Vitals

Nick Nolte as Bob Montagnet, retired thief and junkie gambler

French Riviera, Spring 2002

Film: The Good Thief
Release Date: February 28, 2003
Director: Neil Jordan
Costume Designer: Penny Rose

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Since Nick Nolte turns 85 tomorrow, today’s post responds to a long-overdue request from BAMF Style reader Steve who has asked to see the actor’s style in The Good Thief, Neil Jordan’s remake of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1956 French film noir Bob le flembeur. Nolte stars as the titular Bob Mantagnet, a retired thief now living as a junkie gambler in the French Riviera, where he receives the opportunity to pull the proverbial “one last job”—stealing priceless art from the vault of a Monte Carlo casino on the eve of the Monaco Grand Prix.

After it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2002, The Good Thief was finally released in Ireland, the UK, and North America throughout the following spring.

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What’d He Wear?

Bob cycles between two different black leather jackets: a longer car coat and a bomber-style blouson jacket. The latter is made from a soft but hardy black chrome-tanned cowhide with a lightly corrected pebble grain, texturally contrasting with the black ribbed-knit collar, cuffs, and hem. The straight-zip front is reinforced by an extended storm flap to insulate it when closed. Generously cut over Nolte’s already burly physique, the jacket also features two vertical-entry hand pockets on the sides.

Bob’s dizzying array of baroque shirts belong somewhere between Tony Soprano‘s closet and the Dan Flashes sale rack. The most subdued shirt that he wears with this black leather bomber jacket consists of muted orange and gray stripes against a puckered cloth, styled with a spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs.

From there, the designs get crazier, including an abstract slate-and-peach geometric print against a black ground. The designs recall contemporary early 2000s-era prints by outfitters like Burma Bibas, Luchiano Visconti, Pierre Cardin, and Tori Richard.

Also worn with the aforementioned car coat, the most “organized” pattern of Bob’s wild silky shirts is a series of bronze, gold, pale-blue, and black vertically oriented rectangles—with black rectangles inside some of those gold ones—all connected by a black abstract grid against a dusty taupe-gray ground. This shirt also has a soft point collar, plain button-up front, and button cuffs.

Bob wears black trousers with a mid-rise and pleats that harmonize with his ample fits of his fashionably oversized jacket and shirts. His black leather belt closes through a hefty brass rectangular buckle, detailed with a turquoise stone mounted in the center.

The fourth shirt that Bob wears with his jacket is patterned in a busy lighter beige, mustard, and black tribal-style all-over print, also with a soft point collar, eight black buttons up the plain front, adjustable button cuffs, and a longer hem that looks sloppier when Bob initially wears it untucked.

Bob wears this shirt with light tobacco-brown double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. His shoes are plain black leather apron-toe derbies.

Bob’s black wire-framed Ray-Ban sunglasses appear to be the “Highstreet” model, possibly the RB3023, a style popular during the Y2K era when narrower oval-shaped eyewear dominated men and women’s fashion.

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How to Get the Look

Bob le flamboyant.

• Black pebble-grain cowhide leather bomber-style blouson jacket with black ribbed-knit collar, cuffs, and hem, straight-zip front, and vertical-entry side pockets
• Abstract-printed silky long-sleeved shirts with point collar, plain button-up front, and button cuffs
• Black double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather belt with turquoise-mounted brass buckle
• Black leather apron-toe derby shoes
• Black wire-framed Ray-Ban Highstreet sunglasses with green lenses

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.