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THE MOVIE THAT INSPIRED THIS SEASON’S LOOK The Talented Mr. Ripley

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Brigitte Lacombe

Location Italy

Issue Style The Talented Mr. Ripley Page 97

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IN 1999, fresh off winning an Oscar for The English Patient, director set out for the dreamy Italian island of Ischia with an all-star cast—, Jude Law, , and —and a script based on a sexed-up novel. There the characters frolicked in the golden sun, riding Vespas and dining alfresco, until a murder on a boat spoiled the fun. One of the most stylish movies of the past thirty years, The Talented Mr. Ripley stands as a blueprint for a certain kind of European gentility. Here, GQ associate editor Nick Marino explains how a fourteen- year-old film adapted from a fifty-nine-year- old book wound up on every designer’s inspiration board this season—and susses out what you can learn about getting dressed just by queuing it up on Netflix

! "#$ %&'#()! *)+,-, there’s a term called “throwing it away.” It’s not meant to be Ischia, Italy pejorative. It’s actually something to aspire to: a high-low play where you wear the most exquisite clothes in the most nonchalant Iway. It’s pants on the beach, Italian loafers with no , a designer with a Sex Pistols . It’s what made famous and very, very rich—she never seems even remotely aware o! the clothes she’s modeling (nor is she ever self-conscious about not wearing any at all)—and what makes Keith Richards so cool. It’s the exact midpoint between dandyism and dishevelment, or maybe the art o! embodying both simultaneously. And it’s the look o! the moment, the spirit behind all the clothes in this issue, the attitude with which they should be worn. In collection after spring collection, designers are telling men to throw it away. To wear with a . A buttoned-up dress sans tie. A double-breasted and rolled white . Once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere. And what we found when we started talking to the designers who made all these clothes is that many had the same inspirational touchstone: the 1999 Anthony Minghella "lm The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring Jude Law (as the charming, cosmopolitan Dickie Greenlea#) and Matt Damon

In 2009 we probably would’ve celebrated Damon’s Princeton prep. But now Law’s flashier Continental elegance is the look.

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Matt’s and Jude’s characters had incredible Continental style, which is what this season is all about. The clothes have been fancied up and modernized a bit since then, but we still have everything they wore in our closets today. That might mean a beautiful jacket and a pair of loafers, or the perfect retro and an evening jacket. Classic pieces that look and fit today very much like they did back then. As you’ll see, even Jude’s short, slim patterned could be straight out of the final chapter in this issue.”—JIM MOORE, GQ CREATIVE DIRECTOR

(as the striving title character, who drives himsel! you want,” he says. “Most o! it’s ancient.” It’s desperate to paint on some swagger, but the contrast mad trying to be Dickie). a ridiculous claim—Dickie has the o! between the two men couldn’t be any sharper. With a o! windswept hair and skin bronzed a prince, a closetful o! perfect that he While Dickie is reclining shirtless on a beach chair by the Italian sun, Law, as Dickie, is a caddish doesn’t even bother to button—and a humblebrag. with his hands behind his head, wearing a short American expatriate so Waspy he practically has Because to these gallivanting expats, anything pair o% faded patterned trunks, Ripley’s standing a stinger on his ass. The postwar prodigal son ancient, like Europe, is far superior to what’s shiny there in chartreuse high-waisted swim . has come to the Amal" Coast to escape foggy and new, like America. You can’t take your eyes o# Law in the scene, but old Princeton, his tycoon father, and any chance In fact, until Ripley starts creepily mirroring Damon? He’s so awkward it’s di&cult to watch. he might have to work for a living. His idea o! Dickie’s style (and all his other moves) in Like Mad Men, Ripley isn’t just a drama with productivity is sailing all day and playing saxophone the movie’s second act, he represents whatever a smart wardrobe department—the wardrobe all night, pausing only to sleep with his willowy the opposite o! throwing it away is. Pulling it is part o! the drama. In the "lm, we’re constantly blonde girlfriend (Gwyneth Paltrow)—whom he all together, perhaps? He never looks bad; he just reminded that the guy who gets dressed by the rules doesn’t even seem to love. Through Tom Ripley’s looks uptight. is a shadow o! the guy who gets dressed by 'outing eyes, the movie is pure voyeurism: a trip into “You’re so white,” Dickie tells a pallid Ripley them. In a raucous jazz-club scene—when Ripley Dickie’s permanent vacation. A kind o! resort porn. when they "rst meet on the beach. Coming from clambers onstage with Dickie to sing a "zzy tune Set in the late 1950s, Ripley is su#used with Dickie, a hipster bebop a"cionado, the racial called “Tu vuò (à l’americano,” which has lyrics luxury and midcentury glamour. Early on there’s subtext is hard to miss, as i% Dickie were Charlie alternating between Italian and English and whose a scene where, appalled by Ripley’s sti# clothes Parker and Ripley were Benny Goodman. “It’s title translates as “You Want to Be American”— (a corduroy blazer on the Italian coast?!), Dickie just an undercoat,” Ripley quips back with a forced Continental, multilingual Dickie sails through the invites him to borrow some o$ his own. “Anything grin. “You know, a primer.” The poor guy is song wearing a khaki suit with a porkpie and

THE INFLUENCE AT WORK Eight Looks from the 2014 Runways That Channel Ripley

DAVID HART & CO. BRIONI BERLUTI MAISON KITSUNÉ CANALI POLO RALPH LAUREN LOUIS VUITTON

1314 Ripley - B.indd 100 1314-GQ-RI07 2/11/14 3:17 PM his collar undone, a sax draped around his neck. Ripley, in a dark two-piece and cinched-up tie, can hardly stammer along. Incredibly, Dickie isn’t even the character who throws it away the best. That honor goes to the louche and gluttonous Freddie Miles, played by Philip Seymour Ho!man, who has hal" the physical gifts o# his genetically superior chum Dickie and yet still epitomizes rich-prick prep. Picture him now on a sailboat, in Clubmaster shades and an unbuttoned –style oxford straight o! Savile Row. Or see him indoors, a scar" draped over his brass-buttoned blue blazer, his head adorned by a newsboy with a $ipped-up brim. Freddie radiates that aristocratic fuck-you attitude, the kind where you wear a ridiculously expensive shirt out on a boat where it will get sprayed with ocean water and bleached in the Behind the Scenes The Talented Mr. Ripley earned an Oscar nomination for DESIGNER GARY JONES, who looks back here on his inspiration for the film—and who can’t help noticing that his clothes have swung back into style

THE MOVIE TAKES look that these characters and that’s sexier. The place in 1958, which is a had, I think of a bit of ride up a little, but Jude very significant date—it was flash. Pants with a slightly wore them as though he’d before , so the lower rise. That old-world done that every day of remnants of the 1940s and sensibility: “We have his life. He has an that ’50s were still in play, without always had this. We always you respond to. I think all the rock ’n’ roll influence will have this.” It’s that old- that, before the ’60s, both of the ’60s. That meant the money feeling. men and women had a characters’ clothes needed We used Italian stronger sense of allure. to be body-conscious but with nice soft shoulders Today this whole look is not skintight. that were not exaggerated. coming back. I notice it in N LOUIS VUITTON TODD SNYDER We actually drew our Some of the pieces were men’s and in the costuming inspiration from vintage, but we also had return of short sleeves. For a old jazz photographs, which made by Brioni and, most while they were thought of as made sense, since Jude’s important, Battistoni. We low-class, but that stigma is character was such a jazz got gloves from Sermoneta, going away. Dries Van Noten aficionado. Matt’s clothes which has a store just off the has been trying to shove were meant to be tighter and Spanish Steps in Rome— them into the marketplace a little more conservative, they make the Pope’s gloves. for a long time, and there’s and Jude’s were meant to be And our wardrobes used the been huge resistance. But a little bit looser, just because colors of the Mediterranean: that’s the difference between he was looser. He had the tans, greens, deep blues. costume designers and girl, he had a pair of pink linen In the film, the shorts are designers; they have pants, he had all these things shorter than what people to keep trying until it’s the that Matt’s character wanted. wear now. The proportions right time for people to buy. When I think about and the negative space And now is the right time. Continental style, like the make the legs look longer, —AS TOLD TO NICK MARINO

As Freddie Miles, the great PSH wore his clothes like he’d had If anyone ever asks us why we’re into shorter swim them on for weeks—and had never given them a thought. trunks, we’ll show them this picture and walk away.

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sun because those are the only kinds o! shirts you own—and would ever care to own. That’s the attitude After the spring collections, we always talk to the designers in 2014 are trying to capture in their collections. After all, retro pieces like designers, and it was astounding how many of them had and short-sleeve dress shirts aren’t blinding you with "lash. They’re seducing you subtly instead, used either the movie Purple Noon (which is the original with the trappings o! comfort and class. So why, suddenly, did a whole crop o! designers Talented Mr. Ripley) or The Talented Mr. Ripley itself (all o! whom were working independently o! one another) turn for inspiration to a period thriller as inspiration for the season. It was uncanny. If you want set several generations ago? Maybe that’s just how long it takes for a #lm to move from part o! the to see how to wear the clothes in this issue, go back to conversation to recently forgotten to remembered with nostalgia. (In a funny bit o! timing, it popped Ripley. It oozes the kind of style we’ve been talking up on Net$ix shortly after these collections debuted.) Regardless, i! you’re wondering how, about. And the thing is, the looks aren’t hard to pull off. exactly, to wear the best clothes o! the season, there’s no better place to start than with the movie Just watch it and copy it.”—JIM MOORE, GQ CREATIVE DIRECTOR that inspired them in the #rst place.

Pro move: horsebit loafers (or any loafers, really) worn Jude Law’s breaking at least three boring rules in this sockless, regardless of the season or weather. photo, which is exactly why he looks so great.

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