Vitals

Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, folk singer-songwriter

Newport, Rhode Island, Summer 1965

Film: A Complete Unknown
Release Date: December 25, 2024
Director: James Mangold
Costume Designer: Arianne Phillips
Jacket Maker: Jimmy McBride

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Sixty years ago tonight, Bob Dylan closed out his third consecutive appearance at the annual Newport Folk Festival by taking the stage with a backing band, signaling a seismic shift in music that stunned and polarized the attendees.

The controversial Sunday night set became the climactic scene in James Mangold’s acclaimed A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan alongside Ed Norton as Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.

Mangold and Jay Cocks’ screenplay was based on Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!, which begins by summarizing the now-mythic performance:

On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in black jeans, black boots, and a black leather jacket, carrying a Fender Stratocaster in place of his familiar acoustic guitar.

The crowd shifted restlessly as he tested his tuning and was joined by a quintet of backing musicians. Then the band crashed into a raw Chicago boogie and, straining to be heard over the loudest music ever to hit Newport, he snarled his opening line: “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more!”

What happened next is obscured by a maelstrom of conflicting impressions: The New York Times reported that Dylan “was roundly booed by folk-song purists, who considered this innovation the worst sort of heresy,” In some stories Pete Seeger, the gentle giant of the folk scene, tried to cut the sound cables with an axe. Some people were dancing, some were crying, many were dismayed and angry, many were cheering, many were overwhelmed by the ferocious shock of the music or astounded by the negative reactions.

As if challenging the doubters, Dylan roared into “Like a Rolling Stone”, his new radio hit, each chorus confronting them with the question: “How does it feel?” The audience roared back its mixed feelings, and after only three songs he left the stage. The crowd was screaming louder than ever-some with anger at Dylan’s betrayal, thousands more because they had come to see their idol and he had barely performed.

Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary, tried to quiet them, but it was impossible. Finally, Dylan reappeared with a borrowed acoustic guitar and bid Newport a stark farewell: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”.

That is the legend of Dylan at Newport, and much of it is true.

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What’d He Wear?

In addition to depicting the first four years of Bob Dylan’s music career, A Complete Unknown also chronicles his sartorial transition from working-class folk hero to ’60s rocker through Arianne Phillips’ Academy Award-nominated costume design.

“We broke Bob’s transformation into three distinct beats… [which] informed everything—the costumes, hair, and overall silhouette. For example, the early ’60s silhouette was looser and baggier, whereas by the mid-’60s style became more streamlined and modern,” Phillips explained to Spencer Williams for The Art of Costume, descriing the philosophy guiding her 67 wardrobe changes for Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan.

“The last beat is 1965,” she elaborated to Ingrid Schmidt for The Hollywood Reporter. “After he has gone to London and met The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Animals, he adopted the mod look… in tandem with him going electric and being in a band.”

By 1965, his rugged workwear had been replaced by a mod-influenced skinny silhouette that swaps durable outerwear and blue jeans for dark tailored pieces, statement shirts covering his neck, and narrow black jeans.

Based on Dylan’s actual attire for his pivotal appearance closing the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Phillips designed the black leather jacket which she told GoldDerby “represents his departure from being the solo folk musician with the guitar in those earthy colors he wore earlier. Now, he desires to be in a band, which is at the crux of our story of him—plugging in and going electric. So the visual mirrors the desire of a young artist. Where we leave him is, I believe, the great rock-and-roll American archetype that Bob still echoes to this day.”

The jacket didn’t go unnoted by fans, as Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! includes the recollection of “self-described Dylan fanatic” Leda Schubert who recalled feeling abandoned by the singer after seeing he “was all of a sudden wearing a black leather jacket.”

Unlike leather jackets rooted still rooted in working-class fashions like flight blousons or Springsteen-esque biker jackets, Dylan takes the stage in a hip black aniline leather jacket cut like a single-breasted sports coat with slim notch lapels, patch pockets over the breast and hips, and a narrow fit that augments Chalamet’s lean frame. Made by Jimmy McBride in what appears to be a top-grain lambskin, the two-button jacket has a single vent, and the sleeves are finished with plain cuffs.

Dylan’s shift toward black clothing through this era was likely influenced by his friendship with the Man in Black himself, charismatically portrayed in A Complete Unknown by Boyd Holbrook. Dylan and Cash initially connect at the ’64 Newport Folk Festival, where J.R. wears a black leather vest for his performance—perhaps planting the seed for Dylan’s black leather jacket the following year.

“Johnny Cash had such a significant influence [on Dylan]—not just… artistically but also in terms of style,” shared Phillips—who was also Oscar-nominated for her costumes in Mangold’s 2005 Cash biopic, Walk the Line—to The Art of Costume. “Bob’s wardrobe in 1965 leans into darker colors, but there are hints of vibrancy, like the orange and polka-dot shirts. These looks foreshadow Bob’s transition to the mod-inspired outfits of 1966 and 1967, when he started having clothes made in England, drawing from the British invasion.”

Beverly Hills shirtmaker Anto crafted the custom shirts worn by Dylan, Cash, and Seeger, including the silky burnt-orange bespoke shirt that provides the sole pop of color among Dylan’s all-black Newport ’65 garb. The shirt has a narrow tab collar that Dylan interestingly wears buttoned but sans tie, with the off-white contrasting collar button matching those up the front placket and fastening each cuff. The shirt also has a pocket over the left breast.

Phillips collaborated with Levi’s Vintage Clothing (LVC) archivist Paul O’Neill to research and rebuild Dylan’s jeans from this era, from his self-mended blue 501s earlier in the decade to the black preshrunk heavyweight denim Levi’s “Super Slims” that Dylan wore through much of 1965, paired for the Newport scenes with a black leather belt fastened through a silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Levi’s historian Tracey Panek shared on the brand’s blog that the Super Slims had actually been introduced as Lot 351 in the fall 1965 catalog, just after Dylan would have played at Newport. Panek’s research details that the jeans were offered as slim with “low rise styling” the following spring before they were rechristened under Lot 606 that fall, with “no need to peg… already lean & trim—2 inches narrower.” Typically offered in indigo blue but available in a range of psychedelic hues, the Super Slims were originally available through 1972.

These trendy jeans featured the typical five-pocket configuration, belt loops, and a 505-style zip fly, but—true to their name—were cut with dramatically tapered legs. To differentiate from standard cuts like the 501 and further their youth appeal, the Super Slims departed from the standard Levi’s branding by dropping the usual leather waistband patch and arcuate pocket stitching; the back-right pocket still featured a Levi’s-branded tab, albeit in gold-printed black rather than the familiar red.

While Dylan’s style evolves through this period, he does maintain the through-line of always being “a boot guy,” as Phillips declared to Ella Joyce for HERO, transitioning from his rough-outs and cowboy boots until he “ends up in these very mod-looking Chelsea boots.” This style was also favored by Bob’s new friends across the pond, to the extent that a tight-fitting variation with Cuban heels and pointed toes became known as “Beatle boots”—not unlike the “black leather boots with pointy toes and inch-and-a-half heels” that Wald describes Dylan wearing that weekend. Western Costume Co.’s longtime head shoemaker, the late Mauricio Osorio, built much of Chalamet’s screen-worn footwear, including the black leather Chelsea boots he sports for these 1965-set scenes.

Signaling Dylan’s increasingly aloof approach to the folk scene that brought him fame, he begins wearing sunglasses almost all the time—regardless of time of day or whether he’s inside or outside. Inspired by the real Dylan’s own Frame France glasses during this period, Chalamet’s screen-worn shades have been debated on Reddit as possibly the Imperial Optical “Mohawk” or “New Yorker” or the Dylan-inspired Straight to Hell “Hurricane”, though Phillips confirmed to Erin Fitzpatrick from Who What Wear that Old Focals owner Russ Campbell equipped her with a set of period Bausch & Lomb sunglasses with angular black acetate Wayfarer-informed “cat-eye” frames.

Now sold out, Searchlight Pictures also collaborated with RETROSUPERFUTURE on a set of movie-specific sunglasses “designed to reference the unique 1950s and 1960s look.”

Reel vs. Real

In Dylan Goes Electric!, Elijah Wald describes Dylan’s outfit as he took the Newport Folk Festival stage on the evening of July 25, 1965:

He was dressed in a leather jacket, shiny in the lights, and a salmon-colored shirt buttoned tight at the neck. His jeans were tight and black above his black cowboy boots, and his guitar was a solid-body Stratocaster with a two-tone sunburst finish.

From what I could see of photos and footage from the concert, Chalamet’s screen-worn leather jacket is a near-perfect recreation of the real Dylan’s jacket that night. Though Wald’s text refers more than once to Dylan wearing black “jeans”, photos from the evening more closely resemble tailored slacks, which also aligns with Broadside‘s contemporary reporting that the singer wore a “black leather sports jacket, red shirt, tapered black slacks.”

Given that Levi’s wouldn’t introduce their famous “Super Slims” until later in 1965, it’s likely that A Complete Unknown begins dressing Dylan in these skinny jeans slightly earlier than he actually wore them—though he would indeed wear them!

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How to Get the Look

Dylan’s blacked-out Newport look fused the Man in Black’s outlaw aura with the sharp, slimmed-down cool of the British Invasion, with a silky orange shirt peeking through for just enough color to show that he wasn’t dressing to disappear—just to declare a new direction home.

• Black leather 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, plain cuffs, and single vent
• Burnt-orange silky long-sleeved shirt with narrow tab collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Black heavyweight cotton denim Levi’s “Super Slim” tapered-leg jeans with belt loops and five-pocket layout
• Black leather belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather Chelsea boots
• Black acetate wayfarer-style sunglasses

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and The Other Side of the Mirror, Murray Lerner’s documentary about Dylan’s three subsequent appearances at the Newport Folk Festival.

In addition to the below sources relevant to Arianne Phillips’ costume design for A Complete Unknown, I also recommend reading Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! which formed the basis for much of A Complete Unknown‘s narrative.

Sources:

• The Art of Costume — “Dressing ‘A Complete Unknown’: Arianne Phillips on Crafting the Costumes That Defined Bob Dylan’s Iconic Style” by Spencer Williams
• Fashionista — “An Oscar-Nominated Costume Designer on What Makes for a Worthwhile Film-Fashion Brand Collaboration” by Dhani Mau
• GoldDerby — “A Complete Unknown costume designer Arianne Phillips interview” by Christopher Rosen
• HERO — “He was just a 19-year-old kid who happened to be a genius” – costume designer Arianne Phillips on transforming Timothée Chalamet into Bob Dylan” by Ella Joyce
• The Hollywood Reporter — “A Complete Unknown: The Making of Costume Designs of Bob Dylan Film” by Ingrid Schmidt
• IndieWire — “‘Complete Unknown’ Costumes: Dressing Bob Dylan, Joan Baez” by Jim Hemphill
• W Magazine — “What Bob Dylan Wore: How ‘A Complete Unknown’ Captures the Style of a Generation” by Fawnia Soo Hoo
• Who What Wear — “Arianne Phillips on Dressing Timothée Chalamet and Bringing Bob Dylan’s Style to Life” by Erin Fitzpatrick