I will never forget the line in the movie The Great Gatsby when one man said, "but he wears a blank blank pink suit". This line would surely be repeated today if someone showed up wearing a pink suit, but I actually admired Gatsby's wardrobe. It was a speckle of elegance in the 1970s.
Also, to reminisce, I remember Senator Trent Lott showing up to an event once wearing a pink seersucker suit, socks, and tie. The senator loved seersucker, but on that day, he took it to pink overdrive.
10 comments:
Pink suit...NEVER. Maybe a pink sport coat in Palm Beach during the season...
A pink suit surely gets one a spot on the roster of the pink team...and we know what that means.
I remember them filming 'Gatsby' at Rosecliff (one of McKim, Mead, and White's summer "cottages") here in Newport and had a friend who was an extra. After reading this, though, I'm glad that I had other things to do:
http://www.projo.com/movies/content/lb_great_gatsby_extras_01-16-10_D7H4587_v8.1eeeb49.html
If you were a kid in the 1950s reading Superman, Batman, etc. comics, you'd see Clark, Bruce, Perry, et al, in purple, yellow, orange and probably pink suits. Later I wondered if they were just using up the various colors of ink on hand
An interesting post. Ralph Lauren was one of the costume designers. It was, as far as I know, his first foray into the world of cinema.
Bear in my mind that Gatsby's pink suit was meant to indicate that he was not, after all, a gentleman but merely some genteel gangster's idea of one.
sec word: whodess (antonym of whodat)
A pink suit is evidence of why the old 'go-to-hell' limit is one ostentatiously colored item. A suit just has too much visible yardage. A pink coat or trousers can be pulled off quite separately.
Gossip Girl's fictional Chuck bass wore a minty green summer suit in the second season, and it was... questionable. It didn't look entirely bad or gauche, but it was daring and unusual.
Delightful post! Style perfection: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hT90L8DdBFE/TAAkkGr4c2I/AAAAAAAAAn8/qXDS2nJQycU/s1600/GreatGatsby.jpg
Not for the sensitive or suave of mind. The pink style brings to mind the zoot-suited urban fellows photographed by The Sartorialist in recent years. Bloody hell what were these chaps thinking?
It was an interesting wardrobe, but the cut and some of the style choices were hardly 1920s. While the 2000 A&E version was more authentic costume-wise, Toby Stephens and Paul Rudd hardly carry the same class and chemistry as Robert Redford and Sam Waterston. I feel the 1974 version is unfairly maligned.
Richard ol boy,
Since you did not pick up on the subtle clues, let me quote that great scholarly work of Sparknotes for you to learn from:
Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce, and does not pick up on subtle social signals, such as the insincerity of the Sloanes’ invitation to lunch. In contrast, the old aristocracy possesses grace, taste, subtlety, and elegance, epitomized by the Buchanans’ tasteful home and the flowing white dresses of Daisy and Jordan Baker.
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