Just by making simple fashion decisions, you can boost your self-esteem, make you more productive and improve your career opportunities. Every week, I help 1,000+ men make the most of their wardrobe with fashion tips to upgrade your life.
Born in California, Redford acted in film, television, and on stage, often playing on his All-American image and adding depth to roles that he could have skated through on his prodigious looks.
He began directing in the late 70s, his first picture earning him academy awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and he promoted independent film, environmentalism, and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Tributes have gone up worldwide from film buffs, environmental advocates, and people who simply appreciate one of the most handsome men to ever live.
Redford’s influence on me starts with the movie The Sting.
I first saw The Sting when I was about 10 years old, and the grey three-piece single-breasted suit and matching grey hat that he wears for much of the film planted the seed that grew into everything in my wardrobe today.
Other Redford roles have impacted me as well, particularly his relaxed jeans-and-loafers style in Sneakers and the tweed jacket and knit tie pairing in both Three Days of the Condor and Spy Game.
But Redford came from a Hollywood generation who largely styled themselves when off the camera, in a time before the celebrity stylist and designer partnerships.
There’s as much, if not more to learn about style from his clothing off-camera.
One underrated aspect of Redford’s style is that he wore the hell out of a hat.
Most men with good hair, at least these days, are not hat men, but Redford appreciated good headwear.
Leaving aside the fedoras and western hats that costume designers put on him in The Sting, The Natural, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he was a cowboy hat devotee from his youth visiting family in Texas.
During the filming of Barefoot in the Park in 1968, Redford reportedly couldn’t wait to get out of the sack suit that his character wore throughout the film, and between shoots he would throw on a cowboy hat and boots so he could feel like himself.
In a sidewalk snap of what is admittedly one of his more dated 70s looks (at least when it comes to the jacket), he’s wearing an 8-panel tweed cap.
As a hat wearer, it’s nice to see one of the all-time greats represent us.
As I mentioned above, Redford is particularly recognized for the way his character in Three Days of the Condor wore a tweed sport coat with jeans and a knit tie.
This look seized the style world by the throat in the last decade or so through Drakes and J. Crew shoots and it’s not hard to see why.
Redford could certainly wear a suit and tie but his inclination with tailoring was to wear it in a more relaxed, informal way.
Patterned sport coats have a comfortable, relaxed feel to them, particularly heavier ones with a deep texture, and Redford exploited that offscreen and often without a tie.
In a time where the 90s t-shirt and sport coat look is returning to relevance, this shot of Redford at LAX should be on everyone’s mind.
He’s wearing loafers with white socks, his chinos are pleated, and he’s even using the pockets of his jacket to hold a scarf or knit cap.
There’s style and practicality here that I love to see, and it still works today for the vicissitudes of airport travel.
The leather duffel and scuffed attache case beat the hell out of plastic rolling luggage in my opinion.
He wore a different sport coat on a 1988 trip to Moscow to show some of his films in the Soviet Union, this time with more of a western inflection.
The shirt is a double-pocket snap closure western shirt, and his belt has a big silver buckle on it.
Not understated, but not crazy flashy, and definitely a personal touch.
You might say “of course Redford would appear in style moodboards, looking the way he did,” but he once said in an interview that he was not a handsome child and grew into his looks, and as an actor he didn’t rely on them.
Instead he had a sense of self that carried through the screen, and that informed how he presented himself off-camera as well.
Ultimately, what made Robert Redford a style icon, one of the great style icons, was a simplicity of form that showed us his personality - with the emphasis on “personal.”
His wasn’t a swaggering style that shouted out to be noticed.
It felt real, and he felt real to us who never knew him.
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Just by making simple fashion decisions, you can boost your self-esteem, make you more productive and improve your career opportunities. Every week, I help 1,000+ men make the most of their wardrobe with fashion tips to upgrade your life.
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