On The Waterfront (1954)

May 16 2012

Recently I had the chance to see this old timer at the big screen here in Amsterdam, at the new white spaceship design of the Eye film institute. It was a good watch and I was happily surprised to see so many great garments from the 50′s. On The Waterfront stars the young Marlon Brando, who was in the midst of his rise to fame after appearances in A Streetcar Named Desire and The Wild One. The film is nowadays considered a real masterpiece because it was one of the first to use the so-called “method acting”. A style that requires the actors to search for their own inner emotions and mimic the emotional state of their character. Contrary to the classical acting that was still in favor at the time, where actors use vocal intonation and facial expressions to simulate emotions.

The film portrays the docks of Hoboken in New Jersey and their struggle with the corrupted labour union around. Brando stars as a ex-boxer Terry Malloy now having a good position at the docks thanks to his brother, who’s involved in the union corruption business. When a popular docker get’s killed by the mob, Terry is being suspected and eventually his conscience starts to trouble him. Terry was a former member of the “Golden Warriors”, some rebel youngsters dressed extremely cool in collared varsity jackets, selvage denim and rock ‘n roll haircuts. Brando himself is either dressed in a short red and black lumberjack jacket or the US Army Type B-15 jacket with sheepskin collar. But best clothing pieces are found with the dockworkers still. Old style leather jackets, double-breasted duffle coats, shawl collar duffle coats with leather welt pockets, utility vests, guernsey knit sweaters, other fine woolen knits and a whole lot of headwear including many engineer/railroad cap styles. Love the convention of every man wearing something on his head, good days must they have been.

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The Hunter (2011)

May 7 2012

Another update here with a compilation from the recent feature “The Hunter”. A truly inspiring and intriguing film about a scientist traveling to the island of Tasmania with the task to capture the extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Note I mention the Tiger here, not the Devil, probably first encountered (for Europeans) by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman when he was exploring the waters around ‘Terra Australis’. It is believed that somewhere in the 1930′s the last Tiger died, yet nowadays sightings keep on being reported but never proven. The same case in the movie, where Dafoe is told there is substantial proof that they are still around and goes on a search.

Some amazing shots and pictures of the landscape are seen, while we follow Martin David during his adventures. Besides his own surviving knowledge and skills, he carries some helpful gear and equipment with him to help out. All of this is stored in the marvelous backpack of his, made from khaki colored waxed canvas. I could not identify the backpack, despite of the distinct leather tag stitched on top, and that’s a shame for I’m really curious who makes such backpacks. It might even be a vintage military survival pack, if anybody could help me out here I would really appreciate! His local guide, Jack Mindy, is dressed in a pretty worn-out oil skin jacket, identical to the Beaufort model by Barbour although this one is clearly not a Barbour make. Next to it he wears his Akubra hat with braided leather belt and a moss-green canvas rucksack with leather straps. A set-up I would really love have myself one day, is the music installation with the speakers that are spread over the trees surrounding the house. That must be wonderful, listening to music at full-volume in the midst of the wilderness. Enjoy.

edit: the pack seems to be a Crossfire DG-1 daypack and is not made of waxed cotton, but of 1000d Cordura. It’s probably just the moist and the dirt that gives the fabric its greasy look. Thanks again Daan.

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Risky Business (1983)

May 3 2012

There are some actors that guarantee a good taste in clothes, take for example a Paul Newman, a Jack Nicholson or, not to forget, Steve McQueen. Yet there are some other, more recent, that guarantee this identical amount of style yet to a less extent, like the young Dustin Hoffman or a young Tom Cruise. I’ll try to cover some of these feature-films in the coming weeks, to start of with Risky Business from 1983. Cruise portrays the character of the rich kid Joel, whose parents leave town for about a week which paves the way for a new Joel.

On to Joel’s style. Throughout the movie Joel keeps on changing his clothing and it seem he cannot go wrong in his choices from his Americana wardrobe. He continuously wears his deck shoes, some Sperry Topsiders in dark brown leather, and for outdoors he has a varsity jacket in red wool with white leather sleeves. For transport he either uses his father’s Porsche 928 with the beautiful front and the horrible back, or his own blue race bike. Then there’s the denim from the traditional American makes, Cruise switches between the Lee 101 and Levi’s 501. But in the end the true eye-catchers are the knits, either with a round- or a v-neckline and from cotton or wool, with a button-downed shirt underneath. And he has quite a few of these to make some exquisite combinations. Without a doubt my favorite combination is seen in the last part of the movie, when Joel wears the woolen speckled navy knit with a striped blue shirt underneath, combined with some bordeaux colored corduroy pants.

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Back to the Future II (1989)

April 27 2012

The second in the trilogy, this time they’re actually going to the future and Marty and Doc visit the year 2015, when highways are replaced with ‘airways’ and flying cars, and where the youth rides on hooverboards. What the DeLorean was for the first episode, the Nike MAG is for the second, with its automatic power laces and fluorescent lights. The other super-future-high-tech item is the ‘size-adjusting fit’ jacket that Marty rocks and that has an automatic drying functionality. One thing they predicted right though was the Macintosh computer in the shopping window, now regarded as an “antique computer” from 1984 and the JVC “Super VHS” videocamera, although it might be a hard task selling the latter nowadays.

However, they don’t stay in the future and pay another visit to the year 1955 where we meet Biff again. Probably his Levi’s 501 jeans used for the movie have been a late ’70′s/early 80′s version of the selvage type. Yet you can still tell from the plea at the side of them that they have been stocked and are made of the rigid fabric the good old Levi’s used to have. And that’s interesting for Levi’s stopped making their jeans with selvage-fabric in 1983, because of the Cone Mills factory that replaced all of their shuttle looms producing selvage fabrics. That said, Biff has a refined sense of style, sporting a real nice pair of dark-brown suede oxford shoes underneath his denim.

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The Eiger Sanction (1975)

April 9 2012

The inspiration for this compilation of stills was taken from a recent post by the guys from the Red Wing store in Berlin, who run a great visual weblog over at redwing1905. The bad habit German’s have for renaming titles of movies resulted in the corny name of ‘Im Auftrag des Drachen’ (In the Order of the Dragon), however the pictures of the lovely mountain scenery they posted convinced me to have a look at this one. The story was taken from the same titled novel by Trevanian, who described the movie as vapid afterwards. I haven’t read the original but I can agree with Trevanian on this, because the storyline of The Eiger Sanction is quite cliché and contains silly dialogues. However, the hiking and mountain climbing parts are pretty epic at times and visually really nice. Not to mention the mountain gear and fashion present of course.

Dr. Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is a retired assassin and now an art-history professor and avid collector, with Matisse, El Greco and Picasso pieces in his private collection. Of course he also used to be one of the best mountain climbers and his next mission involves the ascent of the north face of the Eiger. First he’s trained somewhere in Arizona, where he wears nothing but a white tee, a light-weight denim shirt on top and a pair of Levi’s denim, or some khaki shorts. That said, the best part of his outfit is the little distressed canvas and leather reinforced rucksack. There’s much to mention here, like the 1974 Ford Bronco, but as said the mountain fashion is most significant. All four climbers wear a bright colored down-filled jacket and when it gets colder they put on a similar colored parka on top of it. To camp on the foot of the mountain they have their tents which they carry in their green or navy backpacks. If you don’t want to sit out two hours for this one, then just put on the last 30 minutes, that’s when they climb the Eiger itself. It’s the most cool part and makes you eager to climb a mountain like they do once. By the way Eastwood did all his stunts and climb work himself, that’s how it should be.

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