Paul Newman | Clothes on Film

It’s the most celebrated, the most special, the most significant watch of all time; Rolex is symbolic of many things in the movies: style, wealth, attitude, and perhaps most importantly, taste. That is not to say a Rolex is elitist, but rather that the wearer on screen, anyone from James Bond to Steve McQueen, is someone possessed of the knowledge that there is no better. Rolex is the pinnacle. The history of Rolex on film is not nearly as interesting as the scope of its wearers and how this simple act of either subtle or ostentatious display can define character. Take James Bond, a man whose breeding was forced upon…

Newly released on collectable Blu-ray, The Long Goodbye (1973, directed by Robert Altman) is the kind of film you feel ashamed for not watching more often. Starring Elliot Gould as Raymond Chandler’s pulp private dick Phillip Marlowe, this is a quirky, very seventies re-imagining of the Humphrey Bogart man-in-a-trenchcoat myth. The film is contemporary set, yet Gould’s Marlowe is a man out of place and time. Everything from his car to apartment to clothes is indicative of the P.I’s golden age; a world of cocktails, dames and pinstripe suits, not cat food, hippies and polyester. Hollywood’s effortless private detective was created in the post-Prohibition era of the 1930s-40s, and into…