Category: Uncategorized
The Menswear of Clue
Film: Clue
Release Date: December 13, 1985
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Costume Designer: Michael Kaplan
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today marks the 40th anniversary since the release of Clue, which overcame an underwhelming initial release to become perhaps the most successful cinematic adaptation of a board game. The Parker Brothers classic formed the foundation for John Landis and Jonathan Lynn’s zany murder mystery, framed against the backdrop of the post-World War II “Red Scare” though, ultimately, communism was just a red herring.
Clue was released with three separate endings (a fourth was dropped during production), intended to be varied at each showing. In addition to reflecting the spirit of the original game, Landis had hoped that multiple endings would bring audiences back for multiple showings, but the gimmick unfortunately backfired as the public. It wasn’t until Clue was released to home video with all three endings presented sequentially that it gained a cult following.
The movie is set over a rainy New England night in June 1954, as the game’s six colorfully named suspects—Mr. Green (Michael McKean), Colonel Mustard (Martin Mull), Mrs. Peacock (Eileen Brennan), Professor Plum (Christopher Lloyd), Miss Scarlet (Lesley Ann Warren), and Mrs. White (Madeline Kahn)—are summoned to dinner at the foreboding Hill House mansion, where each are greeted by the butler Wadsworth (Tim Curry). Continue reading
The Naked Gun: Leslie Nielsen’s Taupe Suit as Frank Drebin
Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun (1988)
Vitals
Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin, straight-talking police lieutenant
Los Angeles, Spring 1988
Film: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Release Date: December 2, 1988
Director: David Zucker
Costume Designer: Mary E. Vogt
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
As this year’s The Naked Gun continues to draw laughs, let’s flashback to 1988 when audiences first saw the bumbling Frank Drebin on the big screen.
After decades in dramatic roles (save for a zany turn in the first season of M*A*S*H), Leslie Nielsen’s comic potential was first appropriately realized when David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker cast the Canadian actor as Dr. Rumack in Airplane!, their 1980 spoof of disaster films.
The movie’s success—and Nielsen’s deadpan delivery—prompted ZAZ to craft a send-up of classic cop shows like M Squad, continuing their usual blend of slapstick, sight gags, and verbal puns. Police Squad! debuted as a mid-season replacement in March 1982, introducing viewers to “Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective-Lieutenant, Police Squad”. Critically acclaimed for its sense of humor far ahead of contemporary programming, Police Squad! was nonetheless canceled by ABC after only six episodes were produced.
Luckily, ZAZ never gave up on Nielsen’s character, co-writing a screenplay with Pat Proft that retooled the formula for a movie that would become arguably one of the funniest comedies of all time, spawning two sequels (which also starred Nielsen as Drebin) and the 2025 continuation with Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin Jr. Continue reading
Midnight Mary: Ricardo Cortez’s 1930s Tuxedo
Ricardo Cortez in Midnight Mary (1933)
Vitals
Ricardo Cortez as Leo Darcy, sociopathic gangster
New York, Spring 1933
Film: Midnight Mary
Release Date: June 30, 1933
Director: William A. Wellman
Costume Designer: Adrian (gowns)
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
When Midnight Mary was streaming on the Criterion Channel last year, I was impressed not just by the well-tailored costumes worn by its male characters on both sides of the law but also the amount of dialogue within this 74-minute pre-Code classic dedicated to discussing menswear, whether that’s a a lawyer’s butler modeling his new dressing gown or an underworld mook fishing for positive feedback about his new tuxedo only to receive conflicting criticism about the length of his jacket.
The movie centers around the titular Mary Martin (Loretta Young), whose hard life as an orphaned young girl led to her acquaintanceship with the smooth-talking gangster Leo Darcy (Ricardo Cortez) by her late teens. One of the most popular actors of pre-Code Hollywood, Cortez died 48 years ago today on April 28, 1977. Continue reading
Mandalay: Ricardo Cortez’s White Linen Suit and Captain’s Hat
Ricardo Cortez as Tony Evans in Mandalay (1934)
Vitals
Ricardo Cortez as Tony Evans, shady ship’s captain
Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), Summer 1933
Film: Mandalay
Release Date: February 10, 1934
Director: Michael Curtiz
Costume Designer: Orry-Kelly
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
As Memorial Day weekend typically marks the unofficial start of summer style season, many gents are rotating their whites back to the front of their wardrobe. In the spirit of this transition, today’s post takes some perhaps recherché inspiration in the 90-year-old pre-Code drama Mandalay.
Written by Austin Parker and Charles Kenyon from a story by Paul Hervey Fox, Mandalay was one of nearly 200 films directed by Michael Curtiz, who used this as a cinematic playground to pioneer what were then cutting-edge techniques like wipes and opticals. The drama begins in Burma (now Myanmar), where the greedily opportunistic Tony Evans (Ricardo Cortez) essentially trades his charming girlfriend Tanya (Kay Francis) to the unscrupulous local nightclub owner Nick (Warner Oland) in exchange for taking on a job running guns for him. Continue reading
Die Hard: Ranking the Henchmen’s Holiday Hijacking Wardrobes
Clarence Gilyard Jr., Dennis Hayden, Al Leong, Hans Buhringer, Alan Rickman, Wilhelm von Homburg, Lorenzo Caccialanza, Joseph Plewa, Andreas Wisniewski, Gary Roberts, Bruno Doyon, Gérard Bonn, and Alexander Godunov in Die Hard (1988)
“Some badass perpetrators and they’re here to stay…”
Los Angeles, Christmas 1987
Film: Die Hard
Release Date: July 15, 1988
Director: John McTiernan
Costume Designer: Marilyn Vance
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
On the 35th anniversary year of this action classic, today’s post analyzes the style of the dozen bad guys led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) during their Christmas Eve takeover of Nakatomi Plaza. As I’ve done with Christmas episodes of The Office in past years, I’ll dig into my own completely arbitrary rating system to rank each by their suitability for a holiday party hijacking.
One of my favorite aspects of Die Hard is how it makes the effort to define distinctively personalities for Hans’ baddies, rather than just filling the cast with anonymous mooks as in any lesser action movie. We may not get full backstories and motivations (we only have two hours, and would we really need to know?), but they still have distinctive roles, attitudes, and aesthetics to differentiate them and make return viewings even more rewarding.
As their leader, Hans maintains an elevated look with his dark double-breasted suit, informed by his knowledge of men’s fashion (“John Phillips, London,” he acutely observes of Nakatomi CEO Joe Takagi’s silk suit), but how do his twelve henchmen rate?
Unlike Hans’ ultimate descent from Nakatomi Tower, let’s start at the bottom. Continue reading
John Travolta in Blow Out: Red Shirt for Liberty Day
John Travolta as Jack Terry in Blow Out (1981)
Vitals
John Travolta as Jack Terry, horror movie sound technician
Philadelphia, Fall 1980
Film: Blow Out
Release Date: July 24, 1981
Director: Brian De Palma
Costume Designer: Vicki Sánchez
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
My favorite Brian De Palma movie, Blow Out, culminates with a thrilling chase through the director’s hometown of Philadelphia during Liberty Day, a fictional jubilee celebrating 100 years since the last ring of the Liberty Bell.
Commissioned in 1752, the 2,000-pound bell made of copper and tin rang from the Pennsylvania State House for more than two decades before its perhaps most famous pronouncement, said to be among the many bells that rang through the City of Brotherly Love to announce the signing of the Declaration of Independence… four days later, on July 8, 1776—247 years ago today. Continue reading
The Clothing of I Think You Should Leave
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
Vitals
Series: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
Created by: Tim Robinson & Zach Kanin
Season 1 Costume Designer: Emily Ting
Season 2 Costume Designer: Monica Chamberlain
Background
We all know that triples is best, so the third season of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson will premiere on Corncob TV Netflix just under a week from now on Tuesday, May 30.
I Think You Should Leave often steps beyond the line into absurdity, though its costume designers Emily Ting and Monica Chamberlain have always dressed its characters to realistic perfection, adding a familiar verisimilitude that communicates so much about them in the few minutes we spend with each, whether that’s representing the hoodie culture of millennial-run agencies, a drivers’ ed teacher whose baggy polo probably even predates his instructional videos, and the insufferably pedantic jazz fan Howie (Tim Heidecker) poorly layering an open button-up shirt over a black T-shirt with slightly longer sleeves.
I could go on about the understated brilliance of I Think You Should Leave‘s costume design, but I’ll instead limit my focus to the handful of sketches that have centered around clothing, from ridiculous inventions like a T-shirt designed to be tugged or trousers designed to look pissed-in to men who invest in ludicrously patterned shirts and ill-conceived fedoras. Continue reading
10 Years of BAMF Style!
Hi, BAMF Style readers! Today is the 10th anniversary of my first-ever post, analyzing the iconic suit worn by Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest. In the ten years since that post went live on September 26, 2012, I’ve been honored to connect with so many great people as I’ve felt welcomed into the online menswear community.
It’s been a lifelong journey for yours truly, from being a 7th grader hobbling together a rusty pinstriped suit with my grandfather’s flat cap in the hopes of emulating Robert Redford in The Sting to taking countless screenshots from my James Bond and Mad Men DVDs in my college dorm to try to crack the secrets of sartorial success to ultimately—and quite nervously—clicking “Publish” on that first post detailing my observations of Mr. Grant’s attire as the wrongly accused Roger Thornhill.
While I could never look quite as stylish as the erstwhile Archie Leach, this was certainly how my anxiety felt when I decided to begin a ridiculously titled blog about men’s style in my favorite movies.
To tell the truth, I almost never hit “Publish” on that first post… after all, we all know the internet can be a vicious forum that brings out the worst in people. I even considered just making this a private site, accessible only to me, where I could curate my growing knowledge about the style in movies that I admired without fear of criticism, either for my lack of knowledge or the topic itself. Slowly but surely, I realized that there was not only an audience for this type of blog but an actual community of people who cared about the same things! I would have never guessed that, within 10 years, I would have nearly 10 million views from people around the world reading my humble scribblings about the intersection of my interests. (And, if I had known, I surely would have put more thought into what I called it!)
The last decade has been filled with plenty of exploring, connecting, learning, and—most importantly—getting to know so many of you through your comments and emails, and I remain grateful each day for the empowering impact of those with whom I share this digital space. I was a green 23 years old when I started the blog and now, somewhat grayer at 33, I’m lucky that this little hobby has remained fun and fruitful to a rewarding degree. While I’m not 100% sure what the future may hold for BAMF Style, I hope to continue writing for as long as it stays fun… and we’ll see if my anxiety can continue stubbornly resisting the current trends in content sharing, be it TikTok, starting a podcast, or the next great thing.
With much gratitude, I thank you all!
— Nick
Should any of you be curious, I delved into my web insights and metrics to deliver a few morsels of BAMF Style trivia…
Total number of BAMF Style posts: 1,365
Total number of views: 9,486,372
Total number of visitors: 4,041,718
Top 10 most-visited posts:
- John Wick’s Suit
- John F. Kennedy’s Ivy League Style
- Daniel Craig in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Brad Pitt’s Aloha Shirt and Champion Tee
- Bond Style — Bolivian Combat in Quantum of Solace
- Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday in Tombstone
- Collateral — Vincent’s Suit
- Aaron Cross’ Biker Jacket in The Bourne Legacy
- Dexter’s Kill Outfit
- Aaron Cross’ Winter Attire in The Bourne Legacy
A downside of this decade-long longevity? So many of these popular posts are many years old and, in my opinion, require substantial overhauls!
Top 5 decades most represented in BAMF Style posts:
Top 5 actors most represented in BAMF Style posts:
- Sean Connery (44 posts)
- Daniel Craig (41 posts)
- Jon Hamm (40 posts)
- Robert Redford (39 posts)
- Robert De Niro (35 posts)
Scott Fraser Collection’s Icon Series: The Goodfellas Shirts
Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990), wearing a blue striped knit short-sleeved shirt that Scott Fraser Collection recently recreated as the “Salerno” Knit Shirt.
London-based brand Scott Fraser Collection has been on my radar for several years with its increasing lineup of beautiful clothes consistent with its maxim of “retrospective modernism”. With a collection tailored to men and women, Scott Fraser Collection offers knitwear, trousers, suits, and more that take inspiration from the golden age of leisure-wear across the mid-20th century.
In 2020, SFC introduced the first of its “Icon Series”, recreating two famous and distinctive shirts worn by Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Less than two years later, SFC has expanded its Icon Series by turning its creative abilities toward what may be my favorite movie of all time: Goodfellas. Continue reading
The Office: Season 2’s Christmas Party – Ranking Holiday Looks
Christmas is awesome. First of all, you get to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything. Third, you give presents. What’s better than giving presents? And fourth, getting presents. So, four things. Not bad for one day. It’s really the greatest day of all time.
With some offices reinstating the traditional holiday parties this year, I also want to return to my own December tradition of reviewing how the off-the-peg office drones of Dunder Mifflin Scranton dress for their annual Christmas extravaganza.
The Office first approached the festive season with the simply titled “Christmas Party”, midway through the series’ masterful second season. This has always been one of my favorite episodes of The Office, and “Christmas Party” was actually the first-ever iTunes Store purchase I had made after Christmas 2005 found a video iPod in my stocking… appropriately enough, as fans of the episode would realize.
At this point, The Office was still a more restrained satire of American workplaces—rather than the zanier character-driven comedy it would become—and the first Christmas party reflects that mundanity, with cheap decorations, cheap vodka, and cheap grab bag gifts, and seemingly none of the staff happy to be part of this forced corporate fun, save for the oblivious manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell).
The main cast of The Office—Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, Steve Carell, B.J. Novak, and John Krasinski—in a promotional photo for the second season’s “Christmas Party”.
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