Editors' Picks -- 3 hours ago
The stylish legacy of The Talented Mr Ripley
An Oscar-worthy, trend-transcending look
Words: Finlay Renwick
Jude Law initially declined the role that transformed him into a real, actual Hollywood star and an enduring style icon – a character whose wardrobe we’re still dissecting and discussing 25 years later. In fact, he declined it three times.
It was a short-sighted agent who advised Law against taking the role of the spoilt, pleasure-seeking dilettante Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley. “He was a guy who had said to me, ‘It shouldn’t be this easy. Resist this kind of a role because it’s going to box you in’,” Law told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “I was being told by this guy, ‘Don’t take this’, and I believed him. I listened. I was ridiculous enough to turnaround to Anthony Minghella and go, ‘I don’t know if I want to play that part. I don’t want to be boxed in.’”
“Obviously I was wrong.
”Fortunately for us, and our summer wardrobes, Law did eventually accept the role and, in doing so, created one of the great contemporary on-screen sources of male style inspiration. He also got an Oscar nomination out of the deal. In an age when it can feel like an omnipresent cast of friends, colleagues and even the occasional clutch of nemeses are swanning around Lake Como, Amalfi or Puglia – or all three at the same time – Greenleaf’s collection of soft and slightly battered tailoring, pleated shorts, linen trousers, trodden-down loafers and mesh knit polos has proved resistant to the most voracious aspects of the modern trend cycle.
The film’s wardrobe – over-seen by Oscar-winning costume designer Ann Roth (who had previously worked on Minghella’s The English Patient and was in charge of Dustin Hoffman’s derelict-chic tailoring and moth-ravaged outer-wear in Midnight Cowboy) and assistant Gary Jones – has become a constant on moodboards and most stylish lists.
From brands like Aimé Leon Dore to Drake’s and A Kind of Guise, or even the ultra-aspirational earthen tones of labels such as Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli, there’s a hint of Ripley in all of them – set in the 1950s, filmed in the90s and seemingly timeless when it comes to portraying the wearing of nice clothes in the Italian sunshine.“
The 50s were, for the most part, very dull visually,” Roth told Live Design in 2000. “In the 40s, we had the restrictions of the war and limited fabric. After the war, Dior came with the New Look and that was very interesting, with the use of more fabric, the bigness of men’s clothes, the double-breasted things. When we went into the 50s, there was this aspiration to look like a solid citizen... Then, the jet-set thing started to hap-pen – Italians, the Riviera, Brigitte Bardot and the Mambo Kings... There was a certain air about town, which had to do with Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani, and dancing all night. And I was right there.”
Flitting between New York, Rome, Anzio, Ischia, Naples andVenice, the film, drawn from Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley thriller novels, opens with Matt Damon’s awkward chancer slip-ping on a stiff navy sports coat emblazoned with the Princeton crest and into a new life of insouciance, social climbing and long lunches in cobbled piazzas.
Part of the film’s genius is how it deploys clothing as a way to show Ripley’s discomfort, and eventual assimilation, into the rarefied world that Greenleaf and his coterie of privileged friends and hangers-on occupy, including a career-best Philip Seymour Hoffman in a WASPy array of loose poplin shirts, cream linen tailoring and knit ties. Where Greenleaf ’s tailoring is light and loose, Ripley’s is padded and boxy; his polo shirts are pique where his friends’ are revere collared and breathable (fun fact: most of Law’s shirts in the film were bespoke, as Roth couldn’t find new or vintage options that fit the breezy mould).
In one scene Ripley waddles down to the clear waters of the Med in brown brogues, out of his depth in every sense of the term. In another, Greenleaf, either sympathising or revelling in his latest plaything’s incongruity, chimes, “Just wear some of my things. Wear anything you want. Most of it is ancient.” In another, he offers to take him to Battistoni, his “favourite tailor in Rome”.
“My job was to show this very well-off boy, Dickie, in Europe, on a very strict allowance, but with a sensational lifestyle,”Roth said. Ripley is another matter. “I had to do this kid who comes from America straighter than anything,” she added.“Both to show his insecurity about dressing with any kind of flamboyance, and also that he had no bucks. He comes from Princeton, and he's very American East Coast, but from Sears.”
Despite our best efforts, for men, dressing during the summer months is still an often fraught process that can quickly result in you looking like an 11-year-old boy on a family holiday (I’m definitely not saying this from personal experience...definitely not). Finding shoes that aren’t Birkenstocks, trousers that can work for dinner during a heavy night in Liguria, and a shirt that isn’t a floral camp collar... How do you roll the sleeves just so? What’s the right blazer to wear... should you want to wear a blazer?
Twenty-five years on, The Talented Mr Ripley still holds all of those answers and more. Now where did I park that vintage red Alfa Romeo?
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