episode 2.02) flashback set shortly after this episode.

Eleven, clad in Hop’s flannel in “The Upside Down” (Episode 1.08, referring to the episode title not the location). It would be a welcome added layer as she finds herself hiding in the woods for weeks after the incident at Hawkins Middle School.

Removing his plaid flannel overshirt leaves Hopper to confront the sinister Hawkins lab leadership in a navy “waffle-knit” thermal long-sleeved henley, the second—and darker—of the two henley shirts that he wears as undershirts with this outfit. Hop’s shirt has long set-in sleeves with elasticized cuffs and three faux-wood two-hole sew-through buttons at the top.

As henley shirts continue to enjoy a resurgence in popularity, most major menswear outfitters include them among their offerings with the waffle-knit thermal being particularly popular as the year transitions into colder months through the autumn. The garment’s popularity makes it easy to look for navy waffle-knit henleys with Hop-approved details like contrasting buttons and set-in sleeves, so check out these selections from Banana Republic, Gap, Goodthreads, and Old Navy, or this ribbed-knit henley from Vintage 1946.

A defiant smoke during his interrogation.

Hopper wears the navy-colored henley in the last half of the first season, having changed out of the sweaty off-white henley that he wore when captured at Hawkins lab “The Body” (Episode 1.04) and thus when waking up in a frantic sweat on his living room couch at the beginning of “The Flea and the Acrobat” (Episode 1.05). This lighter henley shirt looks similar to the undershirts he wears with his khaki police chief uniform.

Like the navy shirt, Hop’s “natural”-toned ivory henley has long set-in sleeves and a three-button top, though the weave is a vertical rib, similar to the Billy Reid long-sleeved henley in “natural” cotton/poly (Nordstrom Rack) or the Banana Republic ribbed henley sweater in a “cargo khaki” cotton blend. An affordable alternative to both is the Hanes Beefy henley in “pebblestone heather” cotton/poly (Amazon).

Hopper panics after waking up back home after an action-packed night at the Hawkins lab.

The roomy fit of Hopper’s henleys cover the waistband of his dark blue jeans, which look to be relatively run-of-the-mill without any of the common visual identifiers of the major American denim brands like Lee, Levi’s, or Wrangler. The shirts also cover his waist line, though if he is wearing a belt, it’s possibly the same brown X-stitched one that he wore with light wash jeans for a morning smoke in the first episode, “The Vanishing of Will Byers” (Episode 1.01). Should anyone be interested, the same scene communicates to viewers that Hop’s preferred underwear are “tighty-whiteys”, specifically white briefs with thini yellow and navy lines around the waistband.

Hopper’s dark brown leather work boots appear to be the same that he wears with his police uniform, which The RPF has deduced to be Crevo “Buck” moc-toe boots. In addition to the Crevo site, these boots are available from retailers including Amazon and DSW.

These boots have dark brown leather uppers with a 5½”-tall shaft and derby-laced with yellow-and-brown tube laces through seven pairs of eyelets.

Hardly an ideal lifestyle.

Hopper also carries over the same wide-brimmed felt hat that he wears with his uniform. Given how much David Harbour himself was invested in his character’s hat, it’s no surprise that it’s something the character wears daily and not just as part of his work uniform.

Shortly after the show’s first season was released in the summer of 2016, Harbour expanded on the development of Hopper’s hat in an exclusive interview with Marc Ciafardini from GoSeeTalk.com. Harbour had envisioned “an iconic hat, like the pork pie in The French Connection, or Indy’s fedora,” for Hopper and—with the Duffer brothers’ blessing—approached hatmaker Orlando Palacios of Worth & Worth:

…Orlando says, “great, maybe it’s his dad’s hat. There’s a hat called the open road that Eisenhower used to wear.” So we developed this open road hat that was great, and we had three of them made for the character… Orlando is an extraordinary artist, and he’s really detail-oriented, so if you look carefully at the hat, you’ll see the remnants of a band, which is an invisible band – that’s created when things are faded when the Sun hits them. So we decided that at one point it was his father’s hat, and then the band fell off, but Hopper still wears it.

Hopper’s custom hat is made from an olive-tinted taupe fur felt similar to the “Caribou” color of the modern Stetson Open Road, though the experts at The RPF have identified the Stetson Stratoliner as a better alternative that better reflects the softness of the original hat. It has a “teardrop” C-crown like a classic fedora, but the lack of a band and the 2.75″-wide brim adds more of a cowboy touch.

“In many ways, Hopper likes to hide and he doesn’t want people to see the pain that he experiences every day and doesn’t want people to see what he’s feeling. So he has this big wide brim, a 3 inch rim that he can pull down and hide behind.” David Harbour explained to GoSeeTalk.com.

A heartbreaking detail of Hopper’s character is the aqua blue braided bracelet constantly seen on his right wrist. Though David Harbour would later explain the significance to INSIDER, eagle-eyed first season audiences may have spotted that Hop’s daughter Sara was actually wearing this bright blue hair tie the day her parents noticed she was sick, featured in a flashback in the season finale, “The Upside Down” (Episode 1.08).

“It’s something subtle we do, and in fact if you watch the first [scene] of Jim Hopper in season one, he wakes up in the morning and before he even checks his watch he touches that bracelet on his arm,” Harbour told INSIDER following the second season premiere. “It’s the first thing that he does every morning because he never wants to forget her. Sara and the death of his daughter is his grounding place for reality.”

Fans have commented on The RPF that the hair tie appears to be a blue braided “hair elastic” by Scünci, the ConAir brand that’s arguably a market leader in the women’s hair accessory segment. (Amazon)

His daughter’s blue hairband on his right wrist, Hop’s Timex digital watch on his left wrist can be identified by the blue “ATLANTIS” seen above the display.

Stranger Things accurately captures the mania for digital watches in the early 1980s, a time when even James Bond had been wearing digital watches for more than half a decade. In addition to Dustin, Mike, and Will who all sport digital watches (Lucas wears a gunmetal field watch), Chief Hopper keeps time with a Timex Atlantis 100 strapped to his left wrist on a compass watchband.

The sporty Timex Atlantis digital watch is still in production in various forms more than 35 years after Stranger Things was set, virtually unchanged with its silver case, black resin top ring, and four pusher buttons. One of the most recent iterations of the Atlantis, the Timex Men’s Expedition Atlantis, is a reliable and very affordable digital chronograph available on Amazon. Of course, you could also hold out for an actual Timex Atlantis 100 like Hop wears, as recently seen at Bob Ward’s.

Knowing the location of true north isn’t going to help corrupt Indiana state trooper O’Bannon any as Hopper pummels him in an alley… though the prominence of the compass in this scene (itself a motif used by the boys to find “the gate”) could be suggestive to the audience and Hopper himself that his private investigation is heading in the right direction…

Resourceful lawman and outdoorsman that he is, Hopper customized his Timex by swapping out the standard band for a black strap with a built-in mini-compass. This small black compass, worn on a black strap with single-prong buckle, has white and green markers against a black dial, similar to the SE-CCV15 watchband compass (Amazon).

What to Imbibe

Cheers!

Pick your poison! When we are introduced to Jim Hopper in the post-credits scene of the first episode, “The Vanishing of Will Byers”, the chief’s living room is littered with empty cans of Hamm’s and Schlitz beer. When he finally does get to work, there’s a bottle of Jameson whiskey on his desk as he’s typing up Will’s missing persons report.

Hopper’s apartment is in the same state of alcoholic disarray when he wakes up on the couch the morning after he was knocked out at the Hawkins laboratory. His coffee table is a mess of pill bottles, Schlitz cans, an errant Jameson bottle, and a deck of his go-to unfiltered Camels.

A vintage issue of The Saturday Evening Post adds Reagan-era verisimilitude, though it’s surprisingly weathered for the Saturday, November 26, issue… considering that the scene is set Friday, November 11.

We also spy Hop’s handy knife, a Sheffield Superior Folder, and the very knife that he had used the previous night to discover that Will Byers’ “corpse” was indeed a fake.

The Gun

Police chief Jim Hopper carries his duty sidearm, a 4″-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 66 revolver, chambered to fire .357 Magnum ammunition. It’s an appropriate sidearm for the early-to-mid 1980s when most American police officers, specifically in small towns like Hawkins, Indiana, were still carrying classic American six-shot revolvers before the nationwide transition to semi-automatic pistols.

Hopper draws his Smith & Wesson Model 66 after he spots a mysterious sedan in “Chapter Four: The Body” (Episode 1.04).

Smith & Wesson had introduced the Model 66 in 1971 as a stainless steel version of the Model 19, itself a .357 Magnum evolution of the Model 15 “Combat Masterpiece” in .38 Special, though the Model 15, Model 19, and Model 66 were all built on Smith & Wesson’s medium-sized “K” frame. The Model 19 and Model 66 have both been colloquially referred to as the “Combat Magnum” for their ability to fire .357 Magnum rounds. Production of the Model 66 ceased in the early-to-mid 2000s, but the revolver was reintroduced in 2014, first with a 4.25″ barrel before a snub-nosed 2.75″-barreled version joined the lineup three years later.

Though he seems to opt for waistband carry when off-duty, Hop’s duty uniform includes a light brown basket weave “Bill Jordan” border patrol holster worn on the right side of his belt that had been made for the production by Tex Shoemaker & Sons, a venerated leather maker in California’s San Gabriel Valley that sadly closed its doors in the fall of 2017, not long after creating Jim Hopper’s holster.

David Harbour as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things (Episode 1.06: “The Monster”)

How to Get the Look

While dressing like a Stranger Things character could make a very specific Halloween costume, Jim Hopper’s eschewal of trends transcends the series’ 1980s setting as his off-duty ensemble of corduroy jacket, plaid flannel shirt, henley, and jeans would be just as effective, utilitarian, and casually stylish today.

• Chocolate brown corduroy chore coat with four-button front, set-in chest pocket (with single-button flap), slanted welt right-side hand pocket, two patch hip pockets (with single-button flaps), and single-button cuffs
• Blue-and-ivory shadow plaid flannel shirt with curved shoulder yokes, front placket, two box-pleated pockets (with single-button flaps), and rounded button cuffs
• Ivory ribbed-knit or navy waffle-knit thermal 3-button henley shirt with long set-in sleeves
• Dark blue denim jeans
• Brown X-stitched belt with single-prong buckle
• Dark brown leather moc-toe work boots with 7-eyelet yellow-and-brown tube laces and non-slip rubber outsole
• Olive taupe fur felt “open road”-style C-crown fedora with no hatband
• Aqua blue braided elastic hair-tie, worn as a bracelet
• Timex Atlantis 100 digital watch in silver gray case with black resin top ring and four silver pusher buttons on a black customized compass watchband

Visit The RPF if you’re interested in an expertly researched cosplay guide into Jim Hopper’s police uniform as well as some casual attire.

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The Quote

I don’t have a problem. I’m just a concerned citizen.

Sean Connery as Jim Malone in The Untouchables (1987)

Vitals

Sean Connery as Jim Malone, tough and honest Chicago beat cop

Canadian border, September 1930

Film: The Untouchables
Release Date: June 3, 1987
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Marilyn Vance

Background

Recently recruited off the streets of Chicago, aging beat cop Jim Malone is more than happy to bring his grizzled brand of tough justice to the Canadian border to assist federal agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and their small but effective band of “untouchable” lawmen in stopping an illegal shipment of liquor from making its way into the United States.

While staking out the border, Malone taps into his extensive experience of walking the cold Chicago late night beat to offer sage wisdom to his younger colleagues, from stamping their feet to keep warm to not excessively checking their guns. Thus, when the time comes, the four dedicated officers are as ready as they can be, rerouting the criminals with enough firepower that sends them either scrambling on foot or straight to the morgue.

“Alright, enough of this running shit!” Malone shouts to Al Capone’s bookkeeper, George (Brad Sullivan), one of the lucky members of the former group. Malone drags George back to the cabin for an interrogation designed to get the bookkeeper to turn on his infamous criminal boss, but the Mounties’ white-handed methods hardly intimidate their captive… leading Malone to take matters into his own hands with the help of his .38 and a freshly dead gangster he found on the porch.

What’d He Wear?

With the post-Thanksgiving hunting season imminent, let’s take a look at Jim Malone’s warm, comfortable, and classic layers as he joins his fellow “untouchables” essentially hunting bootleggers at the Canadian border.

Malone’s outer layer is a barleycorn tweed coat in a cool shade of brown, styled in the unorthodox combination of double-breasted coat with notch lapels. The broad lapels with their wide notches roll down to a low button stance that consists of a top row of two widely spaced vestigal buttons above four buttons in a two-by-two square formation.

Between his heavy layers and foot-stomping tactics, Jim Malone must be keeping quite comfortably warm.

Malone’s coat blends outerwear sensibilities with the detailing and cut of a sport jacket, creating a unique cut suggestive of a well-traveled, experienced professional who knows how to get the most mileage out of his limited clothing.

The ventless back has an actual half-belt that hangs around the back of the waist, comprised of two straps that fasten in the center on a single button. Each sleeve tightens with a slim, single-button semi-tab around the cuff—a device more informed by the coat’s outerwear context—and the jacket has two flapped bellows pockets on the hips.

Jim Malone issues sage advice to his brother-in-arms, fellow Chicago cop George Stone (Andy Garcia).

Malone keeps his neck and chest warm by tying on a soft wool scarf, widely striped in navy blue and hunter green with slim beige and red accent stripes in between them.

Malone loves the smell of illegally imported Canadian whisky in the morning.

Added warmth comes from Malone’s intermediate layer, a gray shawl-collar cardigan knitted in heavy-ribbed wool with five brown “knobby” leather buttons on a strip down the front of the sweater. The cardigan has raglan sleeves that Malone rolls back at each cuff and two set-in hip pockets with his silver key chain clipped to the welt over his left pocket.

“Now, don’t let him clean himself until after he talks.”

Malone wears a pale blue cotton shirt that resembles the color and fabric of his Chicago police uniform, and indeed it may be the same. If so, it would have shoulder straps (epaulettes) that fasten at the neck in addition to two box-pleated chest pockets, each covered with a mitred-corner flap that closes with a single button.

The shirt has a large semi-spread collar, front placket, and rounded single-button cuffs. As with his pale green R&O Hawick shirt, Connery tends to wear this shirt buttoned up to the neck.

Earlier, Malone—fresh off his long beat—is surprised to greet Eliot Ness at his home, imploring Malone to join his small but incorruptible band of tough and honest crusaders.

Malone wears taupe woolen flannel trousers with double reverse pleats that are both consistent with the era’s menswear trends and a functional detail that allows a more generous fit for an aging man with an increasing midsection.

Malone maintains his curious practice of wearing both belt and braces as we see the dark leather eyes of his suspenders that connect to buttons along the inside of his trouser waistband when he raises the bottom of his cardigan to tuck his .38 back in. Then again, it may be this cavalier practice of carrying his sidearm like this that necessitates the addition of his belt, likely the same black belt he wears with his everyday corduroy jacket ensemble in Chicago. The belt would keep his trousers more closely pressed to his waist, providing stronger traction for the revolver, while the suspenders would do the yeoman’s work of actually keeping the trousers up.

No, it’s not the belt and braces combo that has left his colleagues wordless…

While his trousers are likely not actual riding breeches, Malone tucks the bottoms into the tops of his combat boots to keep the cuffs from interfering while he’s on horseback, causing the ample-fitting legs to bag out over his ankles like jodphurs or plus fours.

Malone tucks the bottoms of his trousers into his black leather cap-toe combat boots, likely also the same derby-laced boots that he wears with his Chicago outfit.

Malone stands over a dead gangster who still has some potential for utility.

A man of modest means, Malone wears a plain tweed newsboy cap often associated with the less affluent population of the era. The mixed brown woolen tweed cap has eight panels that connect under a cloth-covered button at the top. It was included in an auction with the rest of his Chicago-worn clothing, where it was listed as an “AKERI Sportsman Extra Quality” snap cap.

The Guns

Oh, what’s the matter? Can’t you talk with a gun in your mouth?

One of the most memorable character-establishing moments of The Untouchables begins when Jim Malone grows increasingly impatient with mob bookkeeper George’s smug refusal to cooperate. Recalling the dead gangster on the porch that Ness had shotgunned earlier in the day, Malone steps outside and drags the corpse to its feet with its back to the window, giving George and Malone’s fellow interrogators a picture-perfect view of Malone jamming his Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver into the dead man’s mouth, giving him until the count of three to help them decipher the ledger they captured.

“One… two… three!”

Obviously, dead men don’t talk (or wear plaid) so Malone counts from one to three without getting an answer and—BLAM!—blasts the back of the already dead gangster’s throat into the room, frightening not only the captive George but also the Mounties who assisted with the operation. George is convinced and, despite the newly formed puddle in his pants, is all too eager to cooperate… while the chief Mountie shares his disapproval of Ness’ and Malone’s methods. “Yeah?” Ness counters. “Well, you’re not from Chicago.”

Malone isn’t above going beyond the rules in his quest to carry out justice, but it is unlikely that he would use his service weapon in such a brazen manner. Combined with his unorthodox carry method of tucking it into his trouser waistband sans holster as well as the fact that the Chicago Police Department’s issued sidearm during this era was a Colt Police Positive and not a Smith & Wesson, it can be deduced that this 4″-barreled, blued steel .38 Special—which would have still been designated the Smith & Wesson “Military & Police” revolver—is Malone’s personal sidearm.

Like any Prohibition-era crusader worth his salt, Malone is also a deft artist with a Thompson submachine gun, also nicknamed the “Chicago typewriter” for its prevalence in the gangland violence of Malone’s hometown. Dubbed “the gun that made the twenties roar” by historian William J. Helmer in his book of the same name, the Thompson submachine gun revolutionized firearms in both criminal combat and military warfare over the early half of the 20th century.

Despite its geographical moniker, the “Untouchables”—notably Malone and fellow CPD officer George Stone (Andy Garcia)—use their tommy guns to greatest effect during their mission at the Canadian border.

Thompson in hand, Malone briefly confers with his colleague Ness during the border battle.

A prop hard rubber Thompson replica that Sean Connery carried on horseback during these action sequences was auctioned by Profiles in History in July 2005 alongside a Smith & Wesson revolver prop credited as his from the production, though this .357 Magnum revolver’s shorter barrel and shrouded ejector rod make it look like a different model than his .38.

How to Get the Look

Sean Connery as Jim Malone in The Untouchables (1987)

Apropos his rugged nature, Chicago beat cop Jim Malone fills his limited wardrobe with durable pieces like his woolen tweed cap, his everyday corduroy jacket, and this unique double-breasted cross between a sports coat and winter outerwear that he layers over a striped scarf and shawl-collar cardigan for an action-packed raid at the Canadian border.

• Brown heavy tweed double-breasted coat with wide notch lapels, padded shoulders, 6×3-button front, flapped bellows hip pockets, single-button slim tab cuffs, single-button half-belted ventless back
• Pale blue cotton shirt with large semi-spread collar, wide front placket, and rounded button cuffs
• Gray heavy ribbed wool knit shawl-collar cardigan with five brown woven leather buttons and two welted hip pockets
• Taupe woolen flannel double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops and straight/on-seam side pockets
• Dark suspenders
• Black leather belt with steel single-prong buckle
• Black leather derby-laced cap-toe combat boots
• Dark brown tweed newsboy cap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

What the hell… you gotta die of something!

John Saxon as Lt. Ken Fuller in Black Christmas (1974)

Vitals

John Saxon as Ken Fuller, intrepid police lieutenant

Toronto…or some small American college town near the Canadian border, Christmas 1973

Film: Black Christmas
(U.S. title: Silent Night, Evil Night)
Release Date: October 11, 1974
Director: Bob Clark
Wardrobe Credit: Debi Weldon

Background

The second remake of Bob Clark’s cult holiday horror classic, Black Christmas, was released in theaters today, more than 45 years after the original starring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and John Saxon as police lieutenant Ken Fuller. Clark had changed the script’s original title, Stop Me, to Black Christmas to tap into the irony of such sinister events darkening an otherwise festive holiday. Christmas would prove to be a fruitful source of inspiration for Clark as he would go on to direct the now-classic (and considerably less violent) A Christmas Story (1983).

Black Christmas would become not only a trailblazer in the slasher genre but also an early installment in the burgeoning “holiday horror” subgenre that also included contemporaries like Home for the Holidays (1972) starring Sally Field and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1972) with Patrick O’Neal. Clark got his start with horror cinema in the early 1970s and, after the production of Deathdream, he moved his operations to Canada to take advantage of the substantial tax benefits. His subsequent movie, Black Christmas, hardly disguises its Toronto production with plenty of “oots” and “aboots” and names like Graham and Mrs. MacHenry, though Lieutenant Fuller muddies the issue of setting by keeping an American flag prominently placed on his desk.

The level-headed lieutenant was originally to be played by Edmond O’Brien, though the actor’s failing health due to Alzheimer’s Disease surprised the producers when he showed up on set. With little time to spare, compose Carl Zittrer called John Saxon—an actor 20 years O’Brien’s junior who had already read the script— to offer him in the role, giving Saxon two days to travel from New York City to Toronto to begin shooting.

Inspired by the urban legend of “the babysitter and the man upstairs” as well as an actual series of killings committed by “Vampire Rapist” Wayne Boden around Quebec’s Westmount neighborhood, Black Christmas focuses on a sorority house where, after a series of threatening phone calls, the inhabitants are stalked and murdered by a deranged intruder who takes sadistic delight in picking them off one by one. While few take the threat seriously until it’s too late, the girls have an ally in Ken Fuller, the police lieutenant who balances an easygoing personality with a no-nonsense professionalism as he takes action to try to prevent additional murders.

Black Christmas stirred controversy when it was scheduled to make its televised debut (under the title Stranger in the House) in January 1978, only two weeks after Ted Bundy terrorized the Chi Omega house on FSU’s campus, murdering two women in their sleep in an incident eerily mirroring the events of Black Christmas. (As a compromise, NBC gave its affiliates in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia the option to air Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze instead.) While the film was hardly a critical or box office success when it was released, its reevaluation over the decades since has established it as a cult classic, ranked among Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

What’d He Wear?

While the wardrobe for Black Christmas was credited to Debi Weldon, who also appeared uncredited as one of the sorority sisters, the film’s small budget of around $620,000 meant many actors were encouraged to provide their own clothes for their characters to wear. I’m not sure if Saxon was among the cast members who provided his own clothing, though I liked his earthy ensemble of a large-checked sports coat with an understated shirt, tie, and trousers. Given that some of the elements of his wardrobe, particularly the shirt, overcoat, and hat, are suggestive of an older man, I suspect that Ms. Waldon or someone else from the costume department had originally selected Fuller’s wardrobe for an older actor like Edmond O’Brien to wear.

Patterned in a large-scaled brown-and-black basket-woven check, similar to a broken houndstooth pattern, with a black and green plaid overcheck, Lieutenant Fuller’s single-breasted sport jacket has notch lapels that roll to a two-button front. Due to how the shots are framed, it’s hard to discern other details other than the welted breast pocket and long double vents.

Saxon enjoys a chuckle at the expense of the foolish Sergeant Nash (Doug McGrath).

Under his jacket, Fuller wears his snubnose revolver holstered under his left armpit in a tan chamois leather shoulder rig with an adjustable white ribbed nylon strap. The holster suspends his piece in the manner similar to the “quickdraw” holster that Steve McQueen famously wore in Bullitt (1968), adapted from the rig worn by his real-life contemporary, the Zodiac-chasing inspector Dave Toschi of the San Francisco Police Department.

Fuller wisely balances the bold check of his jacket with a subdued shirt, tie, and trousers to avoid the potentially chaotic effect of too many conflicting patterns. His ecru poplin shirt has a spread collar of moderate width, though it looks considerably narrow when compared to the wide collars that were fashionable at the time, during the height of the disco era. The shirt has a plain (French) front and single-button rounded cuffs.

His charcoal tie is divided into uphill-direction stripes by narrow black stripes that have such a low contrast against the charcoal ground that the tie often looks solid at a distance and in certain light. Bronze box shapes are intermittently placed along the tie’s charcoal stripes, adding a touch of tonal coordination with his brown jacket and trousers.

Fuller wears dark brown straight-leg trousers with frogmouth front pockets, a popular full-top style of trouser pocket that was popular from the 1960s into the ’70s and were particularly flattering with the tight-hipped trousers of the era as they wouldn’t flare open like side pockets. In lieu of a belt, Fuller’s flat front trousers have buckle-tab side adjusters.

Fuller’s leather lace-up shoes are a lighter brown than the rest of his outfit. Based on the profile of his shoes seen as he approaches Peter Smythe’s piano, they appear to be derby-laced low shoes though any further detail is next to impossible due to the angles available on screen and the lack of production photos showing more of John Saxon’s costume.

One of my favorite parts of Fuller’s outfit is the dark brown wool bridge coat he wears when he’s out investigating the crimes. This large double-breasted coat originated as a part of military uniforms and was still popular, particularly among officers of European military forces, well into the 20th century. Fuller’s coat has a broad Ulster collar similar to a pea jacket, a full fit without notable waist suppression, and flat black plastic sew-through buttons in parallel columns that characterize the coat as a bridge coat rather than the similar greatcoat which has buttons placed in a keystone formation up to the top.

The traditional bridge coat and greatcoat have been generally eclipsed by shorter, more commute-friendly topcoats like car coats and walkers, though certain fashion houses have maintained this classic style such as Rubinacci with their authentic Italian Casentino wool Ulster coat (via The Rake) and the admittedly short but similarly styled custom coats offered by Hockerty. You can also take a more military approach with the wool greatcoats available from Kent & Curwen, though such a grand coat with its shoulder straps and maritime-inspired gilt buttons needs to be worn with the correct panache to prevent its wearer from looking like Dwight Schrute.

Clad in his bridge coat and gloves, Fuller meets with sorority sisters Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) and Phyllis Carlson (Andrea Martin) to get a sense of who may be terrorizing the house.

Fuller wears a black leather three-point gloves, named for the triple lines of stitching that taper toward the wrist on the dorsal side of each glove.

Fuller’s gloves keep him warm during the holiday season while also preventing him from compromising the crime scene with his own fingerprints.

Of all of Lieutenant Fuller’s attire, the dark brown tweed trilby with its pinched crown and self-band seems the most out of place, suggesting that the costume was meant for the much older Edmond O’Brien rather than the younger John Saxon who was still under 40 at the time of the production and a decade beyond the decline of hat-wearing culture among fashionable gents in North America.

While many aspects of Fuller’s attire aren’t prominently seen on screen, his frequent phone calls give us plenty of time with his silver-toned wristwatch with its light silver round dial. The case and bracelet are likely stainless steel, with the latter resembling the five-piece link “Jubilee” bracelet that Rolex introduced on their Datejust model in 1945.

Is Lieutenant Fuller a Rolex wearer?

If Fuller’s watch is a Rolex, it was likely the owned property of John Saxon rather than a piece purchased for the production as there would be no reason to purchase a Rolex for the character, even if they were considerably less expensive in the early 1970s, even when accounting for inflation.

What’d Barb Wear?

You’re a real gold-plated whore, Mother, you know that?

I can’t let a discussion of Black Christmas go without a shoutout to the sublime Margot Kidder and her entertaining performance as the brash and boozy Barb, one of the sorority sisters targeted by the mysterious caller. The acerbic alcoholic spends most of her time drinking anything from pulls of Labatt’s 50 ale in the police station to G.H. Mumm champagne straight from the bottle. After Timothy Bond added the university setting at the behest of producers Richard Schouten and Harvey Sherman, Bob Clark added Barb’s constant drunkenness as comic relief, further attracting Kidder to the role “because she was wild and out of control” and eventually winning her a deserved Canadian Film Award for Best Performance by a Lead Actress.

In the opening Christmas party scene, Barb lounges from drink to drink in a barely buttoned blue oxford-cloth button-down shirt, leaving the collar also unbuttoned to lay flat and wide over her shoulders and showcasing a black velvet neckband bedazzled with a shiny brooch reading “YES” from the center of her neck.

“That was fun,” Margot Kidder recalled to The AV Club of her time filming Black Christmas. “I really bonded with Andrea Martin, filming in Toronto and Ontario. Olivia Hussey was a bit of an odd one. She was obsessed with the idea of falling in love with Paul McCartney through her psychic. We were a little hard on her for things like that.”

Barb’s look has tragically dodged iconic status, and I remain hopeful each year to see an attendee at a Halloween party (or, perhaps even more appropriately, a Christmas party) channeling Barb’s insouciant look with a cigarette in one hand and champagne coupe spilling from the other.

The Gun

Outside of his shoulder holster, Lieutenant Fuller’s sidearm is seen only in silhouette, but the elongated ramp-style front sight and secured ejector rod suggest a relatively recent Smith & Wesson revolver chambered in .38 Special and with a 1 7/8″ or 2″ barrel. While the six-shot Smith & Wesson Model 10 “Military & Police” is a possibility, the more compact silhouette suggests the five-shot Smith & Wesson Model 36 “Chiefs Special”, built on Smith & Wesson’s smaller J-frame.

His Smith & Wesson .38 drawn, Fuller hopes to close in on the killer.

After Smith & Wesson resumed civilian production following World War II, they recognized the need for a concealable and durable police revolver to contend with the iconic Colt Detective Special snub-nosed revolver that could fire the powerful .38 Special ammunition that had become the standard for American law enforcement. Smith & Wesson’s existing compact I-frame was deemed unsuitable to handle the powerful load, so the manufacturer developed the J-frame for this new revolver, sacrificing one extra slot in the swing-out cylinder to allow it to reliably fire the substantial .38 Special.

The revolver was introduced at the International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in 1950, where the attendees gave it their blessing and voted to christen it “Chiefs Special” (not “Chief’s Special” or “Chiefs’ Special”, mind you.) Though the revolver received its new Model 36 designation when Smith & Wesson began numbering its models later in the decade, the Chiefs Special moniker stuck and remains to this day.

How to Get the Look

John Saxon as Lt. Ken Fuller in Black Christmas (1974)

Bold checks were increasingly fashionable during the ’70s, and John Saxon shows how to wear a large-scaled check sport jacket with taste in 1974’s Black Christmas by keeping the rest of his outfit subdued and classic without surrendering to the excess-driven menswear trends of the decade.

• Brown-and-black basket-woven check (with black and green overcheck) single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, and long double vents
• Ecru poplin shirt with spread collar, plain front, and single-button rounded cuffs
• Black-on-charcoal uphill-striped tie with bronze box motif
• Dark brown flat front trousers with buckle-tab side adjusters, frogmouth front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown leather lace-up shoes
• Steel wristwatch with round silver dial on steel “Jubilee”-style bracelet
• Tan chamois leather “quickdraw” shoulder holster with white ribbed nylon suspension strap
• Dark brown wool double-breasted bridge coat with wide Ulster collar and set-in sleeves with two-button cuffs
• Dark brown tweed trilby with self-band
• Black leather three-point gloves

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Nash, I don’t think you could pick your nose without written instructions.

David Harbour as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things (Episode 3.04: “The Sauna Test”)

Vitals

David Harbour as Jim Hopper, small-town police chief

Indiana, Summer 1985

Series: Stranger Things
Episodes:
– “Chapter Two: The Mall Rats” (Episode 3.02, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
– “Chapter Three: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard” (Episode 3.03, dir. Shawn Levy)
– “Chapter Four: The Sauna Test” (Episode 3.04, dir. Shawn Levy)
– “Chapter Five: The Flayed” (Episode 3.05, dir. Uta Briesewitz)
– “Chapter Six: E Pluribus Unum” (Episode 3.06, dir. Uta Briesewitz)
– “Chapter Seven: The Bite” (Episode 3.07, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
– “Chapter Eight: The Battle of Starcourt” (Episode 3.08, dir. The Duffer Brothers)
Streaming Date: July 4, 2019
Creator: The Duffer Brothers
Costume Designer: Amy Parris

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Netflix recently announced that the fourth season of its sci-fi/horror runaway hit Stranger Things has commenced production, so we can likely expect it to hit within a year. In the meantime, as I’m enjoying a “spring break” of my own with a trip south to sunny Florida this week, I’m taking a much-requested look at the “cutting edge” Aloha shirt that Hawkins police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) wears in all but one episode of the series’ third season.

The third season premiere found a mustached Hop planted in front of his Sony Trinitron, hand in a bag of Tostitos as he watches the pilot episode of Magnum, P.I. (Fans of the series undoubtedly recognized Tom Selleck’s narration: “Don’t look at the dogs, work the lock… you looked at the dogs.”)

Parked in front of the tube munching on chips and salsa, Hopper drifts into the escapist world of Magnum, P.I. to distract himself from whatever is happening between Eleven and Mike behind him.

By the next episode, Hop has obtained his own Magnum-esque tropical-printed shirt, hoping to channel Selleck’s magnetism as he scores a dinner date with his recently single friend, Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder). However, Joyce is more concerned with the lack of magnetism in her life and inadvertently stands Hop up for their long-awaited date… but fate brings them back together in their joint search for answers.

Their combined investigation leads them to an affable Russian scientist named Alexei (Alec Utgoff), though the language barrier prevents their new Slurpee-loving friend from providing them with any immediate use. Hopper had already severed his connection with the mayor of Hawkins after a much-deserved ass-kicking, so he goes further rogue, clamping a Slim Jim in his mouth as he “commandeers” a yellow Cadillac convertible from a Sonny Crockett-wannabe named Todd and heads off in search of Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman) to request the conspiracy-peddling ex-journalist’s translation abilities.

Hop allows himself a “Magnum moment” as, clad in an Aloha shirt, he speeds out of a parking lot in a luxurious convertible.

The paranoid Murray provides invaluable help, though the not exactly-Slim Jim Hopper is less than flattered when Murray translates Alexei’s backhanded compliment:

He says he likes your courage. You remind him of a, uh, fat Rambo.

What’d He Wear?

Much of the action around Stranger Things‘ third and most recent season is set around the recent opening of the Starcourt Mall, a retail epicenter where our protagonists of all ages can loaded up on the latest from The Gap, J.C. Penney, RadioShack, and Sam Goody, before grabbing a Whopper, an Orange Julius, or a cone from Scoops Ahoy and heading home with their latest haul.

Hawkins’ youngest heroes all meet up at the mall during the second episode, appropriately titled “The Mall Rats”, but Hop sends his trusty office manager Florence (Susan Shalhoub Larkin) to do his shopping for him.

“Special delivery!” Flo calls out, a J.C. Penney bag in hand. Somewhat ironically in the middle of arresting a neighbor who was protesting the mall’s existence in town, Hop giddily grabs the bag and excitedly examines the contents: a vibrantly patterned Aloha shirt.

“That the right one?” Florence asks. “Oh, yeah,” Hop mutters in admiration, looking over the pastel shirt that his deputy, Powell (Rob Morgan), deadpans is “a lot of color for you, Chief.”

“It’s cuttin’-edge stuff, alright?” Hop retorts, retreating to the non-judgmental safety of his Chevy Blazer. “It’s cutting-edge!”

Amy Parris’ expert costume design team even added a manufacturer’s label similar to those seen on men’s sportswear during the era.

Costume designer Amy Parris explained to Fashionista ahead of the season’s release last summer that, of course, Hop was inspired by his latest TV hero. “I found a great image of Tom Selleck in the iconic moment of Magnum in the Hawaiian shirt, the light denim Wrangler jeans, a canvas belt, and topsider shoes,” Parris told Fashionista, who put her own twist on Magnum’s iconic style that could be more consistent with Hopper’s character rather than a straight cosplay-esque reproduction.

There were five multiples of the shirt to allow for damage during the various stunts as Hop faces off against Russians, monsters, and smarmy town mayor Larry Kline (Cary Elwes). This required plenty of fabric, so “Parris bought the last 20 yards of a vintage ’80s fabric and custom-printed each one in an original pattern designed by the team,” according to Fashionista. “The graphics even needed to be in the exact same location on each shirt for continuity.”

Although the shirt was created from an original design by Amy Parris’ costume team, its immediate popularity—per Esquire—before the season even streamed made it a popular choice for Halloween costumes last year as Spirit Halloween developed their own officially licensed replica, retailing for $24.99 as of March 2020. (You can buy it here!)

Additional replicas abound on Amazon, all with subtle differences in design and styling from companies like Costume Agent, Cutiee, Cynicismile, and Dark Paradide Vintage [sic], but the Spirit Halloween shirt appears to be the only officially licensed and the most screen-accurate version.

Of course, I would also invite those inspired by Hopper’s Aloha shirt to take a page from the chief’s own book by not directly copying one from a TV show but instead finding the perfect Hawaiian shirt for you. The best place is to start is the vast collection at AlohaFunWear, an authentic Hawaiian outfitter of festive and free-spirited fashions. For example, if you dig Hop’s green and pink approach, check out the Flamingo Island Pink Hawaiian Shirt, the Hibiscus Rainforest Pink Hawaiian Shirt, or the Pacific Orchid Pink Hawiaian Shirt.

Rather than trying to directly copy Magnum’s style, Hopper found a different Aloha shirt that was unique to him… though the closest of Selleck’s screen-worn shirts appears to be this large-printed top from the first season finale, “Beauty Knows No Pain” (Episode 1.18).

Ashamed and more than a little drunk after Joyce stands him up, Hop discards his “date night” outfit in the corner of his cabin before putting his police uniform back on the next day. When his police uniform gets soaked and muddy after he’s attacked by Grigori at Hawkins lab, Hopper has no choice but to dress back in the tropical-printed shirt and jeans, prompting Joyce to ask… “uh, what are you wearing?”

The original pattern developed by Parris’ costume team is a funky “Memphis design”, a popular ’80s aesthetic, consisting of pastel pink and mint green brush strokes against a white ground and overlaid with abstract black “squiggle” lines.

Hopper’s new shirt is short-sleeved, per quintessential Aloha styling and also for added comfort during a hot Hawkins summer, though Parris noted to Fashionista that “David liked the idea of being able to roll the sleeves of the shirt up, just so it’s a little bit more ’80s feeling.”

Also in the Aloha tradition, his shirt has a traditional camp collar as well as a plain front with mixed beige plastic sew-through buttons and a large matching breast pocket with a rounded bottom for Hop to keep his Camels. Although Hop wears the shirt tucked in at first (following Magnum’s frequent faux pas), it has a straight-cut hem that allows him to effectively wear it untucked as intended with Aloha shirts.

Surrounded by Murray Bauman’s TV sets, Hopper argues with Joyce in “E Pluribus Unum” (Episode 3.06).

Worn only for his date-that-isn’t-a-date with Joyce in “The Mall Rats” (Episode 3.02), Hop layers a summer-weight sports coat over his Aloha shirt and jeans, a look that Selleck himself would sporadically wear later in Magnum P.I.‘s run. Hop’s single-breasted, two-button sport jacket is made of a slubbed beige-and-cream cloth—either linen, raw silk, or a blend of both—with a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, a single vent, and three buttons on the end fo each sleeve, smaller versions of the two flat off-white pearlesque buttons on the front of the coat.

This Joseph Abboud sports coat in a “tan tic” 58% wool and 42% linen hopsack blend (via Men’s Wearhouse) would be a suitable near-match for anyone inspired by Hop’s summer sport jacket, Aloha shirt, and jeans aesthetic.

Dressed for date night, Hopper lights a cigarette as he awaits Joyce’s arrival.

In addition to his loudly printed shirt, Hop goes “full Magnum” for the bottom half of his outfit, wearing a pair of light blue jeans with a khaki web belt and, initially, a pair of off-white boat shoes.

Camel in hand, Hopper tries to retain his dignity as he waits for Joyce.

Instead of TM’s signature Levi’s or naval dungarees, however, Hop wears a pair of classic Wrangler five-pocket jeans in a light blue denim wash that the brand currently markets as “bleach”. The jeans can be easily identified by the back, with the distinctive black tab (with yellow lettering) sewn above the left pocket, which also has the branded brown leather patch at the top. Each of the back pockets is decorated with the signature “W” double stitching and flat brass rivets in the upper corners.

Designed in 1947 by “Rodeo Ben” Lichenstein and mostly unchanged in the more than 70 years since then, the Wrangler 13MWZ Cowboy Cut® jeans are still widely available today, for sale via Wrangler or Amazon.

The butt of Hop’s S&W Model 66 sticks out from the top of his Wrangler jeans, identified by their signature brand marks on the back pockets and seams.

Also like Magnum, Hop wears a khaki cotton webbed belt with a gold slider buckle, similar to the belts authorized for Navy service uniforms and available commercially from government-contracted outfitters like Rothco.

Hop and Joyce prepare to pass the point of no return at the Hess farm in “The Flayed” (Episode 3.05).

Hop’s Magnum-inspired boat shoes are made of beige canvas, with brown laces and white outsoles and, of course, worn without socks.

An inebriated Hop kicks off his boat shoes at the outset of “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard” (Episode 3.03), concerned only with his recliner and his commandeered Chianti.

“But later he loses [the topsiders] and puts on his work boots that he likes and wears that through the rest of [the season],” Parris explained to Fashionista. Given the heavy action Hop faces from “The Case of the Missing Lifeguard” (Episode 3.03) onward, it’s perhaps fortuitous that he’s back in the heavy dark brown leather moc-toe work boots that he’s so comfortable wearing with his police uniform.

Based on the theories of other online investigators at The RPF, I suspected that he was wearing Crevo “Buck” boots (available via Crevo, Amazon, and DSW) during the first season, though at least one commenter noted that they were likely Red Wing 8″ boots. That said, the shift in costume designers from Kimberly Adams-Galligan and Malgosia Turzanska in the first season and Kim Wilcox in the second season to Amy Parris for the third season makes it reasonable to assume that his footwear would have shifted from season to season as well.

Indeed, his work boots look notably different for the third season, still well-worn dark brown leather with a moc-toe structure and derby-laced with four sets of brass eyelets and additional speed hooks up the shaft. Although he wears them in each episode, including with his police uniform, they’re most clearly seen in “The Battle of Starcourt Mall” (Episode 3.08) when he squishes the part of the Mind Flayer that had been embedded in the leg of his adopted daughter Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).

Despite the implications of his rough-and-ready work boots, Hopper isn’t much of a mechanic and is forced to abandon his Blazer when it explodes in the woods.

Most of the principal cast received new wristwatches for the third season, with Hop trading in his trusty Timex Atlantis 100 with its built-in wristband compass for an all-steel digital watch on a steel bracelet. Sticking with budget brands, he swapped in the Timex for a Casio—the same brand that Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) and Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) wear—with Water Resist (WR) functionality.

As far as specific models, Redditors have suggested the A158 and B612W, both reasonable contenders with their black dials with digital displays and blue and yellow accents, though I’m inclined to agree with the theory that it’s a Casio B612W given the shape of the case and the placement of items on the face.

Hop’s new Casio is best seen as he applies crooked mayor Larry Kline’s finger to a cigar cutter. Note that Kline wears a mixed-metal Rolex Submariner, indicating the difference in status between the two men… though, interestingly, Hop’s new style idol Thomas Magnum was already wearing his own Rolex by this time.

During “The Battle of Starcourt” (Episode 3.08), the climactic finale fight, Hop is forced to bid farewell to his Magnum-inspired garb when he “improvises” and disguises himself, Joyce, and Murray in shot-up Soviet uniforms as they infiltrate the base under Starcourt Mall.

Hopper and Murray surprisingly manage to bluff their way past the Soviet sentries in their less-than-convincing disguises in “The Battle of Starcourt Mall” (Episode 3.08).

The Gun

Chief Hopper’s duty weapon had been a Smith & Wesson Model 66 revolver during the first season, which he lost and seemingly replaced with a Colt Python for the second season. By the start of the third season in the summer of 1985, Hop has evidently returned to carrying a Model 66 in his “Bill Jordan”-style basket-weave holster made by Tex Shoemaker.

The Model 66 was introduced in the early 1970s as a stainless version of the popular Smith & Wesson Model 19 “Combat Magnum”, chambered in .357 Magnum and available in a range of barrel lengths from the “snub nose” 2.5″ to the hefty 6″, though Hopper carries a duty-length 4″-barreled Model 66. When not on duty, Hop packs the same revolver but sans holster, carrying it with its distinctive squared walnut grips sticking out of the back of his jeans.

Hopper employs a Harries technique, aiming his S&W Model 66 and flashlight directly ahead of him, in “The Flayed” (Episode 3.05).

Although Die Hard wouldn’t be released for another three years, “The Flayed” (Episode 3.05) features a confrontation no doubt scripted in tribute to John McClane’s exchange with Tony Vreski, the first terrorist that he encounters in the Nakatomi Building. Hop gets the drop on Grigori (Andrey Ivchenko), a dangerous Russian agent who counters his non-threatening denim Harrington jacket (of all things) by stalking the basement under the Hess farm with a suppressed Tokarev pistol.

Hopper: You don’t put that thing away, I’m gonna blow some daylight into that thick skull of yours.
Grigori: No. You won’t do that.
Hopper: Why’s that?
Grigori: Because you’re a policeman. Policemen have rules.
Hopper: Oh yeah? (cocks the hammer) You wanna test that theory?

Hopper proves that he indeed would have shot but makes the mistake of giving Grigori until the end of a three-count, providing the Russian with enough time to gain the upper hand as he tosses the weapon from Hop’s grip. Though both Joyce and Grigori get their hands on it during the fight scene that follows, the weapon is ostensibly abandoned under the Hess farm.

Hop lets Grigori know he means business. Unfortunately for Hop, so does Grigori.

In the penultimate episode, “The Bite” (Episode 3.07), Hopper spends the Hawkins Fourth of July festival fighting with Russian assassins, knocking out an agent named Vasilev and taking his own suppressed Tokarev TT-33. The TT pistol was developed in the early 1930s by Fedor Tokarev to replace the aging Nagant revolver as the Soviet service sidearm, taking design cues from John Browning’s successful designs for the FN Model 1903 and the 1911 pistol. Though it never fully replaced the Nagant revolver and would be eventually replaced by the more compact Makarov PM pistol, the TT-33 remains popular for its rugged reliability and its powerful proprietary 7.62x25mm cartridge.

Hop and Grigori are thus both armed with “silenced” TT pistols as they stalk each other through the festival’s fun house in a sequence evocative of Orson Welles’ 1947 noir, The Lady from Shanghai.

Hop arms himself with Vasily’s Tokarev pistol, fitted with a suppressor.

During the season finale, “The Battle of Starcourt” (Episode 3.08), Dustin assigns Hop with “all the fighting and dangerous hero shit” so the erstwhile police chief appropriately arms himself with a custom AKMSU obtained from one of the downed Soviet agents that Eleven had killed via the flying red LeBaron convertible (identified by IMFDB).

The AKMSU was a Pakistani prototype developed by the venerated Russian firearms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in the early 1980s as a compact carbine derived from his popular AKM rifle, chambered in the same 7.62x39mm round. Its full name translates to “Shortened Modernized Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle with Folding Stock”, a rather descriptive designation that neatly sums up the weapon. As only one of these carbines was ever produced, these weapons are likely standing in for the far more commonly fielded AKMS with an under-folded stock that had been introduced in 1959.

Hop adds insult to fatal injury by using one of the Russians’ own AKMSU carbines as he massacres them with a one-handed burst of automatic fire.

What to Imbibe

Poor Hop tries to look sophisticated before his date with Joyce in “The Mall Rats” (Episode 3.02), ordering Scotch for himself as well as “a bottle of red”, aided by an obsequious response from the waiter who can’t help but to pronounce Hop’s mispronunciation of “Chianti”.

Hop pours himself a mug full of Chianti when he gets home from his jilted date with Joyce.

Three episodes later, when the time comes for Hop to restore his energy in a 7-Eleven with Joyce and Alexei, he opts for a can of Jolt Cola. Considered the first carbonated energy drink upon its introduction in 1985, Jolt was marketed with the now-inadvisable slogan of “All the sugar, twice the caffeine!”

Rebranded as Jolt Energy, the drink its still available 35 years later and in more varieties than ever, including zero-carb energy drinks and even chewing gum.

Joyce, Hop, and Alexei recharge with Tab, Jolt, and New Coke, respectively. Note the series’ attention to detail by outfitting Alexei in a Russian-made Kirovskie Crab wristwatch.

Upon reaching Murray Bauman’s hideout and fueling himself (and Alexei) with Whoppers from the “nearest” Burger King, Hopper is forced to forego his preferred whiskey as all Murray has is vodka. Interestingly, he now has a handle of Stolichnaya rather than the fictional lookalike label “Slotichnaya” that was seen during the previous season, likely used as Murray had been providing alcohol for the underaged Jonathan and Nancy in that episode.

Given the Russian themes and enemies of the season, it’s particularly entertaining that our protagonists brace themselves with this definitively Russian vodka, which traces its origins to Moscow State Wine Warehouse No. 1 around 1901 although Stolichnaya vodka itself emerged sometime during the late 1930s or mid-1940s.

After decades of exclusively Russian sales, a 1972 barter agreement between the Soviet government and PepsiCo introduced Stolichnaya to the Western market in exchange for Pepsi-Cola’s importation to the U.S.S.R., in turn making Pepsi the first American consumer product to be produced, marketed, and sold in the Soviet Union. Thus, Roger Sterling’s habit of freely drinking Stoli during the 1960s-set series Mad Men is anachronistic, though it would have certainly been available for Murray Bauman to secure a few legally imported and purchased bottles by the mid-1980s.

Hop and Murray brace themselves with stiff shots of Stoli.

How to Get the Look

David Harbour as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things (Episode 3.04: “The Sauna Test”)

Jim Hopper illustrate that you don’t have to be a fit private detective living on a luxurious Hawaiian estate to feel at home in an Aloha shirt, sporting what the Internet celebrated as a tropical “dad look” in the all-but-exotic environs of small-town Indiana.

• Pastel pink and mint green “Memphis design”-printed Aloha shirt with camp collar, plain front, matching breast pocket, and rolled-up short sleeves
• Light blue denim Wrangler 13MWZ Cowboy Cut jeans
• Khaki cotton web belt with gold-toned slider buckle
• Dark brown leather moc-toe work boots
• Casio B612W steel-cased digital watch on steel bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series, one of the most successful Netflix original shows.

I also highly recommend reading this comprehensive piece written by my friend Aloha Spotter, which shines additional light not only on Hopper’s shirt but Aloha attire worn by other characters and extras, from Dustin’s “cassette tape” shirt and the 7-Eleven clerk’s boldy printed uniform shirt to Lucas’ tropical ball-cap and smocks and shirts worn around Starcourt Mall.

The Quote

I can do anything I want, I’m chief of police…

Clint Eastwood as Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan in Magnum Force (1973)

Vitals

Clint Eastwood as Harry Callahan, tough San Francisco Police Department inspector

San Francisco, August 1972

Film: Magnum Force
Release Date: December 25, 1973
Director: Ted Post
Costume Supervisor: Glenn Wright

Background

When the first Dirty Harry sequel was being conceptualized in the early 1970s, Clint Eastwood recalled a plot line introduced by Terrence Malick in an unused first draft for Dirty Harry that was fleshed out by John Milius to center around a group of young rogue officers in the San Francisco Police Department who formed a secret vigilante “death squad” to rid the city of its worst criminals. This neatly responded to criticism of Harry Callahan’s methods from the first film, illustrating that while Harry may be an antihero comfortable with skirting red tape to get the job done, he doesn’t extend down into the villainous domain that truly takes the law into their own hands, illustrated by the movie’s repeated motif that “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

Magnum Force launched the careers of several of the actors playing the young officers like Tim Matheson, David Soul, and Robert Urich, who would go on to star in ’70s fare such as Animal House, Starsky & Hutch, and Vega$, respectively.

The involvement of Milius meant plenty of attention paid to firearms, from the title itself and the lingering shots of Harry’s .44 Magnum over the opening credits to extended dialogue about the officers’ weapons and shooting practice and competitions beyond the call of duty. When Milius left to film Dillinger, Michael Cimino was hired to revise the script, adding more action sequences and—at Eastwood’s suggestion—a love interest for Harry named Sunny (Adele Yoshioka).

While Milius scoffed at additions like this, he was no doubt pleased by scenes that found Harry and the officers comparing the relative merits of their service revolvers, later followed by an annual shooting competition where Harry gets to show off his abilities not just with his own legendary Smith & Wesson but also with the .357 Magnum carried by the rogue group’s ostensible leader, Officer John Davis (David Soul)… though this turns out to be merely a method for Harry to get his hands on slugs from the revolver to conduct ballistics testing that would potentially link Davis and his fellow officers to the murder of a drug kingpin.

What’d He Wear?

Per request from BAMF Style reader Ryan, let’s take a look at Harry’s dressed-down duds for target shooting. While practicing at the range and in competition, Harry wears a comfortable dark navy windbreaker made from water-resistant cotton or a cotton/polyester blend. Similar to a classic “Harrington jacket”, the waist-length jacket has a standing two-button collar, a zip front, slanted side pockets (albeit without flaps), and raglan sleeves.

Harry fires a cylinder through Davis’ Colt Python revolver.

However, Harry’s jacket has more in common with the Baracuta G4 golf jacket than the G9 “Harrington” as evident by the non-blouson waist hem and the cuffs having an adjustable button closure rather than elasticized ribbing. The jacket is decidedly not a Baracuta as it lacks the venerated British brand’s signature Fraser tartan plaid lining, instead lined in a navy material that matches the lightweight shell, though you’d be in good hands with a Baracuta G4 if you’re looking to crib Harry’s look.

Harry likely chooses this as his designated shooting jacket in Magnum Force as there two outward-facing pleats on each side of the back, shirred at the horizontal yoke that reaches from armpit to armpit, giving Harry a greater range of easy movement as he takes aim.

The back yoke on Harry’s jacket is an additional differentation from the Baracuta G4, which lacks the double side pleats and has a lower-placed “umbrella”-style storm flap and also has adjustable straps on the sides to tighten the fit around the waist as needed.

When Harry arrives at the shooting range for an evening of target practice among the SFPD “death squad”, he wears a pine green short-sleeved polo shirt made from a lightweight synthetic knit fabric as was trendy during the mid-’70s. The shirt has a set-in breast pocket with a single-button flap (best seen in behind-the-scenes photography when Eastwood has his jacket off) and a long front placket with four imitation pearl plastic buttons.

Later in Magnum Force, his suspicions aroused by the young officers, he dresses more casually for the shooting competition in a red crew-neck T-shirt with elbow-length raglan sleeves. On the left breast is a small design consisting of two bright orange footprints, matching a similar logo—embroidered in navy blue—on Officer Davis’ sky blue polo shirt.

The logo suggests that Harry’s and Davis’ shirts were made by Hang Ten USA, “the original surf and California lifestyle brand” that has used this double footprint logo since it was founded in 1960. While the brand continues to offer surf clothing today, you can also scour eBay for vintage finds similar to the short-sleeved top Harry wears for his competition.

Harry’s Hang Ten shirt can be identified by the double-footprint logo on his left breast.

Harry removes his jacket during the competition to reveal his tanned leather shoulder rig with a holster suspending his signature Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver under his left arm for a right-handed draw. As in the earlier installment, Dirty Harry, Harry carries a 6.5″-barreled model in what appears to be the same tanned leather Bucheimer-Clark holster with a sewn yoke, tension screw, and narrow belt strap.

Harry stands with his pal Frank DiGiorgio (John Mitchum) during the police target shooting competition.

Harry’s trousers are beige flat front chinos with a long rise and a straight leg that flatters Eastwood’s tall, lean physique as he strides across the field during the competition. The trousers have on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, plain-hemmed bottoms, and tall belt loops for his thick brown leather belt, detailed through the center in light brown and fastened through a large, gold-toned single-prong buckle.

Harry’s brown napped leather sneakers coordinate with his shoe leather and the informality of the outfit. They are lined in a white leather that can be seen around the ankle collar as a marked contrast to his slightly darker chocolate brown cotton lisle socks.

The Gun

Thanks in large part to John Milius’ early influence, Magnum Force ensured that Harry’s iconic Smith & Wesson Model 29 would continue to ride its momentum from Clint Eastwood’s introduction two years earlier as “a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world,” to become one of the most famous movie firearms of all time. (The title alone, Magnum Force, suggests the power not only of Harry’s Smith & Wesson but also the .357 Magnum revolvers carried by each member of the SFPD death squad.)

Harry’s blued steel Model 29 with its rosewood grips has the same 6.5″ barrel as he carried in Dirty Harry, bringing the weapon’s overall length to one foot. When shooting with the “death squad” officers at the firing range, he explains that his ammunition is “a light Special… this size gun, it gives you better control and less recoil than a .357 Magnum with wadcutters.” The line was reportedly a holdover from John Milius’ contributions, though the firearms-enthusiast director was no longer attached to the production at the time and wasn’t able to clarify that, although the Model 29 can fire the lighter .44 Special round, Harry’s line instead implied that he used a lighter .44 Magnum load that he specially prepared himself.

Production photo of Clint Eastwood taking aim with Harry’s notorious Smith & Wesson Model 29 in Magnum Force.

In 1979, after the first three films of the Dirty Harry franchise were released, Smith & Wesson shortened the Model 29’s 6.5″ barrel length to 6″, and it was this 6″-barreled Model 29 that Clint Eastwood carried in his Bianchi X2000 holster for the final two installments, Sudden Impact (1983) and The Dead Pool (1988).

As always, you can learn more about this and other firearms featured in Magnum Force by checking out IMFDB.

How to Get the Look

Clint Eastwood as Inspector “Dirty Harry” Callahan in Magnum Force (1973). Note that the revolver in his hands appears to be one of the troopers’ Colts and not his signature Smith & Wesson.

Harry Callahan comfortably layers in a roomy windbreaker and chinos for days and nights practicing with his famous .44 Magnum.

• Navy water-resistant cotton or cotton-blend waist-length zip-front windbreaker jacket with standing two-button collar, slanted side pockets, raglan sleeves with button cuffs, and horizontal yoke with double side-pleat sets
• Red cotton crew-neck raglan-sleeve T-shirt
• Beige chino cotton flat front trousers with tall belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown (with light brown center) leather belt with large gold-toned single-prong belt buckle
• Brown suede 4-eyelet sneakers
• Chocolate brown cotton lisle socks
• Light brown leather shoulder holster (RHD) for a Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out Magnum Force or pick up the entire five-film Dirty Harry collection.

Frank Sinatra and Tom Selleck during production of “Laura” (Episode 7.18 of Magnum, P.I.)

Vitals

Frank Sinatra as Michael Doheny, experienced and tough retired New York police sergeant

Hawaii, Spring 1987

Series: Magnum, P.I.
Episode: “Laura” (Episode 7.18)
Air Date: February 25, 1987
Director: Alan J. Levi
Creator: Donald P. Bellisario & Glen Larson
Costume Supervisors: James Gilmore & Charlene Tuch

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Twenty years after he played Tony Rome, Frank Sinatra returned to the world of private eyes in warm locales with his final major acting role, a special appearance in “Laura”, a seventh season episode of Magnum, P.I. The Voice was already over 70 when the episode was produced, but he’s still as charismatic, wiry, and tough as his reputation had preceded him for the better part of a century. On this summertime #SinatraSaturday, let’s take a deeper look at Frank’s final screen role.

“Laura” begins with a brief yuletide prologue New York City, where NYPD detective sergeant Michael Doheny’s retirement dinner is juxtaposed with an ominous scene of an 8-year-old girl playing in the hallway of her apartment building and encountering a sinister pair of red Adidas sneakers. Three months later, we’re back in the series’ familiar environs of sunny Hawaii, where reliable Rick (Larry Manetti) is trying to talk Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) into taking a missing persons job that should net him $10,000 after only two days of work. Magnum suspects it’s too good to be true, and—of course—it is, when their first tip on the trail for the missing Kenneth Geiger is soon waylaid by the gun-wielding ex-Sergeant Doheny, whose Panama hat and Aloha shirt can’t disguise Ol’ Blue Eyes’ distinctive voice as he offers Magnum some “constructive criticism”:

So far, you run a lousy investigation!

Sitting in a jail cell later that day, Doheny suggests to Magnum that they may have gotten “off to a bad start” and hopes to rectify things with the investigator he’s already antagonized. Once Doheny proves his earnestness and expertise and with renewed sense of mutual respect between them—not to mention Rick’s urging—Magnum agrees to help Doheny out in his search for the two vicious killers who had raped, beaten, and murdered the girl from the opening sequence before escaping to Hawaii… who is revealed to be Doheny’s own granddaughter, Laura.

What’d He Wear?

Tom Selleck may be famous for Thomas Magnum’s colorful Hawaiian shirts, but he wears a subdued stone-colored snap-front shirt for the majority of this episode, apropos its darker themes, while special guest star Sinatra steals the sartorial show in his festive Aloha garb.

As one would expect of FS, he makes his first appearance in Hawaii wearing a hat. The rest of his outfit may not differentiate him from the typical ’80s tourist in Hawaii, but Doheny’s classic Panama hat crafted from densely woven toquilla palm straw establishes him as a gent with old-school values. The fedora-styled hat has a narrow black band.

Even on Magnum, P.I., there’s no stopping the Chairman of the Board from sporting a natty hat, adapted to the show’s Hawaiian setting.

Doheny clearly doesn’t buy his tropical shirts at the same place as Magnum, wearing a very unique long-sleeved style that differs from Magnum’s typical Aloha shirts as far as cut, collar, pockets, and almost every other detail.

These shirts have four silver-toned metal buttons up the plain (French placket) front, which squares away at the chest where the shirt opening cuts away to a dramatically wide take on the “Lido collar”. Often associated with resort wear or the leisure class, the permanently open-necked Lido collar was popularized during the interwar years by Hollywood royalty like Gary Cooper, giving rise to the synonymous names “Hollywood collar” and “Cooper collar”. Doheny’s shirts lack that elegant tapered roll associated with the traditional Lido collar and may be best accurately described as a hybrid between a Lido collar and a classic camp (revere) collar.

While we’re playing “Guess that Hawaiian island on Doheny’s shirt?”, Kenneth Geiger is getting away!

Doheny’s first shirt has an indigo ground, covered with an all-over print of white-sketched tropical scenes, occasionally accompanied with Anglicized versions of Hawaiian islands and locations such as Kahoolawe, Kauai, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, and Diamondhead Honolulu.

I’ve tried in vain to track down who would have made this distinctive shirt during the 1970s and ’80s timeframe that it would have been produced with no promising leads aside from this royal blue polyester/cotton vintage shirt from Royal Creations (via Etsy) that borrows the concept and color scheme but differs in the detail of the pattern and the layout of the shirt itself.

Cut straight around the hem and meant to be worn untucked, Doheny’s shirts have a narrow split vent on each side. A matching patch pocket on each side of the chest closes with a single button through a pointed flap.

With both shirts, Doheny wears cream-colored flat front slacks that provide a tropically appropriate balance to his vibrant shirts. These trousers have side pockets, jetted back pockets, and a straight leg down to the plain-hemmed bottoms. He wears a black leather belt that coordinates with his black leather loafers with their squared plain toe and high vamps. His black socks are likely the same “Gold Toe” black socks as we see folded in the top of his suitcase.

Kenneth Geiger turns out to be a dead end.

That night, Doheny changes into another purple-toned long-sleeved Aloha shirt, similarly styled as his previous shirt but with a lilac ground and a more familiar all-over floral print of purple hibiscus. This shirt also seems to swap out the earlier shirt’s metal buttons for more traditionally Hawaiian brown wood buttons.

As the latest houseguest at Robin’s Nest, Doheny is shown to his new quarters by the estate’s proud majordomo Higgins (John Hillerman).

Doheny wears no visible jewelry or accessories, save for the gold wristwatch he was gifted upon his retirement from the NYPD at the start of the episode, secured to his left wrist via flat, shining gold bracelet with a jewelry clasp. The watch has a gold rectangular case and a minimalist gold rectangular dial with a raised bump at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock positions.

According to Tom Selleck during a September 2016 segment of Live! with Kelly, Sinatra’s only condition for appearing on Magnum, P.I. was: “Just make sure I get to beat somebody up!” Steven Keats looks like he wouldn’t mind if the Chairman had made a more genteel request.

The Gun

“The gun gets ’em to tell the truth, then they haven’t got time enough to think up a lie,” explains Doheny of his gun-happy techniques. The weapon in question appears to be an early Colt Detective Special, likely Doheny’s backup piece from his NYPD service. The rounded “half-moon” front sight and rounded butt suggests that this may be a “first issue” Detective Special, produced between 1927 and 1946 before the front sight would be ramped and serrated. The Detective Special would undergo far more extensive cosmetic changes in the early ’70s but it remained at its core a reliable and easily concealed revolver packing six rounds of .38 Special ammunition.

Sinatra seems to spend a substantial amount of his screen time giving Steven Keats hell.

Despite his propensity for pulling his gat perhaps more often than a situation requires, Honolulu PD Lieutenant Page (Joe Santos) still arranges for his fellow officer Doheny to receive a permit to legally carry his Detective Special concealed while in Hawaii. (I’m not familiar with the Hawaii firearms ordinances in 1987, but it seems that Doheny would not be so easily extended that courtesy today as a non-resident.

How to Get the Look

Frank Sinatra as Michael Doheny in Magnum, P.I., Episode 7.18: “Laura”

More than three decades after he wore his “loose, flowing sports shirt” as Maggio in From Here to Eternity, Ol’ Blue Eyes proved he was as comfortable as ever in a tropical-printed aloha shirt… just the item anyone would want to have on hand when guest-starring on Magnum, P.I.!

• Purple all-over tropical-printed long-sleeved Aloha shirt with wide “Lido collar”, four-button extended-tab plain front, two matching chest pockets (with button-down pointed flaps), button cuffs, and straight hem with side vents
• Cream-colored flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather belt
• Black leather squared plain-toe high-vamp loafers
• Black “Gold Toe” socks
• Gold rectangular-cased wristwatch with gold rectangular dial on flat gold jewelry-clasp bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series. Of course, Magnum P.I. is fantastic and fun in its own right, but “Laura” provides a fitting swan song for Sinatra in a role that showcases not only his characteristic toughness but also substantial depth… considerably more dignified and on brand than Orson Welles’ somewhat more ignominious cinematic farewell in The Transformers: The Movie the year prior.

In fact, “Laura” received Magnum, P.I.‘s highest ratings in more than two years, ostensibly saving the show and extending it into another season. While there were plans for Sinatra to return during Magnum, P.I.‘s eighth and final season, the shortened run of episodes due to Tom Selleck’s scheduling conflicts meant there wouldn’t be an opportunity for Ol’ Blue Eyes to make a smooth return to the series and “Laura” remains his final on-screen acting role.

Tom Selleck, Larry Manetti, and Frank Sinatra on set of “Laura” (Magnum, P.I., Episode 7.18). It was reportedly though Manetti that FS first signaled his interest in taking what would be his final acting role.

The Quote

Well, like I always say… anybody can make a mistake.

Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified (Episode 3.03: “Harlan Roulette”)

Vitals

Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, old-fashioned Deputy U.S. Marshal

Harlan County, Kentucky, Fall 2011

Series: Justified
Episode: “Harlan Roulette” (Episode 3.03)
Air Date: January 31, 2012
Director: Jon Avnet
Creator: Graham Yost
Costume Designer:  Patia Prouty

Background

More than two years have passed since I last waxed poetic about Justified, Graham Yost’s continuation of Elmore Leonard’s stories and novels centered around Raylan Givens, a modern-day Deputy U.S. Marshal who brings old west sensibilities and style to his duties. After being criticized by his superiors for his all-too-quick—if justified—trigger finger, Raylan is reassigned to the Eastern District of Kentucky, which includes the coal-mining Harlan County where was raised and acquainted with arch-criminal Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) as well as many other colorful characters who shoot in and out of the series over its six seasons.

As we get closer to the weekend, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite moments from the series as well as Raylan’s characteristically dressed-down off-duty duds.

The third season episode “Harlan Roulette” opens innocuously enough with Raylan and his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea) discussing potential homes—and their respective commodes (“sounded better than crapper”)—as they explore their own reconciliation. Raylan’s buzzing BlackBerry calls him away to a roadblock related to his ongoing investigation of the dimwitted petty crook and oxy addict Wade Messer (James LeGros, who was the first to portray Raylan Givens in the 1997 made-for-TV adaptation Pronto.) Raylan’s pursuit of Messer leads him to a pawnshop owned by the crooked Glen Fogle (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and eventually back to the messy Messer homestead, where he elicits from Fogle that the local oxy chain leads up to smarmy Dixie Mafia chief Wynn Duffy (Jere Burns) before a standoff between Fogle and his own flunky Wally Becket (Eric Ladin) results in both men dead… and a still-standing Raylan fuming over his lost lead.

In a rage, Raylan storms into Duffy’s trailer—initially ignoring the even smarmier Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough) beaming at him from the corner—and knocks Duffy to the floor with two hits, ejecting a live round from his Glock and tossing it onto Duffy’s chest with the badass threat:

Next one’s comin’ faster.

What’d He Wear?

“That guy down there with the hat… his name’s Raylan Givens, he’s a marshal,” Wade Messer tells his friend as they pull up to the roadblock. As that wide-brimmed hat is arguably his sartorial signature, let’s start with Raylan’s crowning accessory and work our way head to toe through his extremely accessible layered look.

One of Elmore Leonard’s conditions in allowing Justified to get made would be outfitting Raylan with the proper hat as the author cites this wardrobe failure from the making of Pronto when “they gave poor James LeGros a George Strait hat that looked like it was ready to take off.” While Timothy Olyphant’s screen-worn cowboy hat wasn’t exactly Leonard’s preferred Stetson Open Road—previously favored by presidents like Ike and LBJ—the handsome hat that made its way onto the show becomes an integral part of the Raylan GIvens image.

Olyphant had first worked with Baron Hats when they crafted his character’s headgear on the HBO proto-Western series Deadwood, so the L.A. milliner was a natural choice when he needed to dress his dome for Justified. Baron Hats proudly elaborates on their work for Justified on their website, where they continue to market “The RG”, available in the same sahara tan 200XXX beaver felt as worn on the show with a 4.25″ cattleman’s crown, 3.25″ brim, and that slim tooled leather band with its steel ranger-style single-prong buckle.

Even off duty, Raylan wears his signature hat.

As this wasn’t supposed to be a workday for Raylan, he’s dressed not in his usual sport jacket and tie but instead a button-up shirt layered over a coordinating henley. The long-sleeved henley shirt is black cotton with a three-button top, worn under a shirt patterned in a subdued black-and-taupe mini-grid check.

Identified by the Facebook page @EverythingJustified as a Converse by John Varvatos garment, this shirt has a short point collar, a front placket with contrasting double edge-stitching and all seven mixed brown plastic buttons worn undone, and long sleeves with the button cuffs also unbuttoned and rolled up his forearms.

Raylan wisely keeps one hand on his holster.

Whether on duty or off, Raylan invariably wears Levi’s jeans, evidently wearing the classic Levi’s 501 “Original Fit” button-fly jeans here with all the familiar elements like the two horse back patch, arcuate pocket stitching, and small red tab sewn against in the inside of his back right pocket.

Raylan wears a dark brown tooled leather belt with a steel single-prong buckle. On the right side of his belt for a strong-handed draw, he wears a tan full-grain leather holster for his Glock service pistol, which had been custom made by Alfonso Gun Leather of Hollywood (confirmed by the post-wrap ScreenBid auction) to resemble the Bianchi Model 59 Special Agent® that he’d worn in the first season.

Kentucky State Police trooper Tom Bergen (Peter Murnik) accuses Raylan of letting Messer get away, but Raylan corrects him: “One of your boys let him get away, I got the driver… besides, these boots aren’t made for runnin’.”

“And yet, chasin’ fugitives is a marshal’s primary function,” counters Tom. “Ironic, isn’t it?” comments Raylan.

Raylan surprisingly admits to putting form over function in his choice of footwear, sporting cowboy boots that support his “cowboy cop” image while potentially hindering his job performance. After costume designer Patia Prouty joined the series for the second season onward, she would eventually Raylan’s already well-worn Justin anteater boots with the familiar cigar-colored Lucchese ostrich leg boots for the third season onward.

Raylan steps near a dying Glen Fogle.

Raylan’s watch, after a few shots in the pilot episode clearly depicting a Rolex Submariner, has been identified as a brushed steel TAG Heuer Series 6000 Chronometer with a white dial worn for most of the series. The bracelet does seem to alternate, with brown leather straps in some episodes or black leather in others, and “Harlan Roulette” actually features both; when Raylan answers his BlackBerry in the opening scenes, his watch strap appears to be dark brown but it’s black by the time he’s reached the roadblock and is rubbing his eyes for the first (of many!) times during that episode.

Does Raylan’s watch strap alternate between brown and black leather, or is this an illusion due to the lighting?

For an additional cowboy-influenced touch, Raylan regularly wears a sterling silver statement ring with a horseshoe and braided sides that taper toward the back of the band.

The Gun

“Howdy. That’s a big gun,” greets Robert Quarles as Raylan storms into Wynn Duffy’s trailer, Glock-first. It’s the same Glock 17 service pistol that Raylan had carried from the first season, chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum despite his telling Judge Reardon in “The Hammer” (Episode 1.10) that it was a .45-caliber model.

As a badass TV lawman in the tradition of the old west, Raylan gets plenty of screen time with his Glock, though “Harlan Roulette” features arguably one of the most memorable moments when he racks the slide to eject a round, catches it in mid-air, and throws it onto the floored Wynn Duffy, warning him: “next one’s comin’ faster.”

Raylan ejects a round from his Glock.

Developed in the early 1980s, Glock pistols heralded a revolution in the world of firearms, kicking off a series of mostly identical polymer-framed, striker-fired semi-automatic pistols with high-capacity magazines a reputation for reliability that led to widespread adoption by countless law enforcement agencies and military forces around the globe. The company had been founded by Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer whose experience extended to curtain rods rather than firearms by the time he answered the Austrian Armed Forces’ call for a new, modernized service sidearm to replace its aging stocks of World War II-era Walther P38 pistols.

Glock pulled together experts from across Europe to develop a pistol that met all 17 criteria ordained by the Austrian Ministry of Defence and its final product, the 17th patent procured by the company (hence the designation “Glock 17”), was deemed the winner with production beginning in 1982 following its swift adoption by the Austrian military.

When the public learned of Glock’s innovative lightweight polymer frames, fear-mongering rumors spread of the “plastic gun” that would be able to bypass airport security, propagated by a 1986 article in The Washington Post and again as a significant but ultimately erroneous plot point in Die Hard 2. (While the frames are polymer, most internal parts are still metal… not to mention the ammunition!)

One notable aspect of Glock pistols are that models of the same caliber have interchangeable magazines, regardless of the frame size. For instance, Raylan could use the same magazines in his full-size Glock 17 pistol as in the other 9x19mm models, including the compact Glock 19, subcompact Glock 26, and even the selective-fire Glock 18. As of August 2020, Glock’s lineup includes nearly three dozen pistols of varying sizes across eight different caliber options.

What to Listen to

In addition to its bluegrass-meets-hip hop theme song “Long Hard Times to Come” by Gangstagrass, Justified excels in scoring its episodes with little-known but deliciously Southern-fried tracks that add flavor without distraction. For example, Raylan’s visit to Glen Fogle’s pawnshop features “If I Change My Mind” from Steven Yell’s 2012 album The Good Life and Hard Times of Rayford Mulestedder Greatest Hits, Vol. 2.

I doubt I would have ever heard this catchy country song outside of Justified, but it’s exactly the sort of music you’d expect to hear from the show and that album name alone justifies its inclusion.

How to Get the Look

Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified (Episode 3.03: “Harlan Roulette”)

While the cowboy touches of cattleman’s hat and ostrich leg boots may not be your particular style, the rest of Raylan Givens’ off-duty garb in “Harlan Roulette” provides a comfortable, casual, and easy template to follow when layering over the seasonal transition from summer into fall.

• Black cotton long-sleeve 3-button henley shirt
• Black-and-taupe mini-grid check cotton long-sleeve shirt with short point collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Blue denim Levi’s 501 Original Fit button-fly jeans
• Dark brown tooled leather belt with a dulled steel single-prong buckle
• Tan full grain leather thumb-break belt holster, for full-size Glock pistol
• Lucchese “cigar”-colored brown ostrich leg Western-style boots with decorative stitched calf leather shafts
• Baron Hats “The RG” sahara tan 200XXX beaver felt cattleman’s hat with a thin tooled leather band
• TAG Heuer Series 6000 Chronometer wristwatch with brushed steel case, white dial, and black leather strap
• Sterling silver horseshoe ring with braided side detail
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series. I also recommend that fans of the show who are on Facebook follow the great page @EverythingJustified which features many great photos, videos, and moments from the series as well as shots of screen-worn gear.

The Quote

I think the question you should ask is whether I care if you ride out of here cuffed in the back of my car or get carried out of here in a coroner’s bag. The answer is: me and dead owls… don’t give a hoot.

Michael Douglas as Nick Conklin in Black Rain (1988)

Vitals

Michael Douglas as Nick Conklin, loose cannon NYPD detective

Osaka, Japan, Winter 1988

Film: Black Rain
Release Date: September 22, 1989
Director: Ridley Scott
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy birthday, Michael Douglas! To commemorate the 76th birthday of this acclaimed actor and producer, I’m addressing a request I received from BAMF Style reader Ryan to take a look at Douglas’ wardrobe in Black Rain as loose cannon cop Nick Conklin.

Already distrusted by his own department, Nick finds himself facing more heat than ever when a yakuza killer he collared in New York escapes after Nick escorts him back to Japan. Determined to bring the gangster to justice and prove his own honesty, Nick and his more diplomatic partner Charlie Vincent (Andy Garcia) remain in Osaka as unarmed “observers” under the supervision of patient investigator Masahiro Matsumoto (Ken Takakura).

What’d He Wear?

Nick Conklin is the kind of badass with a leather jacket for every occasion: a motorcycle jacket for spending Sundays on his Harley racing biker gangs along the New York waterfront and an oversized coat for riding along with Japanese law enforcement.

Constructed of black leather, this latter jacket is somewhat oversized, evident by the tops of each sleeve falling off of Michael Douglas’ shoulders. Styled and sized more like a car coat than a more fitted leather jacket, this casual coat has a convertible shawl collar that he wears flat in the front but turned up in the back, though it has front snaps should he choose to wear it closed over his neck. The fly front closes up a brass zipper that begins a few inches above the thigh-length hem, where there is an additional snap for secure closure.

The sleeves appear to be in the “saddle shoulder” style, an extended variant of the raglan sleeve with wider yokes that extend across the shoulders in the front and back, where the yoke pieces are stitched together at a short center back seam that extends a few inches from the nape of the neck to just above Douglas’ shoulder blades.

Nick’s jacket has three outer pockets; the large, jetted-opening breast pocket has a zipper that closes from right to left, and there are large set-in pockets on each hip below the waistband with slanted welt openings. The back is detailed with a vertical seam down the center and a horizontal seam around the waist, meeting at the intersection with a square reinforced patch with “X” top stitching. The distressed screen-worn jacket can be seen at YourProps.

Nick’s leather jacket was built for action.

This leather jacket makes its debut appearance layered over a burgundy work shirt and light heathered gray cotton crew-neck T-shirt. The long-sleeved button-up work shirt has a short point collar, front placket, and two box-pleated chest pockets that each close with a single-button flap. The shirt is detailed with matching burgundy concave plastic buttons.

Nick is sent back stateside, but he sneaks off of his Northwest flight to meet crime boss (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and engage in a final climactic confrontation with the murderer Koji Sato (Yūsaku Matsuda). “You know me, I don’t go quietly, Mats,” he reminds Matsumoto.

For these scenes, Nick wears a gray marled knit wool turtleneck, the same as he had worn under his motorcycle jacket during the opening scene. Worn over a navy blue undershirt, the sweater has a wide-ribbed body that is further textured with an interlocking large-scaled trellis pattern over the torso.

Aside from the epilogue that calls for a dark suit, Nick seems to exclusively wear black denim Levi’s jeans, with and without a belt. (With the burgundy shirt, he wears a black leather belt with single-prong buckle; with the turtleneck, no belt.)

Nick’s brawl with Sato muddies his outfit, but the distinctive brown leather patch on the belt line of his black Levi’s can still be distinguished.

Nick wears black leather Chelsea boots with black elastic side gussets. These boots take quite a beating over the course of Black Rain.

After tossing Nick an empty shotgun, Sugai’s men scatter the shells he needs at the ground next to his Chelsea boots.

To increase his cool factor, Nick frequently wears a pair of black-framed aviator-style sunglasses with dark brown lenses, similar to the style Michael Douglas would again wear as disturbed detective Nick Curran in Basic Instinct.

These days, the product placement gods may have found an opportunity to appoint this macho cop with an oversized chronograph befitting his larger-than-life nature. Instead, Nick Conklin’s timepiece is a study in subtlety, a plain stainless steel wristwatch with a round white dial on an expanding bracelet.

Scotch, cigarettes, and solitaire for the long plane ride to Japan.

The Gun

Having had both of his Colt revolvers impounded and even disarmed of his partner Charlie’s Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, Nick is at the mercy of Sugai’s men to arm him for his final confrontation with Sato. He is tossed an empty pump-action shotgun—identified by IMFDB users as a Stevens Model 67—followed by a half-dozen 12-gauge shells. The weapon has been modified for combat with a pistol grip in lieu of a removed stock and the barrel sawed down to the same length as the magazine tube.

Nick heads into battle with his pistol-gripped pump shotgun.

J. Stevens & Co. had been established by Joshua Stevens in Massachusetts during the Civil War, manufacturing rifles, shotguns, and target pistols for a half-century until it was acquired first by New England Westinghouse and then Savage Arms in the spring of 1920. For the next forty years, Savage would continue to manufacture firearms at the company’s original Chicopee Falls factory until finally shuttering operations. Savage continued to offer firearms under the Stevens brand, including the budget-oriented Model 67 pump-action shotgun that would be produced until 1989.

How to Get the Look

Michael Douglas and director Ridley Scott on location filming Black Rain (1988)

Michael Douglas’ go-to costume collaborator, Ellen Mirojnick, designed his distinctive look for Black Rain, anchored around leather jackets, boots, and dark jeans like classic rebels such as Marlon Brando in The Wild One, differentiating Detective Nick Conklin from the despised “suits” in his orbit.

• Black leather saddle-shoulder car coat with convertible snap-closed shawl collar, zip-up fly front, zip-closed horizontal breast pocket, slanted-opening side pockets, and ventless back
• Burgundy cotton long-sleeved work shirt with short point collar, front placket, and two flapped box-pleat pockets
• Light heathered gray cotton crew-neck short-sleeve T-shirt
• Gray marled ribbed-knit wool turtleneck sweater
• Black denim Levi’s jeans
• Black leather Chelsea boots
• Black-framed aviator sunglasses
• Steel wristwatch with round white dial on expanding bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, which was originally meant to be a sequel to Beverly Hills Cop.

The Quote

If you pull it, you better use it.

Walter Matthau as Zachary Garber in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Vitals

Walter Matthau as Zachary Garber, New York City Transit Authority police lieutenant

New York City, December 1973

Film: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Release Date: October 2, 1974
Director: Joseph Sargent
Costume Designer: Anna Hill Johnstone

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Walter Matthau, perhaps best known to today’s audiences for his roles opposite Jack Lemmon such as The Odd Couple and the Grumpy Old Men movies, though the New York-born actor’s rich filmography expands a range of genres from westerns and war movies to comedies and crime capers. One of my favorites falls into the latter category, the action thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Released one day after Matthau’s 54th birthday, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three stars the actor as a scrappy New York City Transit Authority police lieutenant whose bad day gets considerably worse once  a well-armed team led by the calculating ex-mercenary Bernard Ryder, aka “Mr. Blue”, (Robert Shaw) hijacks a subway. No longer capable of sustaining “a normal woik week,” Lieutenant Garber enlists the help of his pal, fellow lieutenant Rico Patrone (Jerry Stiller).

Patrone: What’s up, Z?
Garber: You won’t believe it.
Patrone: You know me, I’ll believe anything.
Garber: A train has been hijacked.
Patrone: I don’t believe it.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of my favorite “New York movies”, alongside Sweet Smell of Success, Annie Hall, and Manhattan, bolstered by the Lower East Side-born Matthau’s performance as the believably beleaguered transit cop trying to maintain the lives—and sanity—of all involved. At one tense moment, Garber can’t help but to advise the chief thief:

Listen, fella, I hope you take this in the right spirit but after this is over, you should seek out psychiatric help.

What’d He Wear?

Costume designer Anna Hill Johnstone had two decades of experience dressing some of most iconic characters on both sides of the law with credits including On the Waterfront (1954), The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), and Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Between dressing Al Pacino in silk suits and filed jackets, Johnstone found the time to put together a delightfully chaotic and surprisingly accessible ensemble for Walter Matthau’s haggard transit lieutenant Zachary Garber, which has been the subject of several requests from readers including Blake, Guido, and H.F.

The New York City Transit Authority may be a bustling hub of computers and communications systems, but its staff could hardly be mistaken for NASA engineers in their array of stout and slackened ties, rumpled knitwear, and shirts in every hue. There are some exceptions who prefer more traditional business dress—most notably Lieutenant Patrone and the visiting delegation from Japan—but Garber’s autumnal palette fits with the overall NYCTA office “uniform”. That said, Garber shows a keener eye for dressing, opting for a tasteful and timeless tweed jacket and at least attempting to keep his tie knotted to the neck.

Lieutenant Garber takes a considerably different approach to dressing than the Japanese businessmen he’s tasked with touring around.

Garber’s woolen tweed sports coat is woven in a tan and cream herringbone, so named for the broken twill weave’s resemblance to a fish skeleton. The weave on Garber’s jacket isn’t the traditional herringbone; instead, each “column” of herringbone-style chevrons alternates with a column of the same threads, birdseye-woven.

Despite tweed’s origins in the British Isles, Garber wears an appropriately American unstructured cut with soft, natural shoulders, similar to the sack coats popularized by U.S. outfitters like Brooks Brothers from the turn of the century onward.

The single-breasted jacket has notch lapels that roll over the top of three mixed plastic sew-through buttons for what is known as a 3/2 roll with two matching buttons at the end of each cuff. The lapels, the welt over the breast pocket, and the hip pocket flaps are detailed with sporty “swelled” edges. Though the mid-1970s was a time of excess for most menswear, Garber’s jacket is cut and styled in a manner that transcends its decade, with traditional detailing, moderate widths of lapels and pocket flaps, and only a somewhat longer-than-usual single rear vent betraying its temporal provenance.

“It’s a testament to the power of Matthau as an actor that his garishly appalling shirt and tie do not distract from his performance,” tweeted director and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie during a rewatch of the movie in January 2020. Indeed, while Garber’s tweed sport jacket would have a deserved place in any gentleman’s closet, the same cannot be said for that colorful shirt and tie. That’s not to say that the look is altogether tasteless—in fact, I’d argue that Matthau wears both quite well—but neither are necessarily menswear essentials and instead are reflective of Garber’s charmingly colorful personality.

The shirt is a small-scaled tartan plaid in red, yellow, and teal blue, likely off-the-rack with the decade’s favorite collar, long-pointed with substantial tie space to accommodate a decent-sized knot. The shirt has a breast pocket and white plastic buttons that contrast against the colorful shirting on the front placket and closing each cuff.

Garber’s particular police duties tend to require more aspirin than ammunition.

A shirt like that considerably limits one’s tie choices to solid colors, and choosing one that coordinates without clashing. Bright and unorthodox though it may be, Garber’s golden tie may be the best way to go, calling out the yellow check from the shirt while contrasting enough to not get lost in the busy shirt.

Garber wears plain brown flat front trousers with side pockets, jetted back pockets (without buttons), and plain-hemmed bottoms. He also wears a wide dark brown leather belt through the trousers’ loops, closing through a squared, gold-toned single-prong buckle.

Note the black label stitched on the back of Garber’s yellow tie.

Brown shoes are a safe bet with an outfit like this, and Garber appears to dress for the office in a pair of chestnut brown calf cap-toe oxford semi-brogues, worn with black socks. In an interesting continuity error, his brown shoes appear to have a more prominent moc-toe by the time he’s down in the subway, a switch likely made to avoid Matthau needing to wear office shoes in this dirtier setting.

The swap is forgivable; he still wears brown lace-ups, and the subway scene is so darkly lit that it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it catch… especially considering that this thriller was made considerably before audiences had high-resolution home video where they could pause and notice that Walter Matthau has now wearing different shoes.

“Don’t worry miss, there’ll be an ambulance along in no time,” Garber reassures the long-haired (but decidedly male) undercover officer who lays injured on the subway tracks.

Garber wears a plain gold-toned wristwatch with a round, light-colored dial on a dark brown leather strap that closes through a gold single-prong buckle.

When the events of the day lure Garber from his office, he puts on his khaki gabardine raincoat. December in New York City may call for something heavier for most people, but Garber’s classic bal-type raincoat is a versatile, weather-ready top layer that can be comfortably worn over his already-heavy tweed jacket. The raglan-sleeved coat has slanted side pockets with single-button closure and small semi-tabs that button on each cuff for an adjusted fit. The front closes up a five-button covered fly.

Lieutenants Garber and Patrone (the latter in full uniform) follow up on a list of disgruntled subway employees.

Hat and gloves are also necessities for winter in the Big Apple, both supplementing the coat for extra warmth and protection when Garber heads outside. His lined three-point gloves are caramel brown leather.

While a fedora or even a more structured trilby worn with his raincoat may have affected an image reminiscent of a film noir anti-hero, Garber opts instead for a genteel tweed trilby. (Not unlike Carl Reiner’s topper in Ocean’s Thirteen, which would be gently derided by Ellen Barkin’s character as “the Doctor Doolittle hat.”) Garber’s soft, unstructured trilby is constructed from twin threads not unlike his sport jacket, though a darker olive brown is mixed with cream, woven in a nailhead pattern with a self-band.

Apropos his detective style, Lieutenant Garber’s hat and coat evokes Sherlock Holmes rather than Philip Marlowe.

The Gun

One gets the sense that Lieutenant Garber’s day-to-day work doesn’t call for much use from his service handgun, though the unprecedented circumstances that lead him down into the subway tunnels call for an appearance from Smith & Wesson Model 10 snub-nosed revolver.

.38 in hand, Garber confronts the mysterious “Mr. Blue”.

Smith & Wesson introduced what would become the go-to police cartridge of the 20th century, the .38 Special, in tandem with its “Military & Police” revolver just before the dawn of the 20th century. By the 1970s, .38 Special six-shooters from Smith & Wesson and Colt dominated the American law enforcement market, with the latest evolution of the six-shot Military & Police revolver now designated the Smith & Wesson Model 10 after the manufacturer had started numbering its models in the ’50s.

Indeed, it was Colt who had foreseen the need for an easily concealable .38 Special nearly a half-century earlier when the Colt Detective Special was marketed in 1927. Smith & Wesson responded a generation later with the smaller-framed Model 36 “Chiefs Special”, though the increased concealment came at the cost with the cylinder reduced to five rather than six shots. For Smith & Wesson fans who wanted the full compliment of six .38 Special rounds, the Model 10 was also available with a “snub-nosed” two-inch barrel as opposed to the 4″-barreled variant that was frequently issued to uniformed officers across the 20th century. (In fact, I believe the 2″-barreled Smith & Wesson .38 was first offered around 1915, though it wouldn’t be as effectively marketed as a “belly gun” as the later Detective Special.)

What’d He Wear?

Walter Matthau as Zachary Garber in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

In his excellent review for Cinephelia & Beyond, Tim Pelan describes Zachary Garber as “a clothing colorblind Colombo.” This thoughtful shorthand describes Garber’s approaches to both dressing and detecting, though I believe Matthau’s character earns some points for colorful originality (and effective coordination) anchored by his tasteful tweed sports coat.

• Tan and cream herringbone-and-birdseye woolen tweed single-breasted 3/2-roll sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and long single vent
• Red, yellow, and teal mini-plaid cotton shirt with long point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and squared button cuffs
• Yellow tie
• Brown flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Dark brown belt with squared gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Brown calf cap-toe oxford semi-brogues
• Black socks
• Khaki gabardine bal-type raincoat with covered 5-button fly front, slanted side pockets, single vent, and raglan sleeves (with semi-tab cuffs)
• Caramel brown lined leather three-point gloves
• Olive-brown and cream nailhead tweed unstructured trilby
• Gold-toned wristwatch with light dial on dark brown leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Gesundheit.

The post Walter Matthau in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three appeared first on BAMF Style.

James Shigeta as Detective Joe Kojaku in The Crimson Kimono (1959)

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James Shigeta as Joe Kojaku, LAPD homicide detective

Los Angeles, Summer 1959

Film: The Crimson Kimono
Release Date: October 1959
Director: Samuel Fuller
Costume Supervisor: Bernice Pontrelli

Background

Are you among the many movie buffs who observe #Noirvember, the month-long celebration of shadowy cinema often set in worlds populated by gumshoes, gunsels, and femmes fatale. Defining film noir is often as murky as the outlines of the shadows in some of its seminal works, though even applying the infamous Potter Stewart rule yields at least dozens of crime dramas produced within and beyond the United States during the 1940s and ’50s.

Earlier this year, the Criterion Channel again showcased a collection of noir from Columbia Pictures, the erstwhile Poverty Row studio that churned out some of the most quintessential high-talent noir in including Gilda (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), and In a Lonely Place (1950) as well as an array of criminally underseen B-movies that balanced their low budgets with high quality. One of my favorites from the collection was The Crimson Kimono (1959), directed by former crime reporter and World War II veteran Samuel Fuller.

Modern audiences may recognize James Shigeta as the patient and ultimately doomed Nakatomi executive in Die Hard. Here, a considerably younger Shigeta plays the charismatic Joe Kojaku, an apple-munching, piano-playing Japanese-American homicide detective called in with his partner Charlie Bancroft (Glenn Corbett) to investigate the murder of burlesque dancer Sugar Torch (Gloria Pall) on L.A.’s” Main Street” one brightly lit, jazz-filled night in August 1959.

Detectives Kojaku and Bancroft patrol the L.A. streets by night.

Shigeta slips easily into the role of a noir detective: easygoing but driven, sensitive and streetwise with plenty of unassuming toughness. As Joe, he shares an easy professional chemistry with Sergeant Bancroft dating back to their days sharing a foxhole during the Korean War. Closer than “two dabs of paint” according to the eccentric Mac (Anna Lee), the duo is now partnered in the LAPD’s Detective Bureau and share a swanky suite, recreationally fighting for crowds during the annual Nisei Week kendo match. However, the attentions of their latest charge—a romantic young artist named Christine Downes (Victoria Shaw) who painted Sugar Torch wearing that titular crimson kimono—threatens to fissure the friendship to a disastrous degree once a jealous Charlie becomes aware of Joe and Chris’ mutual attraction.

What’d He Wear?

James Shigeta cycles between three stylish outfits as Joe Kojaku: a dark checked sport jacket and two suits. (Hans Gruber would no doubt be disappointed to learn that none of his garments have been tailored by the fictional “John Phillips, London.”

The Bouclé-Checked Sports Coat

Joe’s sport jacket is detailed with a dark slubbed check threaded against a woolen twill ground. This period-popular technique resembles bouclé, a French-derived term for “ringlet” and defined in a sartorial context by the estimable Hardy Amies in ABC of Men’s Fashion as “a curled effect on the surface of a cloth, produced by drawing out small loops in the threads.”

While a degree of slubbing was particularly popular in 1950s menswear, this jacket takes that textural effect to the next level with the all-over mini-grid check composed of this raised thread for an imperfect finish that Amies describes as “a pleasing ‘rough’ appearance to the texture.”

The single-breasted jacket has the narrow lapels that would become increasingly fashionably through the middle of the following decade, rolling to a three-button front. The jacket has a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, a single vent, and two vestigial buttons spaced slightly apart at the cuffs of each sleeve.

Partners Kojaku and Bancroft in their dark jackets and clipped dark ties.

Joe tends to wear the same type of shirts, light-colored (but non-white) cotton with a spread button-down collar, plain “French placket”, breast pocket, and button-fastened barrel cuffs. With this outfit, he wears a tie striped in two low-contrast shades in a thin, balanced “uphill” direction, held in place with a tie bar.

His dark, high-rise trousers have reverse-facing pleats, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms. He wears a dark leather belt with a rectangular single-prong buckle.

Christine (Victoria Shaw) shares a moment with Joe.

The Flannel Suit

Joe also has at least two flannel suits that he wears throughout The Crimson Kimono, despite the fact that this heavier cloth would no doubt be warm for an August stretch in Los Angeles. The suits are styled with single-breasted, three-button jackets that have wide shoulders, three-button cuffs and single vents. In addition to straight, jetted hip pockets, these jackets have a welted breast pocket where Joe wears a folded white cotton pocket square.

The suits’ matching trousers have double reverse-facing pleats “dropped” a few inches below the waistband, where Joe wears his usual dark leather belt with its rectangular single-prong buckle.

Joe wears his usual shirts with their wide-spread button-down collars with several different ties as this suit makes two different appearances. First, he wears a dark knitted straight tie with a flat bottom; for the film’s finale, he wears this suit with a striped tie similar to the one worn with his sports coat but with a more contrasting color scheme.

The Knitwear-Layered Dark Suit

Joe wears a similar suit made from darker flannel for another scene, again stretching climate credibility by layering the jacket over a unique low-fastening cardigan that closes at the waist with three buttons.

This waistcoat is knitted from a medium-colored wool with a shadowed dark stripe following the edges (from about a half-inch in) down the V-shaped opening to the ribbed, straight-cut waist hem. The two set-in pockets—one on each hip—are accented to match the front edges with a dark stripe shadowed just below it by a slightly lighter one.

George Yoshinaga (Bob Okazaki) meets with Joe, who layers a low-slung cardigan under his suit jacket.

Joe wears the same shoes with all of his outfits, a pair of dark leather split-toe derby shoes with dark socks.

On his right pinky, Shigeta wears a gold stone with a dark rectangular stone that appears to be the same one clearly seen on the album artwork for his 1961 release Scene One / We Speak the Same Language. He wears Joe’s watch on his left wrist.

The Gun

What’s a noir detective without his .38 snub? Like his partner Sergeant Bancroft, Detective Kojaku carries and frequently draws his LAPD-issued Colt Detective Special revolver, carried in a cross-draw holster on the left side of his belt.

Joe draws what appears to be a Detective Special, identifiable by its two-inch barrel and the exposed ejector rod characteristic to early 20th century Colt revolvers.

Colt introduced the Detective Special in 1927 as one of the first manufactured “belly guns”, designed to pack a powerful but easily concealed punch with six rounds of .38 Special ammunition packed in a cylinder behind the standard two-inch barrel. While the concept was already more than a half-century old, dating back to the powerful British Bulldog revolvers that appeared in the late 19th century, the Detective Special standardized a modern approach to the concept that would be mimicked by every major revolver manufacturer in the years to follow.

What to Imbibe

The eccentric artist Mac (Anna Lee) fixes Joe up with enough bourbon in his tea that he can’t stop coughing. While Mac’s concoction may just be a slapdash gag, she’s on the right track as hot water and whiskey is one of the oldest alcoholic concoctions, renowned for its soothing properties whether nursing a sore throat or spending a cozy night in. The hot toddy is arguably the most comforting and ultimately rewarding combination of hot water and spirits, characterized by the addition of some form of sugar.

While not a true hot toddy, the bourbon-laced tea served to our hero Joe Kojaku had me strolling to my liquor cabinet and tea kettle to brew an evening warmer.

In his painstakingly researched volume Imbibe!, David Wondrich retells the anecdote of a Scottish doctor who stated the best drink for health was a “toddy, mun. The spirit must have something to act on, and therefore acts on the sugar and does nae injury to the stomach.”

While the science of this long-gone but undoubtedly popular physician’s statement may be questionable, the hot toddy has been a mainstay of American drinking since the pre-revolutionary era with Wondrich tracing its debut in the printed form to a Boston newspaper in 1750. “The old days were hard, but the people who lived them found ways of making them tolerable,” writes Wondrich, who explores the base spirits of rum, whiskey (for frontiersmen), brandy (for the upper class), applejack (for New Jerseyans), mixed with hot water and a spoonful of sugar that indeed help the medicine go down.

By the mid-19th century, father of American mixology Jerry Thomas had included the hot toddy among his offerings in his inaugural 1862 bartender’s guide where he specifies a teaspoon of sugar, a half-wineglass of boiling water, and a full glass of spirits added in that order, stirred, and served with a spoon. By that time, the “Whisky Skin” had also been pioneered, differentiated only by the addition of a lemon peel.

In the generations since, the mixology behind the toddy and the skin have become intertwined, with some suggesting that lemon is integral to a well-made hot toddy while yet others elect to use herbal tea rather than plain hot water. How to Cocktail by America’s Test Kitchen details the best example of these modernized recipes with five ounces of boiling water, an ounce and a half of brandy (or whiskey), a half-ounce of lemon juice, and a tablespoon of honey representing the sugared element, stirred together in a warmed mug and garnished with a lemon slice and—should one be so inclined—a cinnamon stick.

Whether you like yours with brandy or whisky, water or tea, sugar or honey, I leave you with Wondrich’s endorsement: “Under the proper circumstances, a Hot Toddy—particularly one constructed upon a foundation of good Highland malt whisky—is one of the clearest signs I know that there is a providential plan to the universe.”

How to Get the Look

James Shigeta as Detective Joe Kojaku in The Crimson Kimono (1959)

James Shigeta’s affable detective at the center of The Crimson Kimono has a sensible eye of fashion, his most notable outfit layering a low-slung cardigan with a dark flannel suit, button-down shirt, and knitted tie for a fall-friendly getup perhaps a bit unseasonably warm for a southern California summer but perfect for a mid-autumn day at the office.

• Dark flannel suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Double reverse-pleated high-rise trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Off-white cotton shirt with wide-spread button-down collar, plain front, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Dark knitted tie with flat bottom
• Medium-colored knit sleeveless cardigan with piped edges, set-in pockets, and low V-shaped opening with 3-button closure
• Dark leather split-toe derby shoes
• Dark socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You can’t feel for me unless you are me!

The post James Shigeta in The Crimson Kimono appeared first on BAMF Style.

Nicolas Cage as Rick Santoro in Snake Eyes (1998)

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Nicolas Cage as Rick Santoro, flashy homicide detective and compulsive gambler

Atlantic City, September 1998

Film: Snake Eyes
Release Date: August 7, 1998
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Odette Gadoury

Background

Folks, today is Nicolas Cage’s birthday so we’re going to celebrate in style by taking a look at the film that won Cage the esteemed Blockbuster Entertainment Award in the category of Favorite Actor (Suspense).

Has anyone been asking to read about the threads Nic Cage wore in the 1998 box office bomb Snake Eyes? No. Is that going to stop me after the absolutely insane year that we’ve just had? Also no.

I truly went most of my life without thinking about the movie Snake Eyes until I went down a Letterboxd rabbit hole last summer and came across Aubrey Farnsworth’s entertainingly absurd reviews including many, many from The Cage Canon. Her review of Snake Eyes in September immediately brought back to mind being nine years old in the summer of 1998, seeing trailers for the latest Nicolas Cage joint, and thinking that his shiny brown suit and yellow aloha shirt was just about the coolest outfit anyone could wear. (It isn’t, but I was nine. Plus, digging through old family photo albums revealed that four-year-old me had actually sported a similar combination of a brown suit and wild-patterned shirt… to one of my sister’s dance recitals, no less!)

When 31-year-old me finally got around to watching the movie just a few days after Aubrey’s review, I was pleasantly surprised by a fun and entertaining—if occasionally uneven—thriller as our heroic Mr. Cage races against time and narrative inconsistencies to solve a high-profile murder, untangle a dangerous conspiracy involving a greedily corrupt Atlantic City casino mogul, and prove to us all that adulterous, crooked, and potentially coked-out cops can be people too.

What’d He Wear?

“Jesus, I get you a front row seat and you show up lookin’ like Don Ho,” comments Rick’s straitlaced pal, U.S. Navy Commander Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), who looks considerably sharper in his blue service dress uniform while serving in the official capacity of leading a security detail for U.S. Secretary of Defense Charles Kirkland (Joel Fabiani), whose assassination during the televised Tyler vs. Ruiz boxing match kicks the plot into gear. (CDR Kevin Dunne isn’t to be confused with actor Kevin Dunn, who appears in Snake Eyes as the fight’s media emcee, Lou Logan.)

Do we ever find out why Rick Santoro is such a loud dresser or such a loud person in general? Do we even need to know? “It’s fight night!” Rick excitedly dismisses any question he can’t answer, be it about his attire or attitude.

Information about Cage’s screen-worn kit comes from several prop and auction sites, specifically The Golden Closet, Heritage Auctions, and YourProps, all of which have confirmed that the rust brown-colored suit was constructed from a polyester/cotton blend woven with narrow horizontal ribs and slubbed for a silky sharkskin effect of gold fleck detailing.

Nicolas Cage’s screen-worn costume from Snake Eyes. (Source: YourProps)

Rick’s boxy suit jacket exaggerates the full fit that was fashionable throughout the ’90s, cut with wide, straight padded shoulders and short notch lapels that break high to allow for four rust-toned plastic sew-through buttons.

The ventless suit jacket also has a welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, and three-button cuffs. Even though it’s hardly glimpsed on screen, the lining provides yet another opportunity for Rick to exhibit his sartorial flamboyance, this time via the bronze gold satin-finished lining described by YourProps.

Aside from their more functional purpose to provide more coverage on a sport jacket, four-button jackets are hardly conventional and immediately date the jacket to the ’90s, evoking images of NBA drafts from that era. (In these basketball players’ defense, the average height in the NBA tends to be closer to 7′ than 6′, and the additional buttons provide visual balance for the players’ striking heights… though, on the other hand, the pastels and patterns often used for these infamous suits hardly have any business on a tie, let alone a suit!)

A four-button suit jacket may be more flattering on the six-foot Nicolas Cage than, say, Danny DeVito (with all due respect to Mr. DeVito), but it’s an element here that coordinates with the excessively full cut and flashy suiting to be more of a fashion statement… after all, he is wearing it with a yellow Hawaiian shirt.

Lou (Kevin Dunne) and Ricky.

It’s undeniably Rick’s aloha shirt that invites Commander Dunne’s “Don Ho” comparison, wearing a tropical-printed yellow cotton shirt with his suit. While most sartorial purists would advise against pairing a Hawaiian shirt with a suit, Rick wisely keeps the conservative worsted business suits in his closet and chooses a flashy “fashion suit” for this bold ensemble.

The short-sleeved shirt coordinates with the suit via a reversed colorway, making the golden yellow more prominent as the ground color while the dual shades of brown are incorporated into the detailing via the all-over tropical floral print. Rick buttons the brown wooden (or faux-wood) two-hole buttons up from the straight, untucked hem to the top of the chest, leaving only the top loop undone and flattening the camp collar over the lapels of the jacket. The collar comes to a point in the center of the back, extending just enough to cover the full width of the lapel.

Rick’s gold necklace neatly follows the neckline of his shirt, dropping a flat gold triangular pendant that hangs just behind the buttoning point of his shirt. Rick seems to manifest gold, from his clothes and jewelry to his bright yellow Corvette, the same color as the shirt he wore at the start of this tumultuous night.

“See if you can find me another shirt if I’m goin’ on TV, I don’t wanna look like this,” Rick requests of Lou after the fit hits the shan. “Gotta be, you know, classy like you, Lou.”

Whether it was Lou Logan or someone else, Rick does eventually receive a plain white cotton shirt and skinny black tie to swap out his now-bloodied Hawaiian shirt. The white shirt has a point collar, a plain “French placket” front, breast pocket, and button cuffs.

Remember tobacco product placement in ’90s movies, where Nic Cage could just casually offer Carla Gugino a Marlboro?

Wearing his dressier shirt tucked in shows off more of Rick’s suit trousers around the waist, from the exotic leather belt to the voluminous pleats that contribute to the full fit.

I can’t confirm if Rick’s trousers have two or three sets of pleats; double pleats would be the most conventional, but this was the ’90s when even James Bond was wearing triple-pleated slacks. Especially given Rick’s excessive number of jacket buttons, I think we can safely say all bets are off when using sartorial tradition to hypothesize. When Rick hits the deck and draws his Glock during the assassination, I believe we see three closely spaced pleats.

The trousers also have a zip fly with a hook-and-button closure, side pockets, two jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms with a full break.

Rick shows a unique sense of belt-and-shoe coordination, not by attempting to match the colors but instead selecting exotic leathers for each. True, when Rick got dressed at the start of the day (or night, most likely, given his personality), his untucked covered his shirt hem and thus nullified his choice of belt. Rick’s scaled russet-colored belt suggests alligator leather, detailed with a gold-toned single-prong buckle with two metal keepers and a pointed tip all in a matching gold finish.

Apropos the movie’s title, Rick appears to be wearing snakeskin loafers that shine an iridescent green. These slip-on shoes have a split apron toe, ornamented with a ridged gold-finished bar across each instep. Almost unrelenting in his quest to make every aspect of his outfit unique and memorable, Rick lets up with his choice of almost pleasantly uninteresting black socks, though these go generally unseen due to the trousers’ full break.

Snakeskin in Snake Eyes.

Given that he even carries a gold-finished cell phone, it’s no surprise that Detective Goldfinger Santoro bedecks himself in more gold jewelry than most of the gangsters would on The Sopranos.

On the third finger of his right hand, Rick wears a large gold class ring, evidently a memento from his time at Neptune High School as his classmate Commander Dunne wears the same ring and Rick flashes it when introducing himself to Lincoln Tyler (Sam Shaw) as a “fellow Sea Devil, Class of ’80,” though the Jostens-made ring featured at The Golden Closet is inscribed with a date of 1979. The blue stone was likely chosen to reflect the nautical themes of the school’s name and mascot.

The proud Neptune High grad takes a drag of his Marlboro while reviewing the “bitchin’ technology” security footage in the hopes of finding Julia Costello (Carla Gugino).

Rick wears a gold dive watch, shining yellow gold from the link bracelet to the champagne dial. Based on the watch’s profile and other examples I’ve seen from the era, I suspect Rick wears a TAG Heuer sports watch, though I can’t recall the exact model.

Rick balances both hands with a ring and wrist jewelry on each, also wearing a shiny gold wedding ring on the third finger of his left hand and a gold ID bracelet (engraved “Ricky” according to The Golden Closet) secured to his right wrist on a large Cuban-style curb-link chain.

Rick attempts to work his chaotic charm.

It’s revealed that this certainly wasn’t the only tropical-themed printed shirt in Rick Santoro’s closet as the epilogue depicts him going fishing with his son while wearing an oversized white-and-blue shark-printed shirt over a tonally coordinated slate-blue T-shirt.

A relatively subdued look for Rick Santoro as he takes his son fishing.

A note for fans of Vanishing Point: Gilda Texter is credited as Snake Eyes‘ key costumer in Atlantic City. Nearly a decade before Ms. Texter transitioned her career to Hollywood’s costume industry, she ironically starred as the nude motorcycle rider in Vanishing Point… a role that required a very simple costume.

The Gun

Though he’s off duty for fight night, Rick still carries his Glock 19 duty sidearm, drawing it in the aftermath of Secretary Kirkland’s assassination.

Ricky hits the floor and draws his Glock.

Glock had revolutionized the firearm community when it introduced the innovative Glock 17 in 1982. It took some time for the world to catch on that these polymer-framed pistols weren’t “plastic guns” that could easily bypass airport security (and we can all thank Die Hard 2 for propagating that rumor), but the Austrian manufacturer endured and introduced its second generation in 1988 that included both the longer-barreled Glock 17L and the “compact” Glock 19, which would become one of the most popular Glocks in both the civilian and police markets.

The Glock philosophy centers around its interchangeable parts, particularly the concept that any Glock pistol chambered for one caliber can use many of the the same parts and magazines. Thus, when the Glock 19 was introduced as a same-caliber follow-up to the Glock 17 in 9x19mm Parabellum, this meant many components (not related to the scaled-down frame) could be seamlessly swapped between the two weapons. The concept went a step further in 1995 with the introduction of the subcompact Glock 26, establishing the general Glock template of firearm “families” in standard, compact, and subcompact sizes for each caliber.

Though considered a “compact” sidearm, the Glock 19 dimensionally resembles a full-sized service pistol more than a smaller handgun like the Walther PPK. The overall length is 6.85 inches with a barrel just over 4 inches long, compared to the full-size Glock 17’s 7.32-inch length and 4.5-inch barrel. The Glock 19 weighs in at only 21 ounces unloaded, an ounce lighter than the Glock 17 and just over an ounce heavier than the subcompact Glock 26.

How to Get the Look

Nicolas Cage as Rick Santoro in Snake Eyes (1998)

Nothing’s too flashy for Rick Santoro, who dresses in a chaotic but coordinated fashion for fight night in his slubbed silky brown suit and plenty of gold jewelry to draw the eye… in case the tropical-printed shirt or snakeskin loafers wouldn’t be enough!

• Rust brown (and gold-slubbed) horizontal-ribbed polyester/cotton suit:
  • Single-breasted four-button jacket with short notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Triple reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, hook-and-button closure, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Golden yellow (with two-toned brown tropical floral print) cotton short-sleeved aloha shirt with camp collar (with loop), plain “French placket” front, and straight waist hem
• Russet brown scaled alligator leather belt with gold-finished single-prong buckle, keepers, and pointed tip
• Dark green snakeskin split-toe loafers
• Black socks
• Gold necklace with gold triangular pendant
• Gold ID bracelet on Cuban-style curb-link chain
• Gold class ring with blue stone
• Gold wedding ring
• Gold dive watch with champagne dial, gold bezel, and gold link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. It may not be among the best of De Palma’s or Cage’s respective filmographies, but it’s an interesting concept, excitingly executed, and the opening Steadicam sequence is truly fun to watch… as is an almost psychotically hopped-up Nic Cage at his bombastic best through it all.

The Quote

It isn’t lying! You just tell them what you did right, and you leave out the rest!

The post Nicolas Cage in Snake Eyes appeared first on BAMF Style.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi in Red Heat (1988)

Vitals

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ivan Danko, disciplined Moscow police captain

Chicago, Summer 1987

Film: Red Heat
Release Date: June 17, 1988
Director: Walter Hill
Costume Designer: Dan Moore
Tailor: Tommy Velasco

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Thanks to a recommendation from Pete Brooker of the excellent From Tailors with Love podcast, I beat the summer heat by revisiting Red Heat, the buddy cop actioner that paired Arnold Schwarzenegger as a tough Russian police captain with Jim Belushi as the stereotypical cigarettes-and-coffee American detective, working together to capture the dangerous Georgian gangster Viktor “Rosta” Rostavili (Ed O’Ross).

The end of the Cold War clearly in sight with the release of Red Heat, which was the first U.S. production permitted to film in Moscow’s famous Red Square but—perhaps more important—dared American audiences to accept a Soviet hero who neither defected nor showed any indication of questioning his homeland by the movie’s end. When Belushi’s supervisor, played by Peter Boyle, asks that his secretary “be respectful to our guest,” it could be interpreted as asking the audience to be open-minded toward a Russian protagonist… of course, that wasn’t asking as much with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role as his earlier starring roles in movies like The Terminator, Commando, and Predator had already established Arnie as the ’80s action hero that America never had any qualms cheering on.

There was never any question that Schwarzenegger would play Ivan Danko, the tough and taciturn captain in the Moscow Municipal Militsiya, as Walter Hill had developed the story so that he could collaborate with the Austrian-born superstar. Though the Danko role allowed Schwarzenegger play against type to an extent, cutting down on the larger-than-life action and wisecracks, the unstoppable determination that typified so many of his characters is evident from the beginning from Danko’s naked brawl in the Siberian snow to the game of chicken played with coach buses on the back streets of the Windy City. (Okay, so maybe some of the larger-than-life action is still present.)

When Danko follows the escaped Rosta to Chicago, he’s paired with Chicago PD sergeant Art Ridzik (Belushi), described by his own supervisor as “a good cop… and a total expert at fucking up.” Given Ridzik’s reputation and his preference for “funbag patrol” duties, Danko initially resents the partnership that illustrates what his superior had described as “the poison of the west,” but the two men forge a bond that culminates in the exchange of timepieces.

What’d He Wear?

Pete Brooker graciously shared his notes with me from his interview with costume designer Dan Moore, which posted on From Tailors with Love just in time to celebrate our patriotic holiday on Sunday, July 4. I highly recommend listening to this episode, featuring insights not just from Red Heat but also from across Moore’s prolific career working on everything from Walter Hill westerns like The Long Riders, Geronimo, and Wild Bill to comedies from 48 Hrs. to Brewster’s Millions, graciously recognizing the costume crews and tailors with whom he had collaborated.

“If there’s a continuum between fashion and story, I’m on the story side of all this,” Dan explained to Pete regarding his approach to costume design. “All my decisions were made by what’s best for the story.” This approach jibes with how he explains Schwarzenegger was always interested and open to learning about the reasoning behind his costumes.

Following the bathhouse-set opening scene, Captain Danko spends the first act dressed in his immaculate Moscow Militia uniform, which Donnelley’s secretary Audrey mocks as resembling “a glorified postman… or something out of World War II.”

Not the first thing you expect to see in a Chicago police station.

As he releases himself from the hospital, Danko pulls on a teal suit, white shirt, and tie with the same meticulous detail with which he proudly wore his uniform.

Ridzik: What, did you retire your uniform?
Danko: I now work undercover.
Ridzik: Undercover? You look like Gumby.

Ridzik’s reference may be lost on some decades later, but Gumby was a green-colored claymation character that was a mainstay of children’s television in the ’60s, revived during the ’80s when Eddie Murphy parodied him as a foul-mouthed diva on Saturday Night Live.

Costume designer Dan Moore sourced the lightweight wool gabardine twill suiting from B. Black and Sons, one of Los Angeles’ oldest and most respected fabric stores, choosing the unique teal-green fabric as part of his greater effort to “make things feel a little bit off-track to make him be Russian.”

Danko’s uniquely colored suit shines under the precinct’s florescent lights.

Moore explained to Pete for From Tailors with Love that the script called initially for “an ill-fitting suit, but we managed to make it a pretty well-fitting suit,” thanks to master tailor Tommy Velasco, who ran the Universal Studios tailor shop with his two brothers and was up to the task of tailoring Schwarzenegger’s uniquely muscular physique of massive chest and shoulders that taper down to his relatively smaller waist.

The fit also recalls the martial look of his police uniform, in which the disciplined Danko would have been most comfortable, with the shoulders sloped to fit Arnie’s frame. He fastens all three black sew-through buttons of his full-fitting single-breasted jacket, which has unique “cran Necker” or “Parisian” lapels, a cross between notch and peak lapels. The jacket has a single vent in the back, and the breast pockets and hip pockets are all sportier patch pockets.

Production photo of Jim Belushi and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Worn with a plain gray tie, Danko’s white dress shirts were actually repurposed J.C. Penney work-shirts made from 100% cotton twill, purchased in the largest size available with the sleeves recut to fit Schwarzenegger’s famously long arms. “It wasn’t anything special, but they made it special,” Moore recalled. The final products featured a narrow point collar, breast pocket, and a plain “French placket” front and rounded cuffs that closed with white plastic four-hole buttons.

In one of the few moments where the tight-lipped Danko actually opens up to Ridzik, he has taken off his jacket—one layer of metaphorical “armor”—that visually indicates his openness to some emotional exposure to his new de facto partner.

To arm himself for “undercover” work, Danko dons a shoulder rig consisting of a dark brown leather holster under his left armpit, hooked by a simple cognac-brown napped leather strap that loops around his right shoulder to hold the whole rig in place.

Continuing the offbeat look of Danko’s dress, he wears a unique variation of the traditional white undershirt. The weave of the ivory-tinted shirt creates a unique texture of mini-ribbed stripes, with a solid crew-neck and very short “muscle” sleeves with ribbed bands.

Danko keeps all three buttons of his jacket fastened when he’s wearing it, so we only see the details of the trousers when he’s semi-dressed during the cheap hotel gunfight. The matching teal gabardine trousers have double reverse pleats, consistent with the prevailing trends of the ’80s. He holds them up with a wide black edge-stitche leather belt that closes through a silver-toned single-prong buckle.

The trousers have side pockets, besom back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms with a full break that often bunch over his shoes.

Captain Danko and a gun-toting prostitute (Gretchen Palmer) take refuge in a hallway during his hotel gunfight with Rosta.

Danko’s black leather oxfords are actually Red Wing work shoes. Founded in 1905 in Red Wing, Minnesota, Red Wing has established a reliable reputation as a purveyor of durable work boots made from all-American sources (sorry, Captain Danko!) In addition to its celebrated rugged footwear, Red Wing does offer a limited selection of dress shoes like the Postman Oxford, developed to blend an air of formality with the brand’s trademark construction that has made this derby shoe (not an oxford, in fact) a “a favorite of mail carriers for decades” since its initial government authorization in the ’50s.

According to Pete’s notes, the Red Wings were wisely chosen as Danko’s footwear to provide “a subliminal clunky Soviet feel.”

“It is custom in Soviet Union to exchange article as souvenir of friendship,” Danko explains to Ridzik as he unstraps his watch in the finale. “I decide to give you this.”

“That’s really nice! Here, I want you to have my watch,” Ridzik responds as he unhooks his own Rolex Day-Date, explaining it as a “thousand-dollar marvel of Western technology.” Given the value discrepancy, he’s dismayed to be receiving in return “… a twenty-dollar East German watch.”

The From Tailors with Love show notes from last month explore this tradition, validated as truth by David Henderson-Stewart, managing director of the Petrodvorets Watch Factory in St. Petersburg, which has produced Raketa watches since 1961. Moore checked with Red Heat property master Rick Young, who confirmed that Schwarzenegger wore his own watch in the movie… considerably more expensive than the cheap Soviet timepiece that Ridzik dismisses.

With a closeup like this, surely someone can identify Arnie’s Swiss (not East German!) watch…

Indeed, one of the many close-ups of Danko’s watch reveals the words “SWISS MADE” flanking the 6:00 hour marker on the bottom of the dial. The watch itself is a stainless steel-cased chronograph with two pushers to control the sub-registers at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions, strapped to a textured black leather strap that closes with a silver single-prong buckle. The busy salmon-pink dial has prominently numeric-labeled hour markers with two additional numbered rings around it. Presumably, the watch also has an alarm that’s set exclusively to remind Danko when it’s time to feed his parakeet.

The Guns

“Soviet Podbyrin, 9.2 millimeter, is world’s most powerful handgun,” Danko proudly claims of his service sidearm, a unique semi-automatic pistol that was created specifically for Red Heat by armorer Tim LaFrance.

According to IMFDB, LaFrance followed Walter Hill’s direction for a “P38 but bigger and meaner… a P38 on steroids,” and created three screen-ready examples of what has been known as the Hollywood Eagle by modifying the frame of a massive Desert Eagle Mk I with an elongated barrel and the grips of a Walther P38.

The tools of Ivan Danko’s trade: the 9.2-millimeter “Podbyrin” pistol and his “East German”-made watch with an alarm to remind him when it’s time to feed the parakeet.

Of the two weapons used to form the basis of the Hollywood Eagle, the Walther P38 was considerably older, developed in Germany during the years leading up to World War II as a replacement for the recognizable and reliable—but aging—Luger pistol, chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum.

The Desert Eagle had been produced by Israel Military Industries since its introduction in the early 1980s and quickly became an action movie favorite for its unique and intimidating appearance that made it a natural fit for guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger; indeed, Arnie was one of the first to carry a Desert Eagle on screen as part of John Matrix’s arsenal in Commando. Before even heftier calibers were added to the lineup, the Desert Eagle was originally chambered only in .357 Magnum, previously only a revolver cartridge.

To prep the Hollywood Eagle for on-screen combat, LaFrance modified the gas porting that would allow it to cycle and fire the .357 Magnum blanks. (While there is no mass-produced “9.2 millimeter” caliber, the .357 Magnum would be similar with its 9.07-millimeter diameter, though the actual Soviet 9×18 mm Makarov cartridge may come nearest with its diameter of 9.25 millimeters.)

Only Arnold Schwarzenegger would require the famously massive Desert Eagle to be increased in size to fit his screen presence, as part of the modifications to create the “Hollywood Eagle” included an extended barrel.

Danko had his Moscow Militia-issued pistol imported into the U.S. via his diplomatic pouch, though his use of it during the hospital fracas resulted in Commander Donnelly needing to impound it. In turn, the captain requests that Ridzik provide him with another pistol so—with some reluctance—Ridzik opens his glove compartment to reveal a Smith & Wesson Model 29.

“Here, Captain Danko… you are now owner of the most powerful handgun in the world,” Ridzik explains to introduce him to his new armament, though Danko stands firm in his belief of the impounded Podbyrin’s supremacy. Ridzik isn’t too keen on yielding, responding with:

Come on, everyone knows the .44 Magnum is the big boy on the block. Why do you think Dirty Harry uses it?

“Who is Dirty Harry?”

Production photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing Danko’s undershirt and armed with Ridzik’s Smith & Wesson Model 29.

Though its might had been eclipsed even by the time Clint Eastwood immortalized it on screen as “the most powerful handgun in the world,” Smith & Wesson’s Model 29 with its proprietary .44 Magnum cartridge was indeed unparalleled at the time it was introduced in the mid-1950s.

It fits Ridzik’s character that he would keep one of these large revolvers as his personal backup weapon, as he has already shown his familiarity with the cartridge as his duty weapon appears to be a shorter-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 629, also chambered in .44 Magnum but with a stainless steel frame.

(Of course, what Dirty Harry, Red Heat, and many other movies don’t take into account is that it would be almost unthinkable for a major-city police department to issue sidearms chambered for such massive—and expensive—manstopper ammunition.)

Danko uses the Model 29 to considerable effect during the subsequent hotel gunfight and the finale set on the train tracks.

What to Imbibe

Donnelly: Look, just out of curiosity and, since I figure cops are cops the world over… how do you Soviets deal with all the tension and stress?
Danko: Vodka.

How to Get the Look

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Captain Ivan Danko in Red Heat (1988)

If anyone calls you Gumby, at least take comfort in the fact that you found a fellow fan of ’80s action flicks!

• Teal lightweight gabardine wool twill suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with cran Necker lapels, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, besom back pockets, and full-break plain-hemmed bottoms
• White cotton twill shirt with point collar, plain front, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Gray tie
• Black edge-stitched leather belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather work oxford shoes
• White textured crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• Steel Swiss watch with pink dial (with two sub-registers at 3 and 9 o’clock) on black perforated leather strap

The screen-worn suit can be seen and read about in further detail in the Heritage Auctions listing.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

I do not want to touch his ass. I want to make him talk!

The post Red Heat: Arnie’s Teal “Gumby” Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.

Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified (Episode 1.09: “Hatless”)

Vitals

Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, old-fashioned Deputy U.S. Marshal

Harlan County, Kentucky, Spring 2010

Series: Justified
Episode: “Hatless” (Episode 1.09)
Air Date: May 11, 2010
Director: Peter Werner
Creator: Graham Yost
Costume Designer: Ane Crabtree

Background

Today marks the return of college football season, so I wanted to look at how a BAMF Style favorite incorporated some team pride into an off-duty look. The ninth episode of Justified begins with Raylan Givens drinking away his suspension from the U.S. Marshals Service, or as he calls it, “a well-earned vacation.”

Unfortunately for an increasingly drunk Raylan, he’s joined at the bar by two obnoxious rednecks yukking it up about one of their recent romantic misadventures…

Raylan: Gentlemen, I’m sorry to interrupt… could you just keep it down a bit?
Drunk Man: Why would we do that?
Raylan: Because I didn’t order assholes with my whiskey…

Correctly diagnosed with “harborin’ a bit of hostility there”, Raylan follows the two men outside to work out their issues with their fists… but the two men get the better of the whiskey-soaked marshal, who ends the pre-credits sequence bruised, bloodied, and—worse yet—rid of his signature hat, resulting in the episode’s title.

What’d He Wear?

Before spending most of the episode without it, Raylan wears his famous wide-brimmed hat, crafted properly to accommodate one of Elmore Leonard’s conditions before allowing the series itself to be made. Timothy Olyphant once again featured the wares of L.A.-based milliner Baron Hats, who had supplied his headgear on Deadwood, to create Raylan’s sahara tan cattleman-style hat, detailed with a narrow brown tooled leather band with its curved single-prong buckle on the left side.

More than a decade after the series premiered, Baron Hats continues to market “The RG”, with its 4.25″-tall cattleman’s crown, 3.25″-wide brim, and available in the same 200XXX beaver felt as worn on the show.

In one of his last moments with his hat, Raylan sizes up his opponents.

Off duty due to his suspension, Raylan foregoes his suit jackets and skinny ties, instead wearing a plaid shirt open over his Florida Gators T-shirt. The excellent Facebook page “It was Justified” has identified the plaid shirt as made by Mossimo Supply Co. and the T-shirt as an Adidas product.

The brushed cotton flannel long-sleeved shirt is patterned in a red and black plaid with a pale-gray overcheck, with a spread collar, button cuffs, and two chest pockets, each with a flap that closes through a smoke-gray plastic sew-through button matching those up the front placket.

Does Raylan’s Gators shirt imply that the college he attended on his Aunt Helen’s savings was the University of Florida? Or did he just become a fan during his years in Florida with USMS? Either way, he celebrates the Gainesville-based college when he peels off the plaid shirt to reveal a heathered gray cotton short-sleeved T-shirt emblazoned with a faded, vintage-inspired logo of a green alligator sporting an orange T-shirt with a blue “F” on it, flanked above and below with the words “FLORIDA” and “GATORS”.

Preparing to kick ass, Raylan peels off his over-shirt and hangs up his hat, turning to battle in a Florida Gators T-shirt that makes its sole appearance in “Hatless” after the opening scene renders it too bloody and stretched-out to reappear.

After an early advantage in the fight, our drunken hero ends up spending more time than we’d like to see crawling on the dirty pavement behind the bar, scuffing his dark blue Levi’s jeans, identifiable by the signature red tab sewn along in the inside of the back-right patch pocket. These jeans are likely the 501 Original Fit button-fly jeans, held up with his usual brown tooled leather belt. As he’s both suspended and drinking, Raylan wisely leaves his Glock and holster at home.

Raylan began the series wearing brown anteater cowboy boots by Justin, though these would be swapped out for ostrich-leg Lucchese boots beginning in the third season, following the new direction of costume designer Patia Prouty, who replaced Ane Crabtree for the second season onward. After Winona (Natalie Zea) takes an injured Raylan back to his motel room, she pulls off his boots to show that he’s wearing a pair of dark brown boot socks.

Raylan’s strategy of temporarily disabling one of his opponents with a boot-kick to the groin gives him the upper hand for a few seconds. Unfortunately for Raylan, it’s still two against one… and a relatively drunk one at that.

After prominently wearing a Rolex Submariner for much of the pilot episode, Raylan straps on a brushed steel TAG Heuer Series 6000 Chronometer as his watch of choice for the duration of Justified, the leather bracelet alternating between a black strap or—as seen here—a textured brown strap. Consistent with dive watches, Raylan’s timepiece has a rotating bezel that surrounds the round white dial with its 3:00 date window.

While Raylan’s opponents may have left with his hat, they didn’t bother taking the marshal’s trusty TAG Heuer.

For an additional cowboy-influenced touch, Raylan regularly wears a sterling silver statement ring with a horseshoe and braided sides that taper toward the back of the band.

What to Imbibe

“I’m assuming you’re not gonna stop,” the bartender suggests as he brings forth the bottle to pour Raylan yet another shot of bourbon. “Can’t see one good reason why I should,” Raylan responds, quickly downing the shot of what appears to be a fictional “Old Kentucky” label that’s poured before him.

Several drinks—and kicks and punches—later, a battered Raylan is returned to his motel room, where he keeps a fifth of Jim Beam within reach on the bedside table.

A bottle of Jim Beam stands on Raylan’s nightstand as Winona pulls off his boots.

Justified did much to bring exposure to fine bourbons like Blanton’s, Buffalo Trace, Elmer T. Lee, and Pappy Van Winkle, though there must be very few even in the non-bourbon drinking world who are unfamiliar with Jim Beam, whose standard 80-proof “White Label” variety was deemed the world’s most popular bourbon in Brad Japhe’s reporting for Forbes last year, citing the IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.

Beam family bourbon traces its origins back to 1795. Production was interrupted by Prohibition, after which the distillery was rebuilt by then-manager James B. Beam, for whom the modern iteration of the company is named. The brand followed suit in 1943 when its signature product was renamed “Jim Beam” rather than “Old Tub”, under which it had been marketed since 1880.

The recent bourbon renaissance encouraged Jim Beam to expand its lineup, which now includes nearly a dozen whiskies (including a rye), flavored whiskey liqueurs, and even pre-mixed cocktails.

How to Get the Look

Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified (Episode 1.09: “Hatless”)

Even when not on duty, Raylan Givens wears his everyday cowboy hat, boots, belt, and jeans, though he layers more informally in a plaid shirt unbuttoned over a T-shirt celebrating his favorite team, in this case the Florida Gators. Of course, not all teams coordinate with a cowboy hat so you may want to consider being “Hatless” from the get-go.

• Red, black, and pale-gray plaid cotton flannel long-sleeve shirt with spread collar, two button-down flapped chest pockets, and button cuffs
• Gray heathered “Florida Gators” short-sleeve T-shirt
• Dark blue denim Levi’s 501 Original Fit button-fly jeans
• Brown tooled leather belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Brown anteater Justin cowboy boots
• Dark brown boot socks
• Baron Hats “The RG” sahara tan 200XXX beaver felt cattleman’s hat with a thin tooled leather band
• TAG Heuer Series 6000 Chronometer wristwatch with brushed steel case, white dial, and black leather strap
• Sterling silver horseshoe ring with braided side detail
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series. I also recommend that fans of the show who are on Facebook follow the great page @EverythingJustified which features many great photos, videos, and moments from the series as well as shots of screen-worn gear.

The post Justified: Raylan’s Florida Gators T-shirt appeared first on BAMF Style.

Philip Michael Thomas and Sonny Crockett filming “Brother’s Keeper”, the pilot episode of Miami Vice

Vitals

Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs, vengeful undercover detective

Miami, Spring 1984

Series: Miami Vice
Episode: “Brother’s Keeper” (Episode 1.01)
Air Date: September 16, 1984
Director: Thomas Carter
Creator: Anthony Yerkovich
Costume Designer: Jodie Lynn Tillen

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This week in 1984, Miami Vice debuted on NBC, introducing us to the cooler-than-ice cops Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas). Per the detectives’ duties for the Metro-Dade Police Department’s vice division, the episodes frequently included thrilling gunfights and car chases against drug-peddling foes amidst a stylish backdrop of sleek cars, sleeker clothes, pop music, and a parade of guest stars ranging from Liam Neeson, Willie Nelson, and a young Julia Roberts to… G. Gordon Liddy.

The title of the Emmy-winning pilot episode, “Brother’s Keeper”, refers most specifically to Tubbs, a New York transplant who arrived in Miami seeking vengeance on the wily drug kingpin Calderone, who killed his brother Rafael. Despite their head-butting personalities, Tubbs joins forces with Crockett, hoping to soften the tension between them by bringing coffee and donuts onto his boat as well as the results of his own surveillance on Calderone, but Crockett informs him that “down here, you’re just another amateur.”

Sipping cocktails at a beachside bar to the tune of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, Tubbs spots a “girl” having a little too much fun when she pulls a silenced pistol and kills Leon (Mykelti Williamson), one of his and Crockett’s most promising leads in their case against Calderone.

“You know, buddy, you got a leak in your department the size of the East River,” Tubbs tells his new partner, now convinced that he needs Tubbs’ help to bring down Calderone.

What’d He Wear?

Philip Michael Thomas and Sonny Crockett promoting Miami Vice, each wearing a suit that would be featured in the pilot episode, albeit not at the same time; Crockett wore this white linen suit and light blue T-shirt for his introduction at the start of the episode.

Don Johnson’s layered pastel linens as the slick Sonny Crockett would become the breakout fashions from the series, though Tubbs would have been the standout on almost any other show. As a New York cop fresh in Miami, Tubbs isn’t as rooted in the colorful schematics as Crockett but he quickly gets a hang for how to dress down in the subtropical “Magic City”, adapting his more conventional style to keep up with his partner.

Midway through “Brother’s Keeper”, Tubbs shows up for his first official day partnered with Crockett in a double-breasted dove-gray suit jacket made from a softly napped cloth with a silky finish, possibly a blend of silk and wool serge. Philip Michael Thomas wore the jacket as part of a matching two-piece suit for a series of promotional portraits taken with Johnson, though the jacket was orphaned with non-matching trousers for its appearance in the pilot episode.

Whether worn with a tie or T-shirt, double-breasted jackets would quickly become a style trademark for Rico Tubbs, redefining what had once been a more old-fashioned style to illustrate that you don’t have to be Chance the gardener to wear double-breasted jackets.

The pick-stitched peak lapels roll to a full 6×2-button front, which Tubbs wears both open and fully fastened. Shaped with darts, the jacket has a welted breast pocket, jetted hip pockets, three-button cuffs.

Double-breasted jackets are traditionally tailored sans vents, and Tubbs’ jacket is no exception though the lack of vents creates a rather obvious bulge over where he carries his revolver in the back.

Tubbs would be considerably more predisposed to wearing neckties than Crockett, though he goes open-neck this morning, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his ice-blue silky long-sleeved camp shirt. The shirt has a loop collar, covered fly, and single-button rounded barrel cuffs. The two chest pockets are covered by rounded-corner flaps, neither of which close through a button.

Like his double-breasted jacket, Tubbs’ two-pocket, long-sleeved camp shirt could be considered a relic of mid-century sportswear but worn with a renewed energy that reestablishes both pieces are contemporary fashions for the ’80s.

Tubbs doesn’t wear the jacket’s matching suit trousers in “Brother’s Keeper”, instead sporting pleated taupe trousers that are a shade warmer than the jacket, though the lack of obvious contrast may create the effect that Tubbs was trying to “match” two non-matching pieces. The proneness to wrinkling suggests linen—a smart choice of fabric when expecting action in the hot Miami climate—or a linen and silk blend.

The trousers are held up by a narrow russet-brown leather belt that has a gold-toned single-prong buckle and gold keeper (not a “brother’s keeper”.) Dropped below the mid-rise belt line are a set of two closely spaced reverse-facing pleats on each side of the trousers.

“Call him off, man, I don’t even like alligator shoes!” Tubbs exclaims upon meeting Crockett’s gator pal Elvis on his boat. Indeed, his apron-toe lace-up shoes—while unconventional with their light gray uppers—are made from a more traditional leather than gator-skin. He wears them with a pair of black socks that show under the shorter break of his trouser bottoms, which are finished with turn-ups (cuffs).

Tubbs and Crockett’s dressed-down ensembles are beach-ready at all times.

Tubbs finishes his look with a substantial amount of gold jewelry, from a subtle small hoop earring to a chain-link bracelet and watch that collide on his left wrist. Tubbs’ wristwatches never received the same attention and scrutiny as Crockett’s parade of timepieces, but we see in the pilot episode that he wears a gold watch with a blue square dial flush against the gold bracelet.

Often swinging out from the unbuttoned top of his shirt, Tubbs wears a large gold pendant that has been identified on the Miami Vice Online forums as a religious medallion with a relief of St. Christopher (“Christ Bearer”) carrying Jesus. A St. Christopher pendant had also been famously worn by Steve McQueen.

Good morning, Tubbs!

As part of his undercover image, Tubbs would also weigh down his fingers with a chunky gold ring on each hand, but we don’t see either of those with this particular outfit.

The Gun

As with the rest of his style, Rico Tubbs rarely carried flashy new firearms like his partner, instead veering toward tried-and-true practicality. His Smith & Wesson Model 38 “Bodyguard” reflects the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers authorized for plainclothes policemen across the country for decades while providing the added benefit of a shrouded hammer for an easy draw from within the folds of his designer clothes.

Tubbs and Crockett draw their sidearms upon entering Leon’s apartment.

Smith & Wesson introduced the “Bodyguard” model in 1955, a half-decade after launching the five-shot .38 Special “Chiefs Special”—later to be re-designated Model 36—on the same J-frame. This original alloy-framed Bodyguard would be renamed the Model 38 Airweight Bodyguard, differentiated with the all carbon steel-framed Model 49 Bodyguard introduced by decade’s end. Both “Bodyguard” models featured a “Camel Hump” shroud to conceal the hammer and prevent it from snagging on clothing, making it a particularly practical weapon for concealed carry.

In fact, firearms expert Geoffrey Boothroyd had even insisted to Ian Fleming that the Smith & Wesson Airweight Bodyguard would make an ideal sidearm to replace James Bond’s relatively anemic .25-caliber Beretta, though Fleming relegated it to a backup weapon in the novel Doctor No, preferring to keep 007 armed with a semi-automatic pistol like the Walther PPK.

Tubbs carried his Smith & Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard, with black Pachmayr grips, throughout the entire duration of Miami Vice, while his partner rotated between the SIG-Sauer P220, Bren Ten, and .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatics over the course of the series.

For heavier-duty battles, Tubbs again tends to arm himself with time-tested weapons like the sawed-off double-breasted shotgun that makes several appearances throughout Miami Vice‘s first season, including “Brother’s Keeper”. While not necessarily a weapon still widely in police usage by the 1980s—especially for more urban departments like NYPD or MDPD—the infallible design that dates back more than a century is consistent with Tubbs’ preference for older-inspired technology and fashions.

What to Imbibe

While keeping an eye on Leon from a beachside bar, Tubbs sips from a coral-tinted goblet with the unique garnish of what appears to be a suspended fishing bob.

Any thoughts on what drinks may traditionally be served with garnishment like that?

We unfortunately aren’t privy to exactly what Tubbs is meant to be drinking, unless series creator Anthony Yerkovich detailed it in his script, but the color and context could inspire you to mix the aptly named cocktail Miami Vice.

Liquor.com informs us that “the tropical drink—part Strawberry Daiquiri, part Piña Colada, separated in the glass—precedes the popular ’80s television drama by some years,” so it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of possibility for either of our heroes to order one… though it would perhaps be irresponsible for Crockett or Tubbs to be drinking on the job.

A picture-perfect Miami Vice cocktail, via Liquor.com.

Despite decades of existence, this particular cocktail has eluded inclusion in my latest version of the Mr. Boston Official Bartender’s Guide, so I’ve relied on online sources to get a sense of what goes into mixing a Miami Vice:

• Two 1-ounce portions of white rum
• 1-2 cups of strawberries
• 1/2 ounce of simple syrup
• 1.5-2 ounces of cream of coconut
• 1.5-2 ounces of pineapple juice

Both the strawberry daiquiri and the piña colada portions should be mixed separately, with Liquor.com advising that the daiquiri be prepared first, blending an ounce of the rum with the strawberries, simple syrup, and—if you prefer—an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, all with a cup of fresh ice. Once the strawberry daiquiri is smoothly blended, it should be poured into the hurricane glass and stored in the freezer.

With the blender cleaned out and ready for the next step, blend the remaining ounce of rum with the cream of coconut and pineapple juice (Tipsy Bartender suggests slightly less of the juices than Liquor.com does) with ice until you’ve got a smooth piña colada as well.

Pour the piña colada into the hurricane glass over the strawberry daiquiri, ostensibly providing a layered red-and-white effect that you can garnish with a strawberry, a pineapple slice, or—if you have it at your disposal—a paper fishing bob.

(Feeling patriotic? Baking Beauty suggests dying half the piña colada portion blue for a red, white, and blue cocktail ideal for your fourth of July celebrations.)

How to Get the Look

Philip Michael Thomas as Ricardo Tubbs in the Miami Vice pilot episode “Brother’s Keeper”

A more conventional dresser than his partner, Ricardo Tubbs still embraces the warm, fashionable setting of 1980s Miami as he updates mid-century styles like double-breasted jackets, two-pocket camp shirts, and pleated trousers.

• Dove-gray wool-and-silk serge double-breasted 6×2-button suit jacket with pick-stitched peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Ice-blue silk long-sleeved sports shirt with camp collar (with loop), covered-fly front, two flapped chest pockets, and single-button rounded cuffs
• Taupe linen double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, on-seam side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Russet-brown leather belt with small gold-toned single-prong buckle and keeper
• Light gray leather lace-up shoes
• Black socks
• Small gold hoop earring
• Gold St. Christopher medallion on gold necklace
• Thin gold chain-link bracelet
• Gold wristwatch with flush blue squared dial

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

The Quote

Couldn’t let you handle all that bad karma by yourself.

The post Miami Vice: Tubbs in Double-Breasted Dove Gray for the Pilot Episode appeared first on BAMF Style.

Warren Beatty in Dick Tracy (1990)

Vitals

Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy, square-jawed detective

“Homeville”, December 1938

Film: Dick Tracy
Release Date: June 15, 1990
Director: Warren Beatty
Costume Designer: Milena Canonero

Background

Ninety years ago today on Sunday, October 4, 1931, Chester Gould’s comic strip Dick Tracy premiered in the Detroit Mirror, introducing the world—or at least Detroit—to the determined detective in his trademark yellow coat.

Despite the strip’s longevity and popularity, attempts to adapt it for the screen never came into fruition for nearly six decades until the blockbusting success of Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989 proved to studios there a profitable market for comic book adaptations. Bringing Dick Tracy to Hollywood became a passion project for Warren Beatty, who starred as the title character as well as producing, directing, and attracting a cavalcade of stars to portray the colorful—and colorfully dressed—figures of the mysterious Chicago-like city where Tracy faced off against gangsters and gun molls.

The resulting film remains one of the most confidently ambitious yet curious comic adaptations to date, also considerably violent given its PG rating, a reflection of the surprisingly violent strip itself.

An early illustration of the original Dick Tracy, dressed in his typical yellow fedora and overcoat as well as the red-and-black striped tie that would be recreated for the 1991 movie. (Source: Etsy)

Even if some have criticized the measures to which he’s gone to retain the rights to all Dick Tracy-related content—including a curiously conceived in-character special with Leonard Maltin in 2008—Beatty clearly has a passion for the character and presenting his world in a manner authentic to the original comics, including the film’s adherence to a bright but limited color scheme that ultimately creates a uniquely surreal experience for the viewer. As Emily VanDerWerff wrote in her excellent Vox retrospective for the film’s 25th anniversary:

[Beatty] collaborated with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (winner of three Oscars for other films and a nomination for this film) and his top-notch design team to create a world that existed primarily in the brightly hued splashes of the Sunday paper’s comics page.

This is a world swathed in red and green, in purple and yellow — a look that newspaper publishers adopted in order to print color as cheaply as possible. But Beatty went way, way over-budget trying to capture the lush look of Chester Gould’s old comic strips.

Every single scene is bathed in luminescent tints, and the film frequently pauses to take in the colorful grandeur of its fictional universe. If there’s one reason to revisit Dick Tracy today, it’s that the movie’s visuals are wholly different from those of any comics-based movie of today.

What’d He Wear?

Given Beatty’s obvious passion for the finished film to resemble the limited colors of the original comics, costume designer Milena Canonero brilliantly approached the assignment to ensure that each character—from Dick Tracy himself to the background extras—fulfilled their role in fitting into the vivid tapestry, receiving an Academy Award nomination for her unparalleled work. Unlike Batman, where the Joker’s loud, purple-hued attire distinguished him as the quintessential comic-book villain against the backdrop of gritty Gotham City, everyone in Tracyville completes the intended palette of a vivid world that had once only existed in cheaply printed newspaper comics.

Under his memorably bold coat and hat, Tracy wears a surprisingly conservative suit, shirt, and tie, again all pulled straight from the decades of Gould’s comic strip. After his clothes are ostensibly ruined by Big Boy’s “bath”, Tracy asks his fellow detectives to launder them before changing into… an identical suit, shirt, and tie.

The pitch-black wool suit has a double-breasted jacket with broad shoulders and wide, full-bellied peak lapels that were characteristic of the era’s tailoring. The lapels elegantly sweep across Tracy’s torso to the top of the 6×2-button configuration, and he typically wears both of the functioning buttons fastened. The ventless jacket also has three-button cuffs, a welted breast pocket, and jetted hip pockets.

While black business suits are rarely advised in real life outside of funerals, evening events, and well-dressed assassinations, there’s little of Dick Tracy that attempts to reflect realistic sartorial practices, instead leaning heavily and joyfully into the limited palette of the “golden age” of newspaper comics. The illustrated Dick Tracy was always portrayed wearing black suits which—with his conservative white shirt and red striped tie—project the image of a serious man who takes his serious work very seriously, particularly when opposed to the brightly dressed gangsters he has vowed to remove from his city.

Tracy wears white cotton shirts styled with a sharp point collar reflecting the fashions of the period. The shirt has a plain (“French placket”) front and barrel cuffs that fasten with a single button on the cuff and an additional gauntlet button over each wrist. His rich scarlet tie is patterned with “downhill”-direction black stripes that alternate between narrow stripes and slightly wider bar stripes. The length is also consistent with neckwear of the late ’30s, with a shorter blade that corresponds to a higher trouser rise and also the philosophy that—between closed jackets and waistcoats—the bottom of most gents’ ties wouldn’t be seen anyway.

While it’s likely that his jacket and waistcoat are all pieces from a matching three-piece suit, Tracy appears to only appear one or the other at a time as I was never able to glimpse the waistcoat under the jacket.

The single-breasted waistcoat—or “vest” to us Yanks—has a five-button front that Tracy almost always wears unbuttoned, aside from when he’s cooling his heels in a jail cell. (Interestingly, he had been wearing his double-breasted jacket when he was arrested; perhaps his fellow officers were kind enough to bring his waistcoat.) The waistcoat also has four welted pockets and a strap across the lower back to adjust the fit.

Tracy’s down to his shirt sleeves and waistcoat when he’s caught with Breathless Mahoney (Madonna).

Tracy’s pleated trousers have belt loops, which he wears with a black—or very dark brown—woven leather belt that closes through a gold-toned squared single-prong buckle. The trousers have side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Though suspenders (braces) are recommended for three-piece suits—and we do occasionally see Tracy wearing black suspenders—a belt can provide better retention for a shoulder holster, which is Tracy’s preferred rig for concealing his sidearm. He holsters his .32-caliber Colt pistol in a green holster under his left arm, suspended over his shoulders via an adjustable black leather strap system.

Tracy holsters his .32-caliber Colt. Note that he doesn’t appear to be wearing his waistcoat under his double-breasted suit jacket, one of the few glimpses we get of the open jacket.

The color of Dick Tracy’s hat seemed to vary in the original comics, with some early illustrations featuring green and orange hats, though it appears that our heroic detective had settled on a yellow fedora to coordinate with his coat by the 1950s.

Beatty’s Tracy tops his look with a yellow self-edged, snap-brim fedora, the crown proudly pinched like the prow of a triumphant ship above the black grosgrain band. The recognizable hat has been auctioned by Bonhams—and also featured at The Golden Closet and iCollector—with the listing describing its size as 7 5/8 and the inside stamped: “Golden Coach / by Dobbs / Genuine Fur Felt.”

According to DelMonico Hatter and Fashionable Hats, Dobbs Hats had originated in New York City in 1908, producing reputable men’s headgear throughout the 20th century.

Tracy’s girlfriend, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly) dresses in the same bold red and black as his tie… suggesting that, even under all the layers of yellow, his heart must truly belong to her.

Arguably the pièce de résistance of Dick Tracy’s massive overcoat, a yellow woolen twill double-breasted coat provided by Hollywood’s venerable Western Costume Company, according to the tag described in the Bonhams auction listing that also provided its measurements of a 42″ chest and 18″ from shoulder to shoulder.

So why yellow? The most obvious answer would be that it was part of the successful attempt to reflect the look of the comics… and Gould had likely drawn his Tracy in a yellow coat to reflect the more common khaki or tan coat that would have required a more expensive ink to accurately portray within his strip.

Tracy’s screen-worn yellow coat has wide peak lapels with swelled edges and a buttonhole through each. The shoulders are wide and padded and the excessively long coat extends below Beatty’s knees, adding to the image of Tracy’s coat as his heroic cape. Like the double-breasted suit jacket under it, the coat has a 6×2-button configuration, reinforced by a full belt rigged with D-rings like a classic military trench coat. Also cribbed from trench coat stylings are the fully belted cuffs to adjust the tightness of each set-in sleeve over the wrists. The coat also has flapped patch pockets over the hips and a single vent.

Tracy wears black leather cap-toe oxford shoes with black socks, the most reasonable combination that good taste dictate be worn with a black suit.

Only Dick Tracy could so nimbly scale the wall in that long, heavy coat.

Perhaps one of the most famous pieces of Dick Tracy’s habit would be his two-way wrist radio, the innovative gadget that predated the Apple Watch by nearly 70 years! With input from wireless innovator Al Gross, Gould introduced Tracy’s wrist radio in the comic strip that ran on Sunday, January 13, 1946, an in-universe invention by industrialist Diet Smith’s son Brilliant that was eventually upgraded to a wrist TV in 1964. Martin Cooper, the engineer who pioneered the handheld mobile phone while working for Motorola in the 1970s, later cited Dick Tracy as the inspiration for his world-changing technology.

Even though Dick Tracy is set leading up to New Year’s Eve 1938, the movie retcons Tracy’s adoption of the watch by featuring the invention nearly seven years before Gould himself had added it. (Of course, it would be almost unthinkable to bring Dick Tracy to the big screen without it!)

The screen-worn wrist radio, which was among the other items from the film auctioned by Bonhams, has a rectangular 1¾”-long stainless steel case with a crown coordinating to the flattened tonneau-shaped pearlized analog dial with its black Arabic numeral hour markers and an additional pusher that coordinates to the gilt metal mesh-covered portion that’s evidently both speaker and microphone for the two-way radio capabilities. Tracy straps it to his left wrist on a black crocodile leather strap that closes through a gold-toned single-prong buckle.

Sure, it may not have any apps, but it solves crime… can your Apple Watch do that?

The Guns

Dick Tracy may be outfitted with the latest in mid-century wireless technology, but his chosen sidearm would have been more than a generation old at the time of the movie’s setting. Despite its age though, the ergonomic design of the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless as well as the semi-automatic pistol’s more modern connotations vs. the traditional police revolver make the weapon an appropriately sleek choice for the detective to slip into his shoulder holster.

EDC, Dick Tracy-style.

The almost-perfectly named weapon was introduced by Colt in 1903, popular for its covered hammer and compact size that allow it to be more easily carried in one’s pocket without fear of it snagging on clothing. The “Hammerless” part of the designation refers more to the fact that the rear of the slide completely shrouds the hammer; unlike contemporary semi-automatics like the 1911, there was no way to de-cock an engaged hammer unless the pistol was fired. Thus, Colt designed the Model 1903 with a relative abundance of safety mechanisms, from a manually engaged thumb safety to a “lemon squeezer” grip safety lifted from earlier Smith & Wesson revolvers. Later pistols also incorporated an additional safety mechanism that wouldn’t fire if the magazine wasn’t firmly in place.

Colt offered its Pocket Hammerless pistol in two of the most common smaller calibers of the day, .32 ACP and .380 ACP; pistols chambered for the latter were technically designated the “Model 1908” and had a seven-round magazine capacity as opposed to the eight-round magazines of the .32-caliber models.

Almost immediately popular with civilians who sought pocket-ready personal protection in a world that was advancing from the holstered six-shooters of the old west, the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless eventually proved to be popular on all sides of the law. Lawmen like the aging Bill Tilghman were known to appreciate their easily concealed reliability while criminal desperadoes like John Dillinger and Clyde Barrow—whom Warren Beatty had famously portrayed a quarter-century earlier—employed them as handy pocket pistols for their vast arsenals. (Beatty would also use one while playing another famous gangster in the extended version of Bugsy the following year.)

Waking up in an unfamiliar room next to a corpse with your freshly fired gat in your hand… has there ever been a more noirish situation?

Of course, eight shots from a .32-caliber pistol would hardly be enough when taking on a dangerous villain like “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino), so Dick Tracy also utilizes the classic Thompson submachine gun for heavier-duty work.

The “Tommy gun” had been developed in response to infantry needs recognized during World War I, though its extended development under the supervision of Brigadier General John T. Thompson meant that first combat his portable, blowback-operated .45-caliber submachine gun would prominently encounter was the famous Beer Wars across big cities in Prohibition-era America. However, the Thompson had also proven its military value during Irish Civil War battles of the early 1920s, and it was formally authorized for service by American police and military forces in the decades to follow.

The first major produced version of the Thompson was the M1921A, which boasted the recognizable configuration of the vertical foregrip, drum magazine, and full stock. Five years later, the addition of a Cutts compensator muzzle brake resulted in the M1921AC that has become almost universally recognizable as the “Chicago Typewriter” favored by gangsters of the roaring ’20s.

Dick Tracy arms himself with a Thompson in the classic configuration with the Cutts compensator, vertical foregrip, and 50-round drum magazine as he battles Big Boy Caprice’s gangsters on New Year’s Eve.

As usage of the Thompson increased among military and police forces, its development skewed toward field-ready requirements, such as a simplified horizontal foregrip and box magazines that more reliably fed its .45 ACP rounds. By World War II, the profile and reputation of the Thompson had evolved from gangland massacres to battlefield infantry.

How to Get the Look

Dick Tracy may be the only person in his world to wear a relatively “normal”-colored suit, but he makes up for it with a bright yellow fedora and overcoat that present like a superhero’s cape over his black double-breasted suit. While the total image would be best reserved for cosplay or Halloween parties, the base outfit with his timeless tailoring and strong colors can continue to provide inspiration more than 90 years after Chester Gould first introduced us to the determined detective.

Warren Beatty and Glenne Headly in Dick Tracy (1990)

• Black wool suit:
  • Double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with full-bellied peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with four welted pockets and adjustable back strap
  • Pleated high-rise trousers with belt loops, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White cotton shirt with point collar, plain “French placket” front, and button cuffs
• Scarlet-red silk tie with “downhill”-direction black stripes of alternating widths
• Dark woven leather belt with gold-toned square single-prong buckle
• Green leather shoulder holster with black leather straps
• Black leather cap-toe oxford shoes
• Black socks
• Yellow fur felt self-edged fedora with black grosgrain band
• Yellow woolen twill double-breasted 6×2-button overcoat with swelled-edge peak lapels, flapped patch hip pockets, belted cuffs, full belt (with D-rings), and single vent
• Stainless steel “wrist radio” with small analog dial and gilt-mesh two-way radio

The yellow coat and hat would almost immediately launch any attempts to recreate Dick Tracy’s costume into the realm of cosplay, but you can more subtly incorporate Tracy’s style with Magnoli Clothiers’ faithful replica of what they market as the “Tracy Tie”.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The post Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy appeared first on BAMF Style.

John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Vitals

John Saxon as Donald Thompson, police lieutenant

Suburban Ohio, Spring 1981

Film: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Release Date: November 9, 1984
Director: Wes Craven
Costume Designer: Dana Lyman

Background

A decade after he investigated a series of grisly sorority murders at Christmastime, John Saxon again portrayed a police lieutenant chasing down a serial killer in Wes Craven’s horror classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

We meet Lieutenant Thompson when he’s called to the station late at night in response to the murder of his daughter’s friend Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss). Thompson’s police colleagues initially suspect Tina’s meathead boyfriend, the “lunatic delinquent” Rod Lane (Nick Corri). Rod doesn’t help his case by fleeing the scene, but a tearful Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) explains to her father that it couldn’t have been Rod.

Thompson has little reason to believe his daughter’s protestations, but we the audience know that Tina’s brutal slashing was the work of the disfigured spirit of the long-dead child murderer Freddy Kreuger.

What’d He Wear?

Thompson’s first appearance begins with his arrival at the police station, his light stone-colored cotton sport jacket illuminating him against the darkness of the night. We don’t know where Thompson was before this, as he could have been out for a night on the town in bustling Springwood or roused from sleep and grabbing the first items he found in his closet. His energy suggests the former, as does his wardrobe for the rest of the movie where he tends to rely on a baggy windbreaker.

This single-breasted jacket has a 3/2-roll, meaning that the lapels of his jacket roll over the top button to show only the center and bottom buttons. This configuration can trace its origins to tailoring on both sides of the Atlantic, though Thompson’s undarted sports coat with its single vent shares considerably more DNA with American Ivy style traditions than British or Italian tailoring. The jacket has two spaced-apart buttons on each sleeve cuff, a welted breast pocket, and patch-style hip pockets with flaps with sporty “edge-swelling” echoing the notch lapels.

Thompson’s cotton sport shirt is checked in a yellow double-lined tartan plaid and thin white overcheck against a dark royal blue ground. Worn open at the neck, the shirt has a point collar, front placket, and button cuffs.

Anyone who has spent years immersed in #menswear forums and comment sections would be certainly familiar with the modern iGent’s repulsion at wearing light jackets with dark trousers. While this guidance may have some well-intended basis in taste-informed tradition, it—like so many “rules” of its ilk—would be more productively addressed on a subjective, rather than objective, basis.

What is an iGent? The generic term could refer to anyone who writes about men’s style online—including yours truly—though the more pejorative connotation suggests those who are more judgmental in their preference for sartorial conventions. While there’s certainly a place for this mindset, I feel it goes too far when appreciation for tradition extends into excessive judgment or snobbery. For a great exploration of the relationship between James Bond’s clothes and “iGent culture”, I recommend a great two-part article by Matt Spaier for Bond Suits.

The day-and-night contrast of Don Thompson’s almost-white jacket and dark charcoal flat front trousers does wade into tricky sartorial area. For instance, wearing the same jacket and trousers with a white shirt and tie could look like a slapdash attempt at summer formalwear that lands its wearer looking more like a waiter. Thompson wisely harmonizes what could be challenging outfit by wearing a darker, patterned shirt that dresses it down and eases the stark contrast between these two pieces.

The more judgmental iGent’s heart rate may just be settling back into a reasonable zone until he spies Thompson’s black belt… and brown shoes!

One of the more frequently cited “rules” of menswear dictates that a gent should try to coordinate the leather of his belt and shoes, though Thompson may be able to make a practical case for his mismatch. The black leather belt with its dulled gold-toned buckle blends better against the almost-black trousers. Black oxfords or derbies may have dressed the outfit up too much for his liking, so he instead wears a pair of scruffy brown leather shoes with heavy tan laces and outsoles, which may in fact be ankle boots.

Evidently, the Springwood police just rounded up James Dean’s character from Rebel Without a Cause.

This brief scene at the station would be Saxon’s most fashionable moment in A Nightmare on Elm Street, as he spends the rest of the film clad in either his police uniform or the aforementioned beige windbreaker. Strapped to his left wrist, Thompson wears a stainless steel watch with a round silver dial on a steel link bracelet.

The Gun

Lieutenant Thompson doesn’t appear to be carrying his service revolver when he arrives at the station, but for his next appearance—having followed Nancy’s tracks directly to Rod—he’s in uniform with his Colt Python drawn.

“Just move away from her, son… real easy, like your ass depended on it.”

Colt introduced their top-of-the-line Python in 1955, built on the large I-frame and chambered for the .357 Magnum cartridge, a powerful alternative to the then-universal .38 Special round used in most American police revolvers. As intended, law enforcement agencies across the nation quickly embraced the smooth and precise Python, with many adopting it for decades until the general switch to semi-automatic pistols through the ’90s.

Visually distinguished by the vented upper rib along the top of the barrel, the Python was available in royal blue and stainless steel finishes, the latter a replacement for the original bright nickel option. Barrel lengths ranged from the shorter 2.5″ and 3″ through standard service lengths of 4″ and 6″ up to an unwieldy 8″, which could increase the total mass to a whopping three pounds. Colt discontinued the Python in 2005 after fifty years, though production was revived in January 2020. Though options are limited to 4.25″ and 6″ barrels, the new generation of Pythons—offered for $1,499—are modernized improvements of an already great revolver.

How to Get the Look

John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Even if you’re not interested in directly copying Don Thompson’s late-night look, you can at least find inspiration in the no-nonsense detective’s disregard for some of the more arbitrary “rules” of menswear, pulling on a light sport jacket with dark trousers and mismatching his belt and shoe leather, allowing an instinctive sense of self-expression and taste to take precedence over tired maxims.

• Light stone cotton single-breasted 3/2-roll sport jacket with “swelled-edge” notch lapels, welted breast pocket, flapped patch hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and single vent
• Dark royal blue yellow-and-white checked cotton long-sleeve sport shirt with point collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Dark charcoal flat front trousers with belt loops
• Black leather belt with gold-finished square single-prong belt buckle
• Brown ankle boots with tan laces and outsoles
• Stainless steel wristwatch with round silver dial on steel link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie… or all seven movies in the official canon!

The Quote

Look, I don’t want to get into this now—God knows you need time—but I sure would like to know what the hell you were doing shacking up with three other kids in the middle of the night!

The post A Nightmare on Elm Street: John Saxon’s Off-Duty Sports Coat appeared first on BAMF Style.

Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified (Episode 6.11: “Fugitive Number One”). Photo by Prashant Gupta/FX.

Vitals

Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, old-fashioned Deputy U.S. Marshal

Harlan County, Kentucky, Spring 2010 to Fall 2014

Series: Justified
Creator: Graham Yost
Costume Designers: Ane Crabtree (Season 1) & Patia Prouty (Seasons 2-6)

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Justified is one of my favorite fall shows (despite the fact that each season originally aired in the spring), and I always like to revisit the tangled, moonshine-soaked underworld of Harlan County every autumn.

The first episode established the series-long conflict between Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), who dug coal together in the mines of eastern Kentucky before their diverging career paths as Raylan rose through the ranks of the U.S. Marshals Service tracking down criminals like Boyd, who started the series as the explosives-loving leader of a gang of bank-robbing white supremacists.

Both Raylan and Boyd have frequently been the subjects of requests from fans of the series as the series costume designers neatly established each man’s signature style: Boyd, somewhat fussy for a country criminal, with his layered sport jackets, waistcoats with dangling pocket watch chains, and shirts buttoned to the neck; and Raylan, who blends old-fashioned cowboy aesthetics into his modern business apparel.

What’d He Wear?

Raylan typically alternated between his office uniform of a sports coat and tie or his off-duty outfits of trucker jackets, henleys, and flannel shirts, almost always worn with his go-to Levi’s jeans. As colder weather entered the hills around Harlan County, Raylan regularly layered his latter look by pulling on a dark wool coat over the double denim, beginning with the first-season episode “The Hammer” (Episode 1.10) and seen in nearly every season—except the fourth—through the climactic scene in the series finale, “The Promise” (Episode 6.13).

Raylan the gunfighter pulls his coat back for smoother access to his holstered Glock during a final confrontation in “The Promise” (Episode 6.13).

A modern take on the gunfighter’s archetypal duster—or the “badass longcoat” as defined by TV Tropes—Raylan’s coat was so frequently worn that at least three different coats were featured on the show, as explained by Justified expert Rick, who runs the excellent Facebook fan page It was Justified. The outfit was established during Ane Crabtree’s tenure as costume designer through the first season, remaining a favorite for the character after Patia Prouty took over from the second season onward.

Made from a charcoal herringbone wool, the 3/4-length coat extends to just above Timothy Olyphant’s knees, a flattering look for the lean, 6’0″-tall actor.

Raylan pulls his Glock on Cope (Tom Proctor) as he takes to the eastern Kentucky hills in search of Boyd, Ava, and the missing $10 million in “Collateral” (Episode 6.12).

At least one of Raylan’s coats came from Hugo Boss, as detailed in Rick’s linked post and a 2012 post on AskAndyAboutClothes forum, with a quote from Prouty explaining that it’s “an old (six years) Hugo Boss overcoat from a rental house that we sorta/kinda never returned. I’ve been forever trying to replace it because we always need extras, but I can’t find any more. I even went so far as to look for fabric like it to re-create it.” Prouty’s costume design team must have had success, as a 2018 auction of series props and costumes—three years after the finale aired—included Raylan’s clothing from the final three episodes that described the coat as DKNY.

Though the series’ costume team evidently cycled through several coats over the course of the series, all were similarly styled and detailed with the prominent edge-stitched collar and large-scaled herringbone weave as seen here under the sun in “Collateral” (Episode 6.12).

Four black plastic sew-through buttons fasten up to the neck, though Raylan always wears his coat fully open to allow unfettered access to his belt-holstered Glock. The edge-stitched Prussian collar adds a commanding quality to the otherwise minimally appointed coat, which has vertical-entry welt pockets on each side and a long single vent in the back. The sleeves are set-in at the shoulders and plain at the cuffs, devoid of any buttons, tabs, or other ornamentation or fixtures that could snag as the lawman moves to quickly draw his sidearm.

Hands in his pockets while awaiting the helicopter that will aid his search in “Fugitive Number One” (Episode 6.11), the scattered snow in the hills around him add context to Raylan’s smart layers.

Raylan regularly layered the coat over his favorite casual jacket, a medium blue wash denim Levi’s trucker jacket in the “Type III” pattern that the storied outfitter had been manufacturing since the 1960s. Rick’s It was Justified Facebook page explains that, to spare Timothy Olyphant from overheating and/or to aid his mobility in action sequences, a sleeveless Levi’s jean jacket was modified to be worn in scenes that called for it to be layered under the wool coat.

Raylan joins his father Arlo (Raymond J. Barry) for a shot of bourbon at the local VFW after Arlo talks down a suicidal veteran in “Fathers and Sons” (Episode 1.12). Raylan peels off his coat to show his full-sleeved Levi’s trucker jacket, though subsequent seasons would outfit Olyphant in a modified sleeveless Levi’s jacket when he needed to wear it under his herringbone coat.

Aligned with a horizontal yoke, the pair of pointed chest pockets are the same as introduced on the Levi’s 557XX jacket in the early ’60s, fastened on Raylan’s jacket through silver-toned “donut”-style rivet buttons matching the six on the front of the jacket and the set closing each cuff. The brand’s signature slanted seams taper down in a narrow “V” shape from under each chest-pocket flap to the waistband, which is additionally rigged with a button-tab adjuster toward the back of each side. Levi’s added hand pockets to their famous trucker jackets in the ’80s, positioned with a vertical entry just behind each set of tapered front seams.

Mina and Teena were already unhappy with “Officer Buzzkill” for ruining their pool day, and their frustration with Raylan only grows in “Weight” (Episode 5.10) when Raylan tricks Mina into handing over her phone so he can call Dewey Crowe.

Raylan debuted the wool coat over his double denim in “The Hammer” (Episode 1.10), worn over a navy blue cotton long-sleeved henley shirt that’s seen again with this outfit in “Fathers and Sons” (Episode 1.12). This particular henley has a narrow placket with four “donut”-style metal buttons that fasten right up to the top of the shirt’s crew-neck.

Boyd describes Raylan as “the agent of my salvation”, though he may be regretting his geniality as Raylan takes the opportunity to speak to his “congregation” as a chance to offer them a $50,000 reward for any information leading to Boyd’s capture in “The Hammer” (Episode 1.10). This marks the first appearance of Raylan layering his charcoal herringbone coat over the denim jacket and jeans, as well as the first of several dark henleys.

“When the Guns Come Out” (Episode 3.06) again finds Raylan wearing these layers over a henley, though it’s now a pitch black cotton long-sleeved shirt that has a slightly raised neckline that tapers down to the three-button placket. (I suspect it’s the same shirt that he wore under a black checked shirt three episodes earlier in “Harlan Roulette”.)

Raylan gradually adds layers to his black henley and jeans over the course of “When the Guns Come Out” (Episode 3.06).

Raylan skips this favorite look of his for most of the fourth season, bringing it back at the end of the fifth season in the episodes “Weight” (Episode 5.10) and “Restitution” (Episode 5.13). He wears another black cotton long-sleeved henley, this one with a narrow taped placket with four black recessed plastic 4-hole buttons.

Another day, another dark henley, this time seen under his denim jacket while trading barbs with Mina in “Weight” (Episode 5.10).

Raylan diverged from his usual henleys for a visit to the Bennett homestead in “For Blood or Money” (Episode 2.04), wearing the coat and denim with a checked cotton flannel long-sleeve shirt. Tucked into his jeans, the shirt is patterned in a small-scaled burgundy-and-gray tartan plaid, each color separated by a black graph-check. The shirt fastens up the front placket with black plastic 2-hole buttons.

“Uninvited don’t mean unwelcome,” assures Mags (Margo Martindale), the Bennett family matriarch, to a decidedly unwelcome Raylan in “For Blood or Money” (Episode 2.04).

The final trio of episodes—”Fugitive Number One” (Episode 6.11), “Collateral” (Episode 6.12), and “The Promise” (Episode 6.13)—results in an old west-style showdown, and the fact that Raylan was dressed through this narrative in the long coat layered over his denim reinforces my hypothesis that the look was meant to suggest a connection to occupational ancestors like the Earps.

Under his jackets, Raylan wears a navy-and-black micro-checked cotton flannel long-sleeved shirt from Rag & Bone, layered over a dark gray washed cotton crew-neck short-sleeved J. Crew pocket T-shirt.

Raylan visits a hospitalized Boyd in “Fugitive Number One” (Episode 6.11), wearing the mini-checked Rag & Bone shirt and dark gray J. Crew pocket T that he would wear under his denim jacket and charcoal herringbone coat through the following two episodes until the quickdraw shootout that would lead to the end of his career in eastern Kentucky.

Though Rag & Bone has discontinued this particular shirt, J. Crew continues to offer a “broken-in” pocket T in a shade of dyed cotton marketed as “Bedford coal”… which seems appropriate, given Raylan and Boyd’s shared history.

Interestingly, the reverse side of his Rag & Bone shirt shows a larger-scaled tartan plaid in the same colorway. The shirt has a narrow point collar, a front placket that Raylan wears open, and a breast pocket echoing the T-shirt underneath it.

Note the larger-scaled tartan check on the reverse side of the shirt, seen most prominently on Raylan’s rolled-up cuffs.

If Raylan even wears jeans with his sport jackets and ties at the office, you can be sure he’s going to be wearing them with this off-duty look. Although the wash varies between a medium blue to a darker indigo, he exclusively wears Levi’s 501 Original Fit jeans with the button-up fly, rivet-cornered five-pocket layout, and Levi’s signature arcuate stitching across the back pockets, flagged with the small red tab sewn against the back right pocket.

After being shot in the head—more accurately, his hat—in “The Promise” (Episode 6.13), a sprawled Raylan brings his head up as Loretta McCready (Kaitlin Dever) approaches him.

Raylan wears a dark brown tooled leather belt, edge-stitched in a contrasting white thread and increasingly worn at the edges to show the lighter brown natural leather. The belt closes through a polished silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Raylan wears his U.S. Marshals-issued badge and gun on the right side of his belt, the Glock holstered in a tan full-grain leather holster with a snap-closed top strap. In the first season, he had worn a Bianchi Model 59 Special Agent® holster, but then switched to a cosmetically similar holster custom-made by Alfonso Gun Leather of Hollywood for the second season onward.

Raylan keeps his gun hand ready during a final confrontation with Boyd Crowder in “The Promise” (Episode 6.13).

Raylan’s cowboy boots are an essential part of his image as an old-fashioned country lawman. For the first two seasons, Raylan had worn brown anteater boots by Justin Boots, a equestrian footwear company founded by H.J. Justin in Gainesville, Texas, in 1879.

Still wearing his Justin anteater boots in “Reckoning” (Episode 2.12), Raylan sidesteps the blood spilled during the gunfight that killed his aunt Helen.

Beginning with the third season, costume designer Patia Prouty had switched Raylan’s footwear to a pair of cigar-colored brown ostrich leg boots made by Lucchese, another Texan boot company that had been founded by Sicilian immigrant Salvatore “Sam” Lucchese in San Angelo in 1883, only four years after Justin. The tag from his costume for the final three episodes informs us that Raylan wore gray socks under his boots.

According to WesternOutlets.com, “ostrich skin is by far the best choice in the exotic leather category. It is one of the softest, yet most comfortable and durable, of all the exotic leathers. Ostrich has soft, medium-sheen finish and is easily maintained.” Ostrich leg is specifically characterized by “a distinguished wide scale pattern similar to chicken leg but with the durability and feel of lizard.”

Unless you’re an expert in exotic leather hides, the most significant visual difference between the screen-worn Justin anteater boots and the Lucchese L1380 ostrich leg boots appears to be that the latter are appointed with a set of seams running parallel over each instep similar to “bicycle-toe” vamps.

We linger a moment on Raylan’s Lucchese ostrich leg boots as he approaches one last old west-style showdown in “The Promise” (Episode 6.13).

Though a few shots in the pilot episode show him wearing a Rolex Submariner dive watch, the series initially established Raylan’s favorite wristwatch as one that has been identified by several as a TAG Heuer Series 6000 Chronometer sports watch with a brushed steel case, round white dial, and leather bands alternating between brown and black leather.

While does appear to wear the Series 6000 through much of the series, close-ups of his wrist in the final seasons reveal a non-TAG Heuer timepiece. This wristwatch is cosmetically similar, with a polished steel case rigged on a black leather strap. Likely activated by the extra pusher at 2 o’clock, the luminous light-colored round dial is printed bold black Arabic number hour markers, each with the coordinating 24-hour marker printed smaller in red.

To me, the watch resembled a Hamilton but a BAMF Style commenter and an eagle-eyed expert at the WatchUSeek forums identified Raylan’s last watch as a Versales, a budget-oriented Japanese quartz watch. (You can occasionally find Raylan-style Versales watches on Amazon.)

Fielding the suspicions of his boss via BlackBerry (remember those?), “Fugitive Number One” (Episode 6.11) provides a good glimpse at the wristwatch Raylan wears for the series’ final episodes.

Raylan maintains his consistent cowboy image with a sterling silver horseshoe ring, worn on his right ring finger and detailed with braided sides that taper toward the back of the band.

Elmore Leonard would only give permission for Justified to proceed if the show’s creators could confirm that Raylan Givens would be outfitted in what the author deemed to be a proper hat in the spirit of the Stetson “Open Road” described in Leonard’s stories. To guarantee perfection, Timothy Olyphant returned to Baron Hats, the Hollywood hatmaker he’d worked with on HBO’s proto-Western series Deadwood.

Baron Hats developed Raylan’s signature cowboy hat in a sahara tan 200XXX beaver felt, detailed with a 4.25″ cattleman’s-style crown, 3.25″-wide brim, and a slim brown tooled leather band with a steel ranger-style buckle.

Raylan’s horseshoe ring flashes as he dons his cowboy hat in “The Hammer” (Episode 1.10), having removed it to, uh, pray with Boyd Crowder’s “congregation”.

Integral to his image as an old-fashioned marshal, Raylan’s hat symbolically “retires” when it takes a bullet that’s nearly fatal for Raylan himself in the finale episode. For this scene, Raylan’s hat appears to have been swapped out for a genuine Stetson “Marshall” as “XXX San Angelo Collection” can be seen on the brown leather hatband, referring to a specific line created by the venerable Texan-based John B. Stetson Company.

While it’s well-documented that Raylan’s hat was custom-made for the production by Baron Hats, the silverbelly hat that took a bullet through the cattleman’s-style crown in the final episode appears to be a Stetson, based on the gilt “XXX San Angelo Collection” insignia against the brown leather sweatband.

Signifying the end of his career in the hills of eastern Kentucky, Raylan then abandons his bullet-damaged hat in favor of the custom-made fedora left behind by the now-deceased gunman who had just tried to kill him.

The Gun

The series dialogue occasionally suggests that Raylan Givens carries a .45-caliber Glock, though close-ups of the screen-used weapons determines that he and his fellow Deputy Marshals are actually armed with the Glock 17 service pistol, the standard full-sized Glock chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum.

As one would expect of an old-fashioned lawman, Raylan shows considerable proficiency with his sidearm throughout the series, explaining in “Weight” (Episode 5.10) that “me, I’m good to 50, 75 yards,” a bit beyond Glock 17’s effective range of 55 yards, though he may be relying on his stated confidence to intimidate the knife-wielding Danny Crowe (A.J. Buckley).

Raylan’s Glock comes out on the driver of a mobile OxyContin clinic in “When the Guns Come Out” (Episode 3.06)

Austrian engineer Gaston Glock brought his experience working with synthetic polymers to the development of the semi-automatic pistols that would bear his name. Although it’s been stated that the first model was named the Glock 17 in reference to the number of criteria required by the Austrian military for its new service pistol, this is a false etymology rooted in coincidence; Glock had named his pistol in tribute to it being his company’s 17th patent.

As the recoil-operated Glock 17 entered production and quickly shook up the global firearms market through the early 1980s, the company continued developing variants in different sizes and calibers, beginning with the introduction of the Glock 19 in 1988, a downscaled version of the 9mm Glock 17 that set the standard for interchangeability between most Glock pistols of the same caliber, regardless of size. As of 2021, more than three dozen variations of Glock pistols have been produced in calibers ranging from .22 LR and .380 ACP up to the powerful .45 ACP and proprietary .45 GAP rounds.

Given the cosmetic similarities between the 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber models, there would have little reason for the production to actually arm Olyphant with a Glock 21, especially given .45-caliber ammunition’s less reliable reputation for cycling blanks than the more universal 9x19mm cartridge. Although the .40-caliber Glock 22 would have been the more accurate reflection of what U.S. Marshals are issued in real life, stating that Raylan carries a .45-caliber sidearm likens him more to the legendary lawmen of the old west with their single-action Colt .45s.

One final showdown on Justified, this time between the Glock-wielding Raylan and his gunslinger-styled nemesis Boon (Jonathan Tucker), who’s armed with a single-action revolver, in the series finale, “The Promise” (Episode 6.13).

The Car

Throughout all six seasons of Justified, Raylan Givens drives a black 2003 Lincoln Town Car sedan, the executive cousin of the Ford Crown Victoria that had been an American law enforcement favorite for decades, though the Town Car was more frequently in use by fleet and limousine services.

The Town Car and Crown Vic were both built on the full-size Ford Panther rear-wheel-drive (RWD) platform that had been established in 1979, though the “Town Car” etymology dates back to a limited series of upmarket Continental sedans in the late 1950s, reused for another Lincoln trim option through the ’70s before it became a separate model in its own right.

According to IMCDB, Raylan’s Town Car was almost always a 2003 model, though he had also driven a 1998 Signature Series Town Car through the first season. As denoted by the silver lettering behind the rear doors, Raylan’s Town Car was an “Executive Series”, the entry-level trim.

Raylan with his black Lincoln Town Car in “Fugitive Number One” (Episode 6.11).

Beginning in 2003, all Town Cars were powered by a 4.6-liter Ford Modular SOHC V8 engine that generated 239 horsepower, mated to a four-speed automatic transmission. Once the flagship sedan of the Ford Motor Company, Lincoln ceased production of the Town Car after the 2011 model year, focusing on the Lincoln MKS full-size sedan that was more aligned with the company’s new direction.

How to Get the Look

Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens on Justified (Episode 6.12: “Collateral”). Photo by Prashant Gupta/FX.

Raylan Givens finds a cool and comfortable way to layer his off-duty looks in a manner consistent with his “business cowboy” persona, his double denim anchored by a well-traveled coat that serves as his gunslinger-style duster as he approaches his final shootout of the series.

• Dark long-sleeved henley or short-sleeved T-shirt
• Charcoal herringbone wool 3/4-length topcoat with edge-stitched Prussian collar, four-button front, welted vertical-entry side pockets, set-in sleeves with plain cuffs, and long single vent
• Blue denim Levi’s 557XX “Type III” trucker jacket with six “donut”-style rivet buttons, pointed chest pocket flaps, hand pockets, button-tab waist adjusters, and button cuffs
• Blue denim Levi’s 501 Original Fit button-fly jeans
• Dark brown tooled leather belt with a dulled steel single-prong buckle
• Tan full grain leather thumb-break belt holster, for full-size Glock pistol
• Brown exotic leather Western-style boots
• Baron Hats “The RG” sahara tan 200XXX beaver felt cattleman’s hat with a thin tooled leather band
• Stainless steel quartz wristwatch with round white luminous dial and black leather strap
• Sterling silver horseshoe ring with braided side detail
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series. I always recommend that fans of the show who are on Facebook follow super-fan Rick’s great page @EverythingJustified which features many great photos, videos, and moments from the series as well as shots of screen-worn gear.

If you want to see this outfit in action, you can primarily see these pieces worn together in the below ten episodes, which are some of the best of the series:

• “The Hammer” (Episode 1.10), directed by John Dahl, aired May 18, 2010
• “Fathers and Sons” (Episode 1.12), directed by Michael Katleman, aired June 1, 2010
• “For Blood or Money” (Episode 2.04), directed by John Dahl, aired March 2, 2011
• “Reckoning” (Episode 2.12), directed by Adam Arkin, aired April 27, 2011
• “When the Guns Come Out” (Episode 3.06), directed by Don Kurt, aired February 21, 2012
• “Weight” (Episode 5.10), directed by John Dahl, aired March 18, 2014
• “Restitution” (Episode 5.13), directed by Adam Arkin, aired April 8, 2014
• “Fugitive Number One” (Episode 6.11), directed by Jon Avnet, aired March 31, 2015
• “Collateral” (Episode 6.12), directed by Michael Pressman, aired April 7, 2015
• “The Promise” (Episode 6.13), directed by Adam Arkin, aired April 14, 2015

The Quote

I don’t care how it gets done… as long as it gets done.

The post Justified: Raylan’s Wool Coat and Double Denim appeared first on BAMF Style.

Telly Savalas as Lt. Theo Kojak on Kojak (Episode 1.08: “Dark Sunday”)

Vitals

Telly Savalas as Theo Kojak, NYPD lieutenant

New York City, Fall 1973

Series: Kojak
Episode: “Dark Sunday” (Episode 1.08)
Air Date: December 12, 1973
Director: Charles R. Rondeau
Creator: Abby Mann

Background

Who loves ya, baby?

As today would have been the 100th birthday of Telly Savalas—born January 21, 1922—it felt like the time to take a long-overdue look at the Greek-American actor’s signature role as the tough and tenacious Theo Kojak.

Kojak’s famous lollipops were introduced in the eighth episode, “Dark Sunday”, which begins with the murder of a small-time criminal named Artie Fowler (Marc Alaimo). “He used to love to play with cars, you know,” recalls Kojak. “Strip ’em, drive ’em, steal ’em… oh well, what else?” Through his investigations of the murder, Kojak welcomes Artie’s girlfriend Maria Cranston (Lara Parker) to his office. He has a lit cigarillo in his mouth when she enters, but he swiftly tosses it away in favor of a Tootsie Pop pulled from his desk… the first of what would become one of the character’s trademarks.

The new habit is called out in this same episode by Kojak’s fellow detective, Bobby Crocker (Kevin Dobson), who had been eyeing the suckers with some suspicion.

Crocker: Hey, what’s with the lollipops?
Kojak: I’m lookin’ to close the generation gap. Get outta here!

What’d He Wear?

Kojak would eventually join the vast fraternity of classic TV shows to credit the wardrobe to Botany 500, the American menswear brand that dressed dozens of sitcom stars and game show hosts across the 1960s and ’70s, though the New York-based brand wasn’t yet credited by the time credits rolled on “Dark Sunday” (Episode 1.08). Still, this early episode provides a great look at the glabrous lieutenant’s approach to dressing as Kojak subtly deconstructs his attire over the course of a long day’s investigation.

Throughout the course of Kojak, Savalas dressed his famously bald dome in trilbies like this black short-brimmed hat, decorated with a band of seven black-and-white braids densely stacked to create the effect of staggered static waves around the base of the crown.

Savalas rotated through several pairs of sunglasses as Kojak, often styled with colorful lenses affixed to fashionable frames. His “Dark Sunday” sunglasses appear to be wire-rimmed with blue tinted gradient lenses, resembling a squared aviator-style frame.

Layered against the brisk New York fall morning, Kojak wears his navy melton wool double-breasted coat, with shoulder straps (epaulettes) affecting a martial appearance. The peak lapels and breast pocket are finished with sporty “swelled” welted edges.

Though he dresses for this particular day on the job in a gray flannel suit that had appeared in earlier episodes like “Girl in the River” (Episode 1.05), Lieutenant Kojak is hardly the quintessential American office drone. The single-breasted jacket has notch lapels, rolling to a two-button front, and detailed with four-button cuffs and long double vents. The jacket has a welted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets that slant toward the back, and a flapped ticket pocket added to the right side. The suit’s matching single-breasted waistcoat (vest) has slim notch lapels, a four-button front, and four slim-welted pockets.

Kojak slips his fingers into his waistcoat’s lower pockets as he consults with Crocker.

Kojak holds up the flat front trousers with a black leather belt that closes through a large squared silver-toned single-prong buckle. The bottoms are plain-hemmed, breaking over his black leather shoes. The pockets slant back from behind the foremost belt loop, ending at each side seam, and there are no back pockets.

Kojak further deconstructs his wardrobe around the office by removing both his suit jacket and waistcoat.

The pale-blue shirt has a substantially sized collar, consistent with early ’70s trends, as well as a front placket, breast pocket, and double (French) cuffs that he fastens with a set of large silver etched disc links that resemble coins. His tie is printed in a navy, burgundy, bronze, and black paisley.

Making the most of that lollipop.

Savalas undoubtedly wore his usual array of gold necklaces layered under his shirt, but Kojak’s visible jewelry is limited to a pair of bracelets and a gold ring flashing from his left hand. He wears a different bracelet on each wrist, with the right bracelet connected by a series of small circular links and the left bracelet a twisted rope chain.

By the late 1970s, Savalas publicly touted Rolex watches but he spent much of the decade on Kojak wearing a unique digital timepiece. Finished with a gold case on a tapered gold expanding band, the watch resembles the Pulsar-style LED watch that Hamilton had brought to market at the start of the decade and popularized on screen via Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die.

Kojak flashes plenty of gold from his wrists.

Kojak’s digital watch has been identified as a gold-plated Omega Time Computer 1, specifically a 1974 model described by Uncrate as “one of the first LED watches made, sporting more transistors than the smallest TV of the time.” Solar Navigator goes on to explain that this waterproof watch has a single magnetic switch on the side that triggers the red-lit LED display.

The Gun

Kojak draws his issued revolver, identified by IMFDB as a Smith & Wesson Model 15 with a two-inch “snub-nosed” barrel appropriate for a plainclothes detective. Smith & Wesson had introduced the K-15 Combat Masterpiece at the end of the 1940s, renaming it the Model 15 the following decade when the brand designated each of its models with a numeric nomenclature. Per its original moniker, the revolver was built on Smith & Wesson’s medium-sized “K” frame and was chambered for the .38 Special ammunition typical of law enforcement service revolvers. The two-inch barreled variant was introduced in 1964 and would be discontinued in 1988 alongside the lengthy 8 3/8″ barrel.

How to Get the Look

Telly Savalas as Lt. Theo Kojak on Kojak (Episode 1.08: “Dark Sunday”)

Though the character’s wardrobe would rotate through a selection of uniquely detailed suits and sport jackets, this notable episode that introduced his penchant for lollipops illustrated how Lieutenant Kojak could also add his personal flourishes to a relatively conventional suit.

• Gray flannel suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, flapped ticket pocket, 4-button cuffs, and long double vents
  • Single-breasted 4-button waistcoat with slim notch lapels and four welted pockets
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Pale-blue shirt with large collar, front placket, breast pocket, and double/French cuffs
• Navy, burgundy, and black paisley tie
• Black leather shoes
• Navy melton wool double-breasted coat with shoulder straps/epaulettes
• Black felt trilby with black-and-white braided band
• Wire-rimmed sunglasses with blue tinted gradient lenses
• Gold round-link chain bracelet
• Gold twisted rope-chain bracelet
• Gold ring
• Gold-plated Pulsar-style LED digital watch on expanding band

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the series.

Apologies for the low-resolution screenshots, but I unfortunately don’t have access to any high-quality versions of Kojak episodes.

The Quote

New York’s finest? They’re gonna end up makin’ the Keystone Kops seem like grave-diggers.

The post Telly Savalas as Kojak: A Gray Suit for the First Lollipop appeared first on BAMF Style.