Vitals

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

Between Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio, Spring 2010

Series: Justified
Episode: “The Collection” (Episode 1.06)
Air Date: April 20, 2010
Director: Rod Holcomb
Creator: Graham Yost
Costume Designer: Ane Crabtree

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I’ve recently been rewatching Justified with my wife—her first time seeing the series—and it renewed my interest in how Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) dresses while both on- and off-duty working the Eastern District of Kentucky.

Debuting sixteen years ago this month in March 2010, Justified‘s first season especially blended a case-of-the-week format with the series mythology revolving around how the Givens family feud with Harlan County families like the Crowders and Bennetts translated to Raylan’s crusade against arch criminal Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) as well as his ongoing drama with his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea).

One of the last standalone episodes outside of this format was the sixth episode, “The Collection”, revolving around crooked Cincinnati art dealer Owen Carnes (Peter Jason), whom Raylan increasingly suspects was murdered by his wife Caryn (Katherine LaNasa), despite being reminded that murder alone doesn’t necessarily fall under the U.S. Marshals Service’s investigative purview. The titular collection refers to Owen’s bizarre interest in amassing the early paintings of Adolf Hitler who—in what I can only hope was an extreme coincidence—shares his April 20th birthday in 1889 with the episode’s air date in 2010.

The episode was especially rewarding to revisit this year as my wife and I have been watching and enjoying The Pitt, for which LaNasa recently won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.

---

What’d He Wear?

Following Elmore Leonard’s direction in the source story “Fire in the Hole”, Raylan Givens adopts a western style of wide-brimmed Stetson-style hat and cowboy boots. After the first five episodes established his on-duty look with dark suit jackets and ties often orphaned with jeans, costume designer Ane Crabtree used “The Collection” to soft-launch his off-duty template that kept the hat, boots, and jeans but with plaid shirts over henleys.

I believe this episode is the sole appearance for Raylan’s gray-and-black buffalo-check cotton shirt, styled with a button-down collar and a front placket with black plastic buttons through black-threaded buttonholes. The shirt also has button cuffs and an open breast pocket where he clips his ID badge while at the office. He wears it over a heather gray henley shirt with a two-button top placket, lined in a solid matte gray. It isn’t clear if the henley is long- or short-sleeved, but—based on how easily Raylan is able to roll up his over-shirt sleeves—I suspect the latter.

Raylan wears his usual dark indigo stonewash denim jeans, which harmonize better with the informality of his open plaid shirt and henley than how he typically wears it on duty with a suit jacket and skinny tie. Costume designer Ane Crabtree had selected the iconic five-pocket Levi’s 501® Original Fit for Raylan’s jeans from the pilot episode onward, appreciating both the symbolism of no-frills American denim and how the lean silhouette flatters his Western lawman image.

He always holds the jeans up with tooled leather belts that close through silver-toned single-prong buckles, cycling between brown and black leather. With this outfit, he wears the latter, worn in some spots to reveal the natural brown leather under the black dye. He carries his full-size Glock service pistol in a smooth light-brown grain leather paddle holster fastened onto the right side of his belt.

Through the first two seasons of Justified, Raylan’s exotic brown cowboy boots were anteater leather boots by Justin. He would continue wearing these through the second season, replaced in the third season by custom-made ostrich-leg Lucchese boots under the supervision of costume designer Patia Prouty, who replaced Crabtree after the first season.

For most of the first season, Raylan’s wristwatch is a sporty TAG Heuer Series 6000 chronometer with a brushed steel case, matching rotating bezel, and a round white dial with a date aperture window at 3 o’clock. As with his belts, he rotates between brown and black leather straps—sometimes within the same episode! During “The Collection”, he typically wears a brown scaled gator-style leather band, though this switches to a swollen black leather strap ridged through the center for the scene when he drops in on his ex-wife’s new husband Gary Hawkins (William Ragsdale).

Aside from the Rolex Submariner that Olyphant occasionally sports in the pilot, the TAG would be Raylan’s main watch until it was replaced later in the series by a cosmetically similar but considerably more budget-friendly quartz watch by the Japanese company Versales.

Though the boots change, the watches evolve, and even the hat isn’t always there, Raylan’s constant affectation is the sterling silver horseshoe-shaped ring on his right hand, reinforcing the cowboy imagery more prominently demonstrated by his boots and hat.

And about that hat? Elmore Leonard had intended it to be a “businessman’s Stetson” and the venerated hatmaker is even mentioned in the series dialogue, but the screen-worn hat was actually crafted by Mark Mejia at the Burbank-based Baron Hats, which had also crafted Timothy Olyphant’s headgear on Deadwood several years earlier. Rendered in a sahara tan 200XXX beaver felt, the hat follows a classic cattleman’s-style profile with its 4.25″-tall crown and 3.25″-wide brim, finished with a narrow brown tooled leather band that tapers to an engraved silver three-piece buckle set.

Raylan keeps a dark-gray woolen flannel single-breasted jacket at the office that he pulls on over his shirt to dress up the look when revisiting the Carnes household. Possibly orphaned from a two-piece suit, this three-button jacket has narrow notch lapels, a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and four-button cuffs. It lacks any rear vents that would ease the fabric pulling over his sidearm, so the jacket bunches up over the bulk of his holstered Glock.

---

The Gun

Raylan’s reputation for gunplay catches up with him in “The Collection” when he meets assistant district attorney David Vasquez (Rick Gomez) assigned to look into the Tommy Bucks shooting that opened the series—unfortunately just as Raylan is adjusting the wooden revolver decorating his cubicle wall. Despite this, he manages to keep his Marshal Service-issued Glock 17 holstered even during Caryn Carnes’ eventual arrest at the end of the episode.

Chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum, the Glock 17 was the Austrian firm’s first pistol produced for the market when it was introduced in 1982. Raylan frequently refers to his own Glock as a .45-caliber model, suggesting its meant to be the cosmetically similar Glock 21, though close-ups of the screen-used weapon show that it’s a 9mm Glock 17.

---

What to Imbibe

Raylan pulls from the Carnes fridge a Budweiser—or at least a prop beer with a fictional label mocked up to look identical to Budweiser—while talking to Caryn, who pours herself a shot of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey… a potential red flag to her character given how much Justified is soaked in Kentucky bourbon. He drinks another Bud outside his motel room later that night, firmly establishing this all-American blue-collar classic lager as his characteristic brew of choice.

---

How to Get the Look

Foregoing the hat (as Raylan himself often does during this sequence), this gray-scaled casual look from “The Collection” is among the closest that someone can come to easily incorporating Raylan Givens’ style into their own without going full cowboy cosplay or needing to splurge on anything not already in their closet.

• Dark-gray woolen flannel single-breasted 3-button suit jacket with narrow notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Gray-and-black buffalo-plaid cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Heather gray henley shirt with two-button gray-lined top placket
• Dark indigo stonewash denim straight-cut jeans
  • Levi’s 501® Original Fit
• Black tooled leather belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Tan full-grain leather paddle holster
• Brown anteater cowboy boots
  • Justin
• Light tan 200XXX beaver cattleman’s hat with buckle-fastened thin brown tooled leather band
  • Baron Hats
• Brushed steel chronometer with rotating bezel, round white dial with 3:00 date window, and brown scaled leather band
  • TAG Heuer Series 6000
• Sterling silver horseshoe ring with braided side detail

---

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the first season but watch the whole series.

The source material, Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole”, is also excellent reading.

---

The Quote

Suppose right now you had a gun in your hand, finger on the trigger, and you had the inclination. As good as I am, it’d be tough for me to clear my holster before you put one in me. Hard to miss at that distance. But if you did that, where would it end?