Tagged: Long Island
The Wolf of Wall Street: Dark Blue Chalkstripe Flannel on IPO Day
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
Vitals
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort, shrewd Wall Street stockbroker
Long Island, Fall 1993
Film: The Wolf of Wall Street
Release Date: December 25, 2013
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Sandy Powell
Tailor: Leonard Logsdail
Background
It’s Labor Day, so sartorial traditionalists should start packing up their cream linen suits and pull their sharp chalkstripe flannels up to the front. Ideally, you have today off of work and one extra day before you need a snazzy suit to make an impression when strutting back into the office tomorrow.
Though avoiding excess isn’t exactly Jordan Belfort’s thing (i.e., drugs, women) in The Wolf of Wall Street, he did manage to avoid some of the sartorial excesses of the late ’80s and early ’90s that continue to plague thrift shops and convenience stores to this day. For the most part, he avoids baggy double-breasted suits with low button stances and excessive shoulder padding. Continue reading
Gatsby’s Caramel Suit and Yellow Duesenberg (2013 Version)
Leonardo DiCaprio on set as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013)
Vitals
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, eccentric and romantic millionaire bootlegger
New York City, Summer 1922
Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: May 10, 2013
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Costume Designer: Catherine Martin
Background
Car Week is wrapping up with a yin to Monday’s yang. The first post this week looked at the big yellow Rolls-Royce tourer from the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby and the suit Robert Redford wore while driving it. The car was practically as close as the one mentioned in the novel, but the suit was too dark and too contemporary to be accurate with the suit in the novel.
Today’s post looks at the more recent 2013 adaptation directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. The film nicely brought to life the “caramel-colored suit” that Fitzgerald wrote about in the novel, but the Rolls-Royce of the novel is now an anachronistic supercharged Duesenberg. I can’t complain too much since the scenes of Gatsby driving his Duesy are some of the most exciting moments in the movie.
He saw me looking with admiration at his car.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?” He jumped off to give me a better view. “Haven’t you ever seen it before?”
I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory, we started to town.
– The Great Gatsby, Chapter 4
Jay Gatsby’s Brown Suit and Yellow Rolls-Royce (1974 Version)
Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1974), posing with his yellow 1928 Rolls-Royce Phantom I convertible.
Vitals
Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, romantic millionaire and shady bootlegger
New York City, Summer 1925
Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: March 29, 1974
Director: Jack Clayton
Costume Designer: Theoni V. Aldredge
Clothes by: Ralph Lauren
Background
Well, it’s the arbitrarily-chosen second week of June, which means it’s time for the third semi-annual Car Week!
I’m kicking off this week by focusing on a very iconic car in both literature and film – Jay Gatsby’s big yellow Rolls-Royce tourer, a symbol of the era’s destructive opulence. Continue reading
Gatsby’s Sweater and Linen Slacks (2013)
A very jovial Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (2013).
Vitals
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby, eagerly romantic millionaire and bootlegger
Long Island, New York, Summer 1922
Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: May 10, 2013
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Costume Designer: Catherine Martin
Background
Today in 1920, Prohibition went into effect, kicking off a decade-long party known to many as the “roaring twenties” and most famously coined “the Jazz Age” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald would have certainly been the expert, having written the novel that defined the decade and, by extension, the entire country. That novel, The Great Gatsby, didn’t have much success at the time, and Fitzgerald himself considered his masterpiece to be a flop at the time of his death in 1940. Continue reading
Redford in Gatsby’s White Three-Piece Suit
Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby in 1974’s The Great Gatsby.
Vitals
Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, enigmatic millionaire and eager romantic
Long Island, New York, Summer 1925
Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: March 29, 1974
Director: Jack Clayton
Costume Designer: Theoni V. Aldredge
Clothes by: Ralph Lauren
Background
According to tradition passed down to us from generations of snobs, Labor Day is the last socially acceptable day for Americans to wear white prominently. If you’re scrambling to get your white in before your country club bars you for showing up in October with your favorite ivory sports coat, follow Gatsby’s example to make a solid impression.
In his 1925 book, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes Gatsby’s attire as:
…Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in.
Real Men Wear Pink: Redford as Gatsby
Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby in the 1974 adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The little girl on his left is Patsy Kensit, who would later play Mel Gibson’s ill-fated love interest in Lethal Weapon 2.
Vitals
Robert Redford as Jay Gatsby, enigmatic millionaire and eager romantic
Long Island, New York, Late Summer 1925
Film: The Great Gatsby
Release Date: March 29, 1974
Director: Jack Clayton
Costume Designer: Theoni V. Aldredge
Clothes by: Ralph Lauren
Background
Today is the day that Baz Luhrmann is releasing his interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel The Great Gatsby. Saving any comment on that for the end, it only seems appropriate to look at some of the iconic suits that Robert Redford donned for his portrayal of Gatsby almost forty years ago.
By the early to mid 1970s, men’s suits were beginning to revert back to styles popular during the height of the Roaring Twenties: bright three-piece suits with wide lapels, double-breasted waistcoats, and flared legs. Some credit the fact the coke-and-disco fueled ’70s were a replication of the booze-and-jazz fueled ’20s and that the style would naturally gravitate towards excess. Others point to the award-winning costumes made by Theoni V. Aldredge for 1974’s The Great Gatsby. Continue reading
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