Vitals

Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Impossible Missions Force agent

Prague to London, Spring 1996

Film: Mission: Impossible
Release Date: May 22, 1996
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Penny Rose

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Despite how much I enjoy espionage-themed spy movies—indicated by the plethora I’ve written about James Bond, Jason Bourne, and Three Days of the Condor—I had strangely never seen Ethan Hunt in action until just last week, two months shy of my 36th birthday, when all the buzz around Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning convinced me that it was time for me to trust Tom Cruise’s almost-superhuman spy one… first… time.

And, of course, I loved it. I had either forgotten or didn’t know that the 1996 film was directed by Brian De Palma from a script co-written by Robert Towne—with David Koepp, from a story by Koepp and Steven Zaillain. None of that considerable talent was wasted in rebooting Bruce Geller’s TV series for the screen, resulting in a stylish and fun blockbuster that became the third highest-grossing movie of 1996 and spawned a successful film franchise with the eighth (and likely final) installment released last month.

Mission: Impossible reintroduces Impossible Missions Force (IMF) team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight), a reimagining of the character originated by Peter Graves on TV decades earlier. The movie begins as Jim assembles his squad—Ethan Hunt, Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas), Jack Harmon (an uncredited Emilio Estevez), Jim’s wife Claire Phelps (Emmanuelle Béart), and Hannah Williams (Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė)—at a Prague safe-house, where he briefs the team on their upcoming mission to surveil and stop a rogue agent from stealing a list of the CIA’s non-official cover (NOC) identities.

When the IMF team and their target are wiped out with the NOC list missing, suspicion falls on the mission’s lone survivor: Ethan Hunt, who now has to prove his innocence while finding the real mole at the center of the scheme.

Sounds impossible? Not for Ethan Hunt.

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What’d He Wear?

Aside from his disguise during the Kiev-set pre-credits sequence, Ethan Hunt’s everyday wardrobe introduces him to the audience as the stereotypical ’90s “cool guy”—as black leather sport jackets, pullover tees and sweaters, and jeans were a favorite of contemporary costume designers establishing this type of character from Matt LeBlanc in the pilot episode of Friends to Ethan Hawke’s romantic tourist in Before Sunrise.

Though Ethan does later pull on a dark-gray pinstripe suit tailored by Timothy Everest, his fondness for this worn black leather jacket and dressed-down shirts reinforces his youthful energy and all-American swagger, in contrast to cinematic contemporaries like the well-tailored James Bond. Ethan repeats this outfit anytime he is “off-duty” through this first movie, establishing what would become his go-to casual aesthetic of dark leather jackets and pullover shirts across the subsequent Mission: Impossible films, albeit with cuts and styles updated to match the times.

Ethan Hunt’s black leather jacket in the first Mission: Impossible is styled more like a sport jacket or blazer than a traditional piece of outerwear—a fashionable choice for a ’90s man who wanted the toughness of leather with a more refined silhouette than a moto or flight jacket.

The single-breasted jacket features notch lapels with welted edges, a two-button front (always left undone), a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and a single rear vent—all details lifted from conventional tailoring. Only the plain, buttonless cuffs and the horizontal yoke across the back break from traditional sports coat design.

Update! Pete Brooker, host of the From Tailors With Love podcast and @therewillbebond, confirmed that tailor Timothy Everest confirmed the jacket was made by the UK brand Hepworths, where Everest had worked as a sales associate in his teens.

Costume designer Penny Rose and her team ensured the jacket reflected the kind of wear you’d expect from an off-duty spy, with soft creases and natural wrinkling that provide lived-in realism. The fine, smooth-grain leather with its semi-matte finish and supple drape suggests a lambskin shell—lightweight yet luxe, and easy to move in during moments of espionage or explosion.

During the introductory “spaghetti scene” in Prague, Ethan wears a gray ribbed wool V-neck long-sleeved sweater.

Later, when Ethan is on the run with Claire and recruiting fellow disavowed agents Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Franz Krieger (Jean Reno) into his rogue mission, he layers the jacket over a simple black cotton V-neck T-shirt.

The most significant sequence to feature this outfit begins in a London safe-house after Ethan’s rogue team has successfully extracted the NOC list from CIA headquarters. He wears the jacket over a soft ribbed wool long-sleeved V-neck sweater that’s identical in styling to the dark-gray one he wore earlier but in a much lighter color. It looks light-gray in the safe-house but then appears to be a pale shade of lilac at the café, a confusion compounded by the Prop Store describing it as “beige” in their 2015 auction listing.  The most likely color is a pale stone-gray with warm undertones that present pinker in the London café lighting.

For the penultimate scene in London, Ethan wears the jacket over a plain French-blue cotton crew-neck T-shirt.

While they lack the visible twill weave or high-contrast stitching often associated with denim, the slightly waxy sheen and trim structure of Ethan’s pants suggest over-dyed black jeans in a lightweight cotton, styled with a zip fly and the typical five-pocket arrangement that includes two patch-style back pockets.

Ethan surprisingly contrasts the dressed-down outfit with black calf leather cap-toe oxfords—typically more appropriate with suits than leather jackets and jeans. It could be argued that—even as a master of disguise able to craft realistic masks of Jon Voight while on the run—Ethan prefers to pack light, keeping a single pair of shoes appropriate for his pinstripe suit that also harmonizes with his black-centric casual-wear. In context, it serves to balance the edgy leather jacket and black jeans by maintaining a sharp sophistication within the European setting.

When not wearing his team-issued video watches, Ethan straps on a Casio DW290-1V alarm chronograph, establishing the character’s initial preference for tactical, blacked-out Casio tool watches that would continue with his pair of G-Shocks in the following two sequels.

Water-resistant to 200 meters, this affordable quartz-powered digital watch features a hefty 50.6mm-wide case with mineral glass protecting the two-row display that defaults to the day and date across the top and full time readout across the bottom. Four pushers around the outside control features like the alarm, stopwatch, timer, and electro-luminescent “Illuminator” display backlight. Despite some color markings on the case and display, the watch is predominantly black, including the resin band.

New to the Casio lineup when Mission: Impossible was released in the spring of 1996, Casio continues to market the DW-290 today, currently sold (as of June 2025) for a modest $54.95—barely even 1% the cost of his cinematic contemporary’s preferred Omega Seamaster!

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What to Imbibe

Unlike that same martini-swilling contemporary, Ethan Hunt isn’t much of a drinker on the job, though we do see him with a nearly finished beer at a London pub during the denouement of Mission: Impossible. The actual brand isn’t identified, though Ethan’s nationality and the presence of Budweiser bottles in the scene—as well as spotted earlier in the London safe-house—make this classic American lager a reasonable choice to pair with your movie night.

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The Gun

Ethan Hunt briefly retrieves a Beretta 8000 Cougar F semi-automatic pistol that Jim’s IMF team kept stashed in a vase in the Prague “crow’s nest”. Though Ethan draws the Beretta when Claire returns later that evening, the first Mission: Impossible remains the only movie in the series where Ethan never fires a gun.

Beretta launched the 8000 series in 1994 as a more compact alternative to the full-size Model 92 series. Like many other Beretta handguns nicknamed after big cats, the 8000 series became known as the “Cougar” and was made available in F (traditional double-action), G (decock-only DA/SA), and D (double-action only) configurations. The Cougar’s relatively rare rotating-barrel locking system allowed for lower recoil despite its aluminum alloy frame keeping it a lighter weight than most contemporary recoil-operated pistols. Originally developed around the .40 S&W cartridge, Beretta quickly added variations in .357 SIG and 9x19mm Parabellum, followed by .41 Action Express and 9x21mm variations for the European market and a .45 ACP version in the United States.

Claire’s comment that “we’ve got 75 rounds for your Beretta, but only 20 for the SIG-Sauer” suggests that Ethan’s Beretta takes different ammunition than her SIG-Sauer P228, which would have only been chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum. Although Beretta did offer Cougar models chambered for .357 SIG, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP—with IMFDB users even speculating that the screen-used pistol is the latter 8045 model—a close-up of the markings on Ethan’s pistol reveal the model is indeed a “8000”, which typically designates 9mm models. Additionally, the 8045 wasn’t introduced until 1998, two years after Mission: Impossible was released.

Given that the IMF team is stationed in Prague, it may be possible that Ethan’s 8000F Cougar was meant to be chambered in .41 AE or 9x21mm, though my understanding is that the slide would have simply omitted the word “COUGAR” to read “8000 F” on these European-only models.

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How to Get the Look

Rebooting the Mission: Impossible franchise meant introducing Ethan Hunt in a fashionable wardrobe reflecting the quintessential ’90s “cool guy”: black leather jackets and jeans, paired with the latest Casio digital watch and a rotation of soft sweaters and T-shirts.

• Black leather 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, plain cuffs, and single vent
• Pale-gray ribbed wool V-neck long-sleeved sweater
• Black lightweight cotton jeans
• Black calf leather cap-toe oxford shoes
  • Since you’re not an agent on the run, I’d advise channeling the same aesthetic with more contextually appropriate chukka boots. But you do you!
• Black digital Casio DW290-1V quartz-powered “Alarm Chronograph” watch on black resin band

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Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to…

…check out the movie, but don’t eat all your popcorn before it even starts!

You can also read more about the costumes of Mission: Impossible in the From Tailors With Love podcast episode in which Pete Brooker and Matt Spaiser interview tailor Timothy Everest.

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The Quote

If you’re dealing with a man who has crushed, shot, stabbed, and detonated five members of his own IMF team, how devastated do you think you’re gonna make him by hauling Mom and Uncle Donald down to the county courthouse?