Craig Wasson and Deborah Shelton in Body Double (1984)

Vitals

Craig Wasson as Jake Scully, sensitive struggling actor

Los Angeles, January 1984

Film: Body Double
Release Date: October 26, 1984
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Gloria Gresham

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

After a long, cold winter, the promise of a milder spring invites us to trade heavy wool coats and thick sweaters for lighter, transitional layers—think the corduroy-anchored wardrobe of Jake Scully in Brian De Palma’s Hitchcock-inspired Body Double. This 1984 erotic thriller stars Craig Wasson (born 72 years ago today on March 15, 1954) as Jake, a claustrophobic struggling actor who loses his most promising gig, his girlfriend, and his apartment in one swift collapse.

The cuckolded Jake ultimately stumbles into a promising new arrangement, house-sitting a swingin’ Hollywood Hills pad for the enigmatic Sam (Gregg Henry), who explains it’s “one struggling actor helpin’ out another, that’s what it’s all about, right?” Filmed at the John Lautner-designed modernist Chemosphere off Mulholland Drive, the joint comes with a telescope conveniently pointed into the neighboring home of striking brunette Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton).

Jake’s voyeurism grows over the next few days of watching Gloria’s onanistic dancing until he believes she has a more dangerous stalker and takes matters into his own hands, drawing him into a horny Rear Window-meets-Vertigo intrigue that includes an adult film star named Holly Body (Melanie Griffith) and a murder-by-power-drill incident.

Frustrated from his censorship battles over Scarface the previous year, De Palma sought to push the envelope even further with Body Double, incorporating violent and explicit themes of voyeurism and exhibitionism with his own critical telescope turned against Hollywood itself. Critics were lukewarm and audiences stayed away, but it was enough to earn Griffith a nod from the Golden Globes (as well as a Razzie nomination for De Palma’s direction) and has been reassessed as a cult classic in the decades since its release.

What’d He Wear?

After ditching the apartment where he walked in on his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend Carol getting railed, Jake Scully is stuck with a limited but versatile wardrobe centered around a corduroy sport jacket, khaki slacks, and sneakers. The single-breasted sports coat is made from a tan medium-wale corduroy, styled in the traditional configuration of notch lapels rolling to two brown woven leather buttons—echoed by three matching vestigial buttons dressing each cuff—and a single rear vent. The welted breast pocket is supplemented by patch pockets over the hips with rounded bottoms and flaps. Brown suede elbow patches add professorial flourish.

Jake smartly tends to layer the corduroy jacket over texturally coordinated shirts that share corduroy’s workwear heritage. He initially wears a western-styled blue denim work shirt from Wrangler, evident by the “W”-shaped stitching over both chest pockets. These patch pockets are covered by narrow flaps that each close through a single white-finished snap that match the snap-buttons up the front placket, while the pointed flaps themselves echo the western-pointed yokes extending onto the chest from each shoulder.

Each sleeve is finished with three snaps over the cuff and an additional snap closing the gauntlet. When he rolls them back, we get a better look at his classic yellow-gold dress watch strapped to his left wrist on a russet scaled leather band. This medium-sized watch has an elegantly minimalist champagne-gold dial with non-numeric gold baton-style hour indices.

Shop the shirt:

Wrangler Men's Denim Western Snap Front Shirt in "lake wash" (Wrangler, $39.99)

Price and availability current as of Mar. 13, 2026.

On the day he follows Gloria into a shopping complex and clocks her mysterious stalker, Jake looks slightly dressier in a white cotton shirt patterned with a black-framed navy-and-gray mini grid-check. This long-sleeved shirt has a large button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and conventional button-fastened barrel cuffs.

this horny mf, I stg…

Though khaki slacks grew increasingly popular after returning servicemen continued wearing their service trousers after World War II, this style was firmly established as a menswear staple during the business casual boom of the 1980s. Jake wears his beige cotton flat-front slacks with the same casual ease as many modern men wear their jeans, stylistically anchored to his hardy jacket and shirts by a western-informed ranger belt of brown tooled leather, tapering toward the front where it pulls through an engraved silver single-prong buckle and two matching keepers.

The trousers have plain-hemmed bottoms, quarter-top slanted side pockets, and set-in back pockets, with the back left pocket covered by pointed single-button flap.

Jake keeps the look grounded in youthful sportiness with his white leather Adidas Stan Smith sneakers. Developed from Horst Dassler’s concept, Adidas launched the world’s first mass-produced leather tennis shoes in 1963, renamed two years later to capitalize on the brand’s association with French tennis professional Robert Haillet. Dassler’s search for a new partner after Haillet’s 1971 retirement led him to American tennis champion Stan Smith, who signed a contract with Adidas in ’73 and whose endorsement helped the German company gain a stronger foothold (so to speak) in the American market.

The shoe’s branding remained in limbo through the decade, with an odd blend of Smith’s green-printed portrait on the tongue but “Haillet” written above it. The Haillet name was finally removed in 1978 and, with Smith’s endorsement, the shoe was officially renamed the Adidas Stan Smith as it remains today—even more than forty years after Smith’s retirement—considered one of the best-selling tennis shoes in history with more than 30 million sold. They’re no longer recommended for tennis as footwear technology has evolved for more comfortable and protective shoes, but the Adidas Stan Smith remains iconic more than a half-century after its inception.

Almost all classic Adidas Stan Smith shoes have white leather uppers with the triple rows of punched ventilation perforations along the sides, derby-laced through seven sets of eyelets and attached to flat-bottomed outsoles in an off-white pimpled rubber. While the classic Stan Smith configuration have a grass-green tongue logo and rear foam padding, Jake’s shoes are the less common variation with these elements in dark-blue—designating them throughout their production timeline as model AF1365, 034685, or the current M20325. As Body Double was filmed through the spring of 1984, Craig Wasson’s screen-worn Stan Smith shoes would have been produced in France as part of the original release, thus designated AF1365.

Jake wears sporty two-tone socks comprised of pale-gray soft knit bodies that each have a wide, bright-red upper cuff banded around the top for stronger retention.

Shop the shoes:

After Adidas reintroduced the Stan Smith in 2013, they continued the white-and-dark blue colorway with the M20325 model.

Adidas Stan Smith M20325 in white-and-dark blue (Adidas, $100)

Price and availability current as of Mar. 13, 2026.

When Jake auditions for porn director Corso (Al Israel), he wears his usual corduroy sport jacket and Stan Smith sneakers but with jeans. The wash is a mid-blue denim, with a button-fly and straight-cut which suggests these could be classic Levi’s 501 jeans, though that’s merely conjecture as we don’t see the back pockets which would have the telltale red tab and arcuate stitch.

Jake’s shirt for this sequence is a white-and-indigo hickory-striped mid-weight cotton, similar to the hardy work-shirts favored by loggers. This shirt has a a convertible spread collar, barrel cuffs, and a plain front with white plastic buttons.

Jake transitions his style to reflect his undercover persona as a porno producer in a tight burgundy leather jacket, an open-neck pink sports shirt, and slicked-back hair.

What to Imbibe

A cuckolded Jake regularly requests the company of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey to drown his sorrows, beginning with when he demands “Jack Daniel’s, neat,” from his bartender buddy Doug (B.J. Jones) and then downs shot after shot to the point of getting quickly aggressive.

Jake: I thought you were a bartender, not a priest.
Doug: That’s right, I’m a bartender.
Jake: Then keep the fucking glass filled!
Doug: Keep your own glass filled.

Jake eventually takes Doug’s advice to extreme lengths; he cuts out the middle man by taking a fifth of Jack up to his borrowed bachelor pad, where he takes pulls straight from the bottle on the rotating bed.

Jake’s Jack.

Not every situation calls for straight 80-proof whiskey, of course. During his first night in the Chemosphere, Jake drinks cans of Coors Banquet beer—the very same Colorado-brewed lager that Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed sped eastbound and down with seven years earlier in Smokey and the Bandit, when it was still outlawed for sale east of the Mississippi.

The Car

Jake also shows unimpeachable taste in cars, driving around L.A. in a robin’s-egg-blue 1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS convertible. Produced during the Camaro’s first year of production, Jake’s ’67 Camaro was one of nearly 65,000 produced with the Rally Sport (RS) package that was available on any model—distinguished by RS badging, hidden headlights under retractable doors, and brighter exterior trim.

Since Jake’s Camaro isn’t one of the SS or Z/28 performance models, the available engines would either of the 230- or 250-cubic inch “Turbo-Thrift” inline-six engines, or the 327 “Turbo-Fire” V8 that ranged in output from 210 horsepower to 275 horsepower, which varied by carbureton.

How to Get the Look

Craig Wasson as Jake Scully in Body Double (1984)

Jake Scully’s smart casual everyday outfit bucks the excess of ’80s trends, tactfully blending the western-informed informality of his Wrangler denim shirt and tooled leather belt with the sportier sensibilities of his two-tone socks and Adidas Stan Smiths—all united by the versatile neutrality of his timeless corduroy sport jacket and khaki slacks.

• Tan corduroy single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, brown woven leather buttons, welted breast pocket, flapped patch hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and brown suede elbow patches
• Blue denim cotton Wrangler work-shirt with western-pointed yokes, snap-up front placket, two patch chest pockets (with single-snap pointed flaps), and triple-snap cuffs with gauntlet snaps
• Beige cotton flat-front trousers with belt loops, quarter-top slanted side pockets, jetted back-right pocket, flapped back-left pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown tooled leather belt with carved silver-toned single-prong ranger-style buckle with matching end and double keepers
• Adidas Stan Smith AF1365 tennis shoes with white leather derby-laced uppers, dark-blue tongue logo and rear foam padding, off-white pimpled rubber flat-bottom outsoles
• Pale-gray soft-knit socks with red ribbed upper bands
• Gold dress watch with champagne dial and gold baton-style hour indices on russet scaled leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, which Criterion Channel subscribers can find back on the channel this month.

The Quote

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