Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith in Something Wild (1986)
Vitals
Jeff Daniels as Charlie Driggs, buttoned-up investment banker
From Pennsylvania to Virginia, June 1986
Film: Something Wild
Release Date: November 7, 1986
Director: Jonathan Demme
Costume Designer: Norma Moriceau
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy 70th birthday to Jeff Daniels, the versatile actor who may be one of the few talents that could effectively transition from playing a decorated Civil War general one year to Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber the next. The actor rose to prominence through the ’80s with back-to-back Golden Globe-nominated performances in The Purple Rose of Cairo and Something Wild.
“Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild is a lot of things—Renoirian screwball, Gen-X The Odd Couple, defense for the reggae mixtape—but it’s a road movie first and foremost, and it introduces its lead, Charlie Driggs, as a man untraveled. Played with dopey precision by Jeff Daniels, Charlie is a golden retriever of a Reaganite, eager to climb the ranks of his job on Wall Street and content with the grass on his side of the fence. Building a career in the big city implies some degree of worldliness, but Manhattan can be deceptively hermetic,” writes Christian Craig at Bright Wall/Dark Room.
As Demme’s follow-up to his acclaimed Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, the hilariously Hitchcockian Something Wild—unrelated to the dark 1961 thriller of the same name—is infused with the same manic energy, primarily embodied by the chaotic “Lulu” (Melanie Griffith) who seduces the somewhat delusional Charlie after confronting him for his inability to pay for his own lunch in a Manhattan diner. In the larcenous 24 hours that follow, Lulu compels Charlie to abandon his old life—including his old clothes—and introduces him as her new husband to her mother and even to former classmates at her 10-year high school reunion… though it’s here where the vibe shifts from daring to dangerous when the pair encounter something even more wild than Lulu: the menacingly charismatic Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta), who is both an ex-convict and Lulu’s ex-husband.
What’d He Wear?
Charlie, it’s you!
Lulu is delighted by the blue dupioni silk suit that Charlie tries on at a secondhand shop in Pennsylvania, where she had told the two proprietors “we need something for the gentleman.” Following his usual pattern of behavior where Lulu is concerned, Charlie initially refuses (“in all certainly, no”) and ultimately gives in.
“It brings out the blue in those eyes,” Lulu comments of the dupioni silk suiting, a highly lustrous summer-weight shantung-type silk often characterized by irregular slubs.
Charlie gets used to his new look, chosen for him by Lulu and two women running a secondhand clothing shop somewhere in Pennsylvania.
In case her name, wig, and attitude didn’t illustrate it clearly enough, Lulu is a strong advocate for reinvention, so it makes sense that she believes—indeed, with some validity—that changing Charlie’s look can change his personality. While encouraging Charlie to embrace his rebellious side, she interestingly doesn’t push for traditional “bad boy” clothes like her proto-cowboy ex Ray wears, instead dressing him in a chaotic throwback to mid-20th century fashions—perhaps a tribute to the latter age of screwball comedies, of which Something Wild is arguably a spiritual successor. All the elements of Charlie’s new look—dupioni silk suiting, double-breasted tailoring, a loud tie, suspenders, and white bucks—were still worn to varying degrees in the 1980s, but I’d argue were generally more prevalent through the ’50s.
As our straitlaced Regional Vice President may look more dopey than dangerous if he suddenly donned a biker jacket or massive belt buckle, the offbeat suit compromises the remnants of his yuppie identity with her push toward nonconformity, while also adhering to the jacket-and-tie dress code of her reunion… which also issues little stars-and-stripes paper hats, on theme with the patriotic “Spirit of ’76” graduating class.
The double-breasted suit jacket has the usual peak lapels, with bone-colored horn buttons arranged in a traditional 6×2 configuration. These high-contrast dress down the suit more than if they matched the suiting itself. The shoulders are padded and wide, extending out to the roped sleeve-heads. Each sleeve is finished with four cuff-buttons that match the bone-colored buttons on the front. The ventless jacket has a welted breast pocket and straight jetted hip pockets.
The double reverse-pleated trousers rise high to Jeff Daniels’ natural waist, where they are held up with white suspenders (braces). These suspenders have gold-toned adjusters on the front and white double-ear loops to hook over the buttons along the inside of his trouser waistband. Devoid of belt loops, the trouser waistband has an extended front tab that closes through a single button, and a short cinch strap in the back below the short fish-tail designed for better drape with suspenders. The side pockets are cut with straight on-seam entries, and there are two jetted back pockets. The bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs) with a full break over the tops of his white bucks.
Inside you there are two wolves…
Charlie’s white voile shirt features a mini tonal white-on-white satin diamond-woven pattern, hardly discernible from a distance but visible in extreme close-ups like when he’s talking to Ray from the backseat of his car in the convenience store parking lot. The shirt’s full fit through the body is contemporary to ’80s trends, bloused at the single-button squared barrel cuffs. The shirt has a narrow point collar, front placket, and a low-slung patch pocket over the left breast, covered with a pointed flap.
The bright-yellow tie depicts a tropical scene over the swelling blade, with a pale-yellow crescent moon in the “sky” above palm trees and pools of water presented in almost-neon shades of mint-green. The tie echoes the novelty painted “swing ties” most popular for men through the “Bold Look” of the late 1940s into the early ’50s.
Though Charlie’s brown business oxfords would have comported themselves just as well with his new blue suit, his refreshed image calls for new kicks, so Lulu outfits him in a set of classic white bucks. This style emerged during the early 20th century, when well-to-do men on both sides of the Atlantic increasingly began accompanying their summer resort wardrobes with lace-up shoes built with soft white buckskin uppers and brick-red rubber soles. Though it was buckskin that gave the shoes their name, later variations have been crafted from calf suede and nubuck instead.
“The red-soled English white buck has a definite blue-blooded American cachet,” writes Alan Flusser in Style & the Man, “representing an era when the care of high-maintenance attire was left to those employed to look after the privileged.” This connotation resulted in the classification of “white-shoe firms,” describing the prestigious East Coast businesses, bankers, and law firms that generally hired from pools of Ivy League elites who were used to white bucks being a campus status symbol; J.D. Salinger may have coined the term when denigrating “white-shoe college boys” in his 1957 novel Franny and Zooey. Though they’ve woven in and out of fashion through the 20th and 21st centuries, the 2009 edition of Esquire‘s The Handbook of Style includes white bucks among “the five shoes every man needs,” with the guidance to “consider them a semi-dress-up alternative to sneakers.”
Charlie’s white bucks may be an ironic commentary on his own employment at a prestigious white-shoe firm in New York. His plain-toe suede uppers have an ivory finish, derby-laced through four sets of eyelets.
Charlie’s pale-blue socks continue the tonality of his richer blue suiting into his white shoes. As most clearly seen when he strips down to his underwear in a Virginia gas station, these cotton lisle socks are patterned with a wide white “L”-shaped angle on each side. (For what it’s worth, his undershorts are plain white cotton boxers.)
When Lulu seemingly abandons him to travel with Ray, Charlie drives their convertible south through Virginia. Without his own sunglasses, he evidently dug out Lulu’s very distinctive blue-framed plastic shades adorned with a white plastic astronaut figure on each side.
After he spots Ray nearby and impulsively purchases new tourist gear to disguise himself, Charlie realizes “sunglasses—I need sunglasses!” but the attendant assures him he should continue wearing Lulu’s: “Nah, keep ’em. You’re beautiful.”
What to Imbibe
The whiskey flows freely through Something Wild, specifically Seagram’s Seven Crown—recognizable for the large red “7” printed on the label. This 80-proof whiskey rose to prominence during the 1970s, when it was celebrated as the base spirit in the Seven-and-Seven highball that mixed it with 7 Up soda.
Though a liquor store clerk offers it in response to Lulu’s request for “four pints of Scotch,” Seagram’s Seven is actually an American blended whiskey. She doesn’t protest, as this was almost certainly what she had in mind anyway, given the bottle that she and Charlie had already polished off on their way to the poor man’s shop. Lulu and her ex share a taste for the same whiskey, as Ray hands back his own pint of Seagram’s Seven when telling Charlie “we’re gonna have to make this a night to remember!”
A night to remember.
How to Get the Look
Jeff Daniels in Something Wild (1986)
You may not have as much luck finding such retro gold in your local thrift shop, but Charlie Driggs works with the mysterious Lulu to effectively transform his buttoned-up corporate yuppie image into a freer version of himself, shining in a blue dupioni double-breasted suit, tropical-printed novelty tie, and white bucks.
- Blue dupioni silk suit:
- Double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Double reverse-pleated trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, cinch-back strap, and turn-ups/cuffs
- White tonal diamond-patterned voile shirt with narrow point collar, front placket, pointed-flap breast pocket, and 1-button squared cuffs
- Yellow palm-printed swing tie
- White suspenders with gold-toned adjusters and white leather hooks
- White nubuck leather plain-toe 4-eyelet derby shoes with brick-red rubber soles
- Pale-blue cotton lisle socks with white “L”-shaped sides
- White cotton boxer shorts
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
Maybe I don’t wanna be free.
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