Vitals

Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague, moody romantic mob heir

Verona Beach, Summer 1996

Film: Romeo + Juliet
Release Date: November 1, 1996
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Costume Designer: Kym Barrett

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Baz Luhrmann’s brash update of Romeo + Juliet remains the highest-grossing live-action William Shakespeare adaptation nearly thirty years after its release. While his tendency toward spectacle isn’t my preferred cinematic style, I appreciate Luhrmann embracing the challenge of retaining the Bard’s original dialogue in a contemporary American setting that includes custom handguns, flashy Hawaiian shirts, and “Lovefool”.

Luhrmann translates the play’s Italian setting of Verona to “Verona Beach”, situated somewhere on a southern coast of the United States though—aside from limited production in Miami—most of the film was shot on location in Mexico. The warring Montagues and Capulets become rival mob families, dooming the passionate young love between Romeo Montague (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Juliet Capulet (Claire Danes).

Following yesterday’s “Shakespeare Day” that observes April 23rd as both his possible 1564 birthday and confirmed 1616 death anniversary, today feels right for a springtime Aloha Friday spotlight on DiCaprio’s style as the tragic lover Romeo—updated for the ’90s with floral fits to boot.

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What’d He Wear?

Costume designer Kym Barrett sartorially divided the Capulets and Montagues, with the slick Capulets darkly tailored in surplus Dolce & Gabbana stock while the scrappier Montagues recall American servicemen enjoying a tropical R&R in their Hawaiian shirts and chinos.

Both of Leonardo DiCaprio’s blue floral shirts as Romeo have proven their cultural staying power as high-profile designers have paid homage to them over the three decades since the film’s 1996 release, a powerful testament to the success of Barrett’s first screen credit as costume designer. As she explained to Liam Hess from British Vogue for the film’s 25th anniversary:

We made almost everything ourselves… the Capulets definitely have that kind of gunslinging, gangster, low-hipped, cowboy-boots kind of vibe. And then the Montagues are more flyboy. They’re like the guys in Hawaii on leave from the ship. They’re still fighters, but they’re more laid-back and relaxed and American in a way. But both families are super religious, so it made sense that when I designed the shirts, they should have that kind of iconography painted in them. We had an amazing team of fabric painters in our department, and we designed the shirts to have all these different religious symbols embedded in them.

Romeo’s first shirt is made from bright royal-blue silk with a hand-painted floral motif around the border and a larger red wounded heart directly at the center—”pierced with a sword, crossed with pink roses over a sunburst with yellow flames,” as described by its listing in the Powerhouse Collection—with sunflowers and calla lilies painted over the shoulders, the banded short sleeves, and along the waist hem. All were painted by Barrett’s team, as she intentionally chose the calla “death lilies” as foreshadowing the couple’s infamous fate. The long-pointed two-piece loop collar echoes traditional aloha shirt design, with five large dark-brown wooden buttons fastened up the plain front.

After Romeo is wounded, Father Laurence (Pete Postlethwaite) dresses him in his own blue aloha shirt, which the priest had worn at the start of the film. Interestingly, the shooting script had described this specifically to be “a clean white shirt,” but the vision shifted in the months leading up to the actual production. “Leo’s shirt at the end that he wears in the cathedral was definitely the inspiration and jumping-off point,” Barrett explained to British Vogue. “I found it in a thrift store in Miami, and it already had this very dreamy, romantic Technicolor motif.”

This short-sleeved shirt has a plain camp collar (sans loop) and four widely spaced dark-blue buttons up the plain front, but it is otherwise styled like the earlier shirt with its elbow-length short sleeves and straight-cut hem. Against a blue silk ground, the pattern is an all-over print of Japanese blossoms in various shades of pink, red, yellow, and green.

Romeo always pairs these loud shirts with dark trousers. With the second shirt, he continues wearing the dark-blue straight-leg trousers from the custom-made Prada suit he wore for his wedding. These flat-front trousers have side pockets and jetted back pockets, and the bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) with a short break.

The trousers rise to below DiCaprio’s natural waist, where he holds them up through the loops with a black leather belt that closes through an ornate silver belt buckle; I haven’t been able to definitively identify the shape of Romeo’s belt buckle, but it’s possibly another wounded heart like the motif on his first shirt.

Romeo wears black leather derby shoes, but they’re more like heavy-duty work or service shoes with their weathered calfskin uppers, sturdy moc-toe construction, and five sets of nickel-finished metal eyelets. The white ribbed cotton socks present an offbeat contrast, reinforcing the Montague preference for eye-catching comfort over traditional uniformity.

The religious and militant influences on Romeo come to a crossroads around his neck, where he wears a silver ball chain (also known as a “bead chain” or “snake link”)—similar to military dog-tag necklaces—but with a matching silver ball-chain cross, a unique alternative to typical cross pendants. After his wedding to Juliet, he wears their silver “R+J” ring on the same necklace.

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The Gun

Baz Luhrmann’s modernized Romeo + Juliet replaced the 16th century swords with 20th century firearms, all named after edged weapons; Benvolio (Dash Mihok), Tybalt (John Leguizamo), and Mercutio (Harold Perrineau) carry Beretta-inspired 9mm Taurus PT99 pistols named the “Sword”, “Dagger”, and “Rapier”, respectively, while Romeo and his cousins are armed with the Para-Ordnance P13-45 pistol rechristened the “Dagger .45”.

Following their successful introduction of high-capacity conversion kits for 1911-style pistols, Toronto-based firearms manufacturer Para-Ordnance introduced their own line of 1911 pistols in 1990. Their flagship pistol remains the single-action P14-45, named for its double-stack 14-round magazine of .45 ACP ammunition—doubling the standard seven-round magazines fed into traditional single-stack 1911s. From this, Para-Ordnance branched out into different calibers (such as the .40-caliber P16-40 and the 9mm P18-9 as wielded akimbo by Timothy Olyphant’s Agent 47 in Hitman), trigger systems (like the double-action LDA), and frame sizes.

Though it fed from the same 14-round magazines as the P14-45, the P13-45 was named to designate its slightly shorter frame as a more compact, Commander-style alternative to the full-size P14; as opposed to the P14’s five-inch barrel, the P13 has a 4.3-inch barrel that also shortens the overall length from the P14’s 8.5 inches to 7.8 inches.

Introduced in 1994, the P13-45 was still relatively new to the market when wielded on screen by DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet. Romeo’s P13-45 has the stock combination of black trigger, magazine release, ring hammer, and rear sights against its matte stainless frame, but with shining gold accents: slide release, thumb safety, grip screws, and grip safety. He carries his in a fancy black leather shoulder holster with gold-embroidered winged insects and white edge stitching.

Para-Ordnance ceased manufacturing the P13-45 in 2003 after nearly a decade. Even after the company shifted into American hands when it moved operations to North Carolina and rebranded as Para USA in 2009, the P14-45 remained in production. Curiously, 2009 also saw the introduction of the Para G.I. Expert—a traditional single-stack 1911.

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How to Get the Look

The true tragedy of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is that not quite everyone can pull off a barely buttoned Hawaiian shirt like young Leo DiCaprio could. Tempt not a desperate man to do so.

• Blue hand-painted floral silk short-sleeved aloha shirts
• Dark-blue flat-front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather belt with silver-toned “wounded heart” buckle
• Black leather moc-toe 5-eyelet derby shoes
• White ribbed cotton socks
• Silver ball-chain necklace with matching cross pendant

L.A. streetwear brand PLEASURES released a 100% viscose recreation of the first act’s “sacred heart” shirt in October 2021, ahead of the film’s 25th anniversary. It has long since sold out, but examples can still be found from secondhand sellers like Etsy.

To date, the best quality rebuild of his Japanese blossoms shirt (pictured here) is made by Hawaiian company Avanti, crafted from 100% Crepe de Chine silk with authentic coconut buttons.

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, which officially allows us to describe Paul Sorvino as a Shakespearean actor.

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The Quote

I defy you, stars!