Vitals

Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth, sadistic drug dealer

Lumberton, North Carolina, Spring 1985

Film: Blue Velvet
Release Date: September 19, 1986
Director: David Lynch
Costumer: Ronald Leamon

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

After his early low-budget debut Eraserhead (1977) and adaptations The Elephant Man (1980) and Dune (1984), David Lynch finally unleashed many of his cinematic signatures when the neo-noir thriller Blue Velvet premiered forty years ago today during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), one week before its wider release.

Blue Velvet‘s themes of disturbing violence and surreal absurdism among a neo-nostalgic Americana backdrop became Lynchian trademarks, as well as his cast of frequent collaborators like Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, Jack Nance, and Isabella Rossellini. The movie also revitalized Dennis Hopper’s stalled career through his explosive, Golden Globe-winning performance as the chilling criminal Frank Booth—a psychopathic, amyl nitrate-addicted Roy Orbison fan with serious mommy issues.

“Why are there people like Frank? Why is there so much trouble in the world?” MacLachlan’s naive amateur detective Jeffrey asks as he grows increasingly entangled in Frank’s violently twisted web.

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What’d He Wear?

Frank Booth’s distinctive sense of style reflects his dark, villainous, and decidedly offbeat personality. Dressed exclusively in shades of black and gray, leather anchors his menacing monochrome wardrobe—most notably his jacket and boots—while touches of cowboy flair, epitomized by his ever-present bolo tie, lend his sinister appearance an appropriately eccentric edge.

His black leather jacket is styled like a single-breasted sports coat, with notch lapels tapering to a two-button stance positioned at Dennis Hopper’s waist and styled with the welted breast pocket and straight, flapped hip pockets conventionally found on tailored jackets. The sleeves are finished with three vestigial buttons on each cuff, and the sides are split with long double vents up to the waist.

When we (and Jeffrey) first encounter Frank, he wears a black Western-style shirt with two silver-trimmed “smile” pockets curved over the chest, a snap-front placket, and triple-snap cuffs. The point collar is finished with silver triangular tips, coordinating to the slide of his bolo tie.

Also known as a “bola tie” or “shoestring necktie” (hence its “bootlace tie” name in the UK), the bolo tie remains deeply associated with American Southwestern culture and was eventually named the official state neckwear of Arizona (where Victor Cedarstaff repotedly invented it in the 1940s), followed by New Mexico and Texas. Frank’s bolo tie consists of a black braided leather cord, tipped with long silver aiguillettes and tightened through an etched silver inverted triangular clasp.

When Frank meets Jeffrey and forces him and Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) to accompany him and his goons to meet Ben (Dean Stockwell), he wears a vertically striped black-and-gray herringbone shirt. Though this shirt lacks pockets and has a covered fly front, it also has a silver triangular-tipped collar like his earlier black western shirt.

Frank’s black trousers have belt loops, plain-hemmed bottoms, and full-top front pockets like jeans, though the fabric and lack of flat-felled seams don’t suggest a denim construction. These are likely casual flat-front trousers made from a synthetic blend like the STA-PREST™ pants that Levi’s developed through the 1960s and ’70s, which would harmonize with the rest of his Western-flavored wardrobe. He holds them up with a plain black leather belt that closes through a squared silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Frank’s boots have black leather uppers, with cowboy-style pointed toes and plain shafts that extend up over his calves. The stacked leather heels would help boost Frank’s height.

Frank’s sole piece of jewelry is a braided silver dual-banded ring on his left ring finger.

In one of the brief and rare instances where Frank foregoes his bolo tie, he wears a gray long-sleeved sports shirt patterned with alternating rows of black and satin silver tics, the latter giving his shirt a distinctive shimmer. The shirt has a flat camp collar with a short extended loop that buttons up to the neck, though Frank initially wears the plain button-up front completely open over a faintly horizontal-striped black crew-neck T-shirt. (This is also the shirt later seen under his jacket in surveillance photos shown to Jeffrey, as well as Jim Bridges’ set photography featured at the top of this post.)

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What to Imbibe

Frank: What kind of beer do you like?
Jeffrey: Heineken.
Frank: Heineken?! Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!

Frank’s vehement preference for the “working-class” brew Pabst Blue Ribbon over the more yuppified Jeffrey citing the foreign Heineken is one of the most quoted aspects of his character. The Best Brewing Company was founded in Milwaukee in 1844 by Philip Best, whose granddaughter later married Frederick Pabst. Based on the latter last’s name, you can imagine where the story goes from here; Pabst eventually took over as brewery president and their “Best Select” flagship lager was renamed “Pabst Select” until taking its current name from blue silk ribbons tied around the bottle’s neck to differentiate it from competitors.

Although the silk ribbons and early advertising imagery initially positioned Pabst as a premium lager, Blue Ribbon eventually found favor among blue-collar drinkers as exemplified by Johnny Russell’s 1973 country single “Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer”. Following its sales peak in 1977, popularity declined—despite Frank Booth’s profane but enthusiastic endorsement—until the brewery eventually left Milwaukee in 1996.

About a decade later, PBR re-emerged as the favorite of 21st century hipsters whose preferences were “exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don’t care,” according to Dan Fletcher for Time. Rather than sacrifice its brand authenticity by fully embracing hipsterdom, Pabst more tactfully selected marketing inroads that still reached this target market through dive bars, indie music, NPR, and ironic tweets like: “Nothing pairs like PBR and Amyl Nitrate, ask Frank Booth!”

“If we take these three beer brands as personality cues, we can extend an interesting line of inquiry through Sigmund Freud’s triumvirate domain of selfhood,” introduces Michael Zunenshine in his interesting analysis of Blue Velvet‘s beers in Sight and Sound, also including Detective Williams (George Dickerson) drinking Budweiser in his analysis. “Pabst, Heineken, and Budweiser stand in respectively for the id, the ego, and the superego and add another dimension to the dynamics between the characters who drink them.”

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The Car

Frank: Hey, you wanna go for a ride?
Jeffrey: No, thanks.
Frank: No, thanks? What does that mean?
Jeffrey: I don’t wanna go.
Frank: Go where?
Jeffrey: For a ride.
Frank: A ride! Now that’s a good idea!

Frank Booth’s crew speeds through Lumberton in his dirty, matte black-painted 1968 Dodge Charger. This was the first year of the Charger’s brief but iconic second generation with Richard Sias’ “coke bottle”-styled body that curved around the front fenders and rear quarters. This redesign resonated favorably with contemporary buyers as Charger sales leapt more than 500% from 1967 to ’68. This generation also became entrenched in muscle car history after an orange-painted ’69 Charger was established as the “General Lee” on The Dukes of Hazzard.

The 1968 redesign maintained the same engine options from the earlier Charger: the 318 cubic-inch V8, a 2-barrel and 4-barrel 383, and the 440 Magnum and 426 Hemi both available for the R/T performance package. The standard 318 was swapped for a 225 cubic-inch slant-six engine in mid-year. While all engines could be mated to Chrysler’s three-speed TorqueFlite automatic transmission, the slant-six and 318 V8 were also offered with a three-speed manual while the big-block V8s could be paired to a four-speed.

Frank’s car may be a visual callback to the villains’ black ’68 Charger R/T driven by famed stuntman Bill Hickman in the famous chase opposite Steve McQueen’s green Mustang fastback in Bullitt (1968).

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How to Get the Look

If you’re a cold-hearted criminal who considers yourself somehting of an urban cowboy, then by all means find some inspo in Frank Booth’s black-forward outfits invariably anchored by a black leather jacket and boots with a bolo tie dangling below your gas-masked visage. Otherwise, YMMV.

• Black leather single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, flapped hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and long double vents
• Black solid or black-and-gray striped long-sleeved shirt with silver triangular-tipped point collar
• Black braided leather bolo tie with etched silver inverted triangular clasp and long silver aiguillettes
• Black synthetic-blend flat-front casual trousers with belt loops, full-top front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather belt with silver-toned squared single-prong buckle
• Black leather cowboy boots with raised heels
• Braided silver double-banded ring

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

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The Quote

Baby wants to fuck! Baby wants to fuck Blue Velvet!