If you were to name your favorite Italian style icons, Richard Gere probably wouldn’t even crack your top 100 list. Yet, few people wore Italian clothes better. To be sure, Gere is an American – born in Philadelphia and the son of two Mayflower descendants – but he did a lot for Italian tailoring in the 1980s when he wore Armani for his role in American Gigolo. Menswear blogs and magazines have endlessly picked over those film stills, but if we’re to be honest, the clothes were kind of ugly. The ties were too driven by fashion; the jackets fit atrociously. Where Gere’s style really shined was in his personal life, which is seen here through paparazzi photos.
Outside of a few questionable outfits, Gere dressed impeccably. He typically looked his best in dinner suits and floppy bow ties, which he wore to award ceremonies, but he also mixed slouchy sport coats with tonal shirts and knits during his off-hours. For sportswear, he wore velvety suede jackets with jeans, tailored topcoats with hunting boots, and seemingly anything that would reveal a collarbone. There are a lot of half-buttoned shirts, linen popovers, and merino v-necks here.
In keeping with the times, much of Gere’s style in the ‘80s and ‘90s was influenced by Armani (he helped popularize it, after all). Armani is often credited in the press as having invented soft tailoring, but that’s only half true. The soft Italian look had been around for decades prior, although it was only available through bespoke tailors (mostly because ready-to-wear was still in its nascent stages during the first half of the 20th century). Domenico Caraceni in Rome published a book about it in the early 1930s, and Vincenzo Attolini pioneered the technique in Naples through his work as a cutter at Rubinacci. What Armani did was introduce a version of the style to the masses, making even the softest of Madison Avenue shoulders look bulky.
To really appreciate Armani’s style, you have to think about the silhouette (as well as what came before it). Men’s tailoring throughout the ‘60s was often slim and straight, with angular, clean lines running across the shoulders and then sharply cleaving towards the waist. Think of the English Mods and French “cigarette” look. Armani’s suits, by contrast, were slouchier and fuller. His shoulders were slightly extended; the chest a bit drape-y. The buttoning points were dropped, and with them, so went the gorges. The overall effect was to make the front of the jacket look like it was falling away from the chest. You can see how the tailoring fits with the kind of shirts shown in the video above, which have oversized pockets set lower on the body. The point was to create a kind of luxe, languor look that sat between suits and sportswear (maybe even pajamas).
It’s hard to say who made Gere’s personal clothes, although a lot of what’s shown here carries Armani’s signature. The softer, rounder silhouette across the shoulders gives a more casual vibe, but the jackets aren’t cut slim and short like a lot of today’s tailoring. Gere often combined his pieces in low-contrast ways, pairing black jackets with gray jeans, or mushroom-colored button-ups with dark brown tweeds (a good way to make an outfit look modern, I think). I also like how many of Gere’s jackets only have two buttons at the front – something normally reserved for sharper, more formal suits, but works here in extending the lapel line and accentuating the dropped buttoning point. To dress down his suits, Gere often went sans necktie and opted for thinner, one-inch wide belts, rather than your more conventional inch-and-a-quarter.
To be sure, a lot of photos here ride on the leading actor’s natural good looks, but there’s also an element of how he made tailored clothing look so natural and relaxed. How Richard Gere dressed in the ‘80s and ‘90s was kind of awesome.