Men’s Style Expert Reacts to “The Godfather” – Menswear Review

As many of our frequent readers know, we are passionate about classic men’s style, especially historic clothes. So, today, we’ll take a closer look at the outfits and suits in the original Godfather film from 1972. We’ll try to point out things that are off, note certain details, and what we could have maybe improved.

Pasta Cannoli’s, Tommy guns, and striped suits today are often associated with a gangster genre, and they owe this legacy in a great part to the original Godfather movie from 1972. The costume designer was Anna Hill Johnstone and she tried to emulate a 1940s aesthetic. Of course, though, with them being in the 70s, usually these movies all have a certain hint of the era they were filmed in, just like for example, The Great Gatsby does.

The Godfather: Menswear Style Review

Don Vito Corleone

Black Tuxedo

First up, let’s take a look at the godfather himself Don Vito Corleone. As you know, the movie starts out in his office at his daughter’s wedding day with him wearing a black tuxedo. When you look at him, looks like a stiff shirt. You can see there are some X pleats there, which means it was a stiff shirt front, a Marcella bib front– not a pleated shirt front. His bow tie hangs there slightly crooked. And if we take a closer look, it’s actually a pre-tied bow tie.

You could also see a big red boutonniere pinned on his lapel, not worn through the buttonhole. In the 40s, especially mid–1945 after the war when this movie was set, men would have worn the boutonniere through the buttonhole, not pinned onto it. You can see he has two visible shirt sets, which is accurate at the time.

Today, shirts oftentimes have three visible studs. In the beginning, they look black but upon further notice, they almost seem like a gray glass that becomes lighter with a reflection at times. There’s even a photo where it almost looks white but in the movie, he wore something that was probably a darkish gray.

And exactly you could also really see this kind of v-cut of the vest. It shows you that it’s a proper evening vest, not something that you often see today but in the 40s, you would definitely have worn the tuxedo with a cummerbund or more commonly with a vest. So, that’s correct.

You can definitely see that it’s a bib shirt front when he takes off his jacket. If you look at his bow tie, it’s like dangling there and it’s very symmetrical and the tips are exactly on point, it’s very flat and it’s a sure sign that in the movie, they used a pre-tied bow tie. Back in the 40s, men would have tied their own bow tie. So that’s definitely not accurate.

Here in this one scene when he slowly turns around. You see there’s an adjuster on the left side because it’s a wing collar and that is something that, in 1945, he probably would not have worn because he would have worn a fixed proper black bow tie, which is the right way to do it; the classic way to do it and that’s the only style we sell at the Gentleman’s Gazette shop.

Interestingly, you can see here that he’s wearing a white tie shirt with a detachable stiff collar. In one picture, you could see the color start reflecting from underneath. So, back in the day, men would have shirts where the collar was not sewn on and this wing collar was typical for a white tie shirt, for example, but it would also have been worn more in the 20s and 30s with suits. Later on, collars became attached, they became softer, they weren’t starched as much.

But what he’s wearing in terms of a shirt would be kind of a mix because, for Black Tie, you’d have a softer collared shirt that was turned down collar–a trend the Prince of Wales, late, Duke of Windsor introduced but he was old school in the 1940s and so, he would wear this more stiff-collared formal shirt.

You can also see that it’s not a typical double cuffed shirt that you would get today. If you look at the cuffs, they’re rounded and they’re single cuffs; they’re not folded over. There’s one thing you can actually see his cufflinks a little bit, and you can see that they probably match the shirt studs. Of course, in the 70s they didn’t have 4k or HDTV so it’s hard to see the details. It was very common to have a dress set that had coordinated shirt studs as well as cufflinks. 

You can see them wearing a swivel T-bar cufflink, which was a little more pedestrian, and typically, for evening sets, you had two-sided sets such as from Krementz, for example, or other places that had these double-sided dress sets. It’s hard to see, but actually, the back of the collar is piped with silk satin. Typically, in a tuxedo, the lapel is faced in satin or in grosgrain to make it different from a regular suit and to be a little shinier and sparkle the light.

So, the piping that he has is typically something you would have seen earlier in the 20s or in the 30s for formal morning wear, not for formal evening wear. That didn’t take place until the late 60s or 70s, and I remember that Maurice Sedwell from Andrew Ramroop, he had this kind of a piping that looked kind of funny, and on a tuxedo, but this is definitely an influence from the 70s in this costume here.

Next, let’s look at his lapel. You can see little ripples, which is common in silk lapel, so that’s normal. And while his lapels are quite wide, they’re probably on the wider side of the 1940s lapel. And he also has a notch lapel, which, at the time, was not very popular especially for tuxedos, because classically, they have a peak lapel.

Yes, you can find notched lapel tuxedos and you could probably even find them rarely in the 40s. But they were usually associated with a rental tuxedo or kind of a lower class tuxedo, not something the top-of-the-food-chain mobster boss would have worn.

In this one scene, we get a close look at his waistcoat. It has three black buttons. And, actually, if we take a closer look here you can see that the shirt bib doesn’t reach all the way down to the vest. So, you can see that the length of the vest is a little too short for the shirt, but if it was shorter the pants have a low rise and so the shirt peeks out from underneath the vest. So, an Italian mobster of this caliber would have certainly had his suit tailored and this outfit was not tailored for Marlon Brando, I can tell you that.

There’s only one scene where you can see the shoes. It seems to me like it’s a pair of black leather derby shoes. It’s really hard to tell and that is a style that maybe in Austria is correct to be worn, but in the US you would typically wear either opera pumps with a bow in patent leather or regular calf leather, or you’d have plain toe oxfords. And this is, again, not correct.

So, overall, how does the Godfather himself stack up? There are a number of issues; the adjustable pre-tied bow tie, the boutonniere, the cufflinks, and the little details that are off. But compared to other people in the film, just look at this guy here, for example, with his socks that are too short and the pants actually coming out on top of the vest, he’s doing much better.

Also, he’s not as bad as Johnny, for example, who wears a ruffle shirt, which was popular in the late 60s and 70s, but not at all in the 40s. So, they clearly took something from the modern-day era and put it in the movie. I don’t know if it was product placement or it was just an oversight. I can see they wanted to make the character more flamboyant, but it was just wrong, and no one would have worn that in 1945.

Brown-Gray Striped Suit

Okay, next up, we see Vito’s brownish-grayish bold striped suit. It’s another interesting outfit because he wears it for a business outfit. The shirt is kind of in a pale-ish olive green, and his tie has kind of a micro pattern that is a 60s-inspired kind of Macclesfield pattern, which you would typically see in madder silk. Here, it’s kind of harder to tell what it is exactly. There are tones of blue and red, maybe even a little brown.

Lapels seem to be at three and a half inches wide, which is something that you could have worn in the 40s. Later on in the 70s, they became wider so this is pretty much on point. In this one scene here you can see that it has a single vent, which again suits at a time probably would have had no vent, and the single vent came from horseback riding, more in the 60s and 70s; you definitely had more center vents.

You can also see he doesn’t have a pocket square, and kind of a missed opportunity in that sense, but again not all men wore pocket squares back then. In terms of sleeve length, he likes to wear his sleeves longer. He did with a tuxedo, where you couldn’t see the shirt, and here, too, you can’t see any shirt cuff.

I mean, interestingly, you can see all the others wearing traditional business suits with like white shirts, but he’s wearing this very casual ensemble, just showing “I’m the man. I don’t have to adapt to conventional dress codes. I can wear whatever I want when I conduct business.” He obviously favors those earth tones, which are different than what usually people would wear around him, and it’s just another nod to the way the film uses color to define characters or make implications. For example, whenever you see orange, something bad is going to happen.

Assassination Attire

His preference for earth tones is continued into the next scene when there is an assassination attempt. This is overcoated in this kind of lovat color and they’re in the street and you see the orange fire burning; there are oranges on the shelves that he’s gonna buy and then it all goes downhill–he takes five bullets, basically.

You can just see how he goes down, he has this bold multi-stripe tie. I definitely think it’s something that I would have worn. Also, the shirt color, is that like a plain white it’s maybe like a pale orange or pastel shirt, which is definitely something you would have seen more often in the 40s; They’ve fallen a bit out of favor.

If you look at the hat, it’s a silver belly colored fedora, right? All in that kind of earthy tonal range that is more subdued and less contrasty than like a black or navy or charcoal suit. Actually, as he gets shot and falls down and turns towards the front so we can see him, you can actually see his belt buckle and there’s a little C on it for Corleone.

Double-Breasted Dark Suit

Later on, when Vito has recovered, and they’re at the table with all the other mobsters trying to keep the peace, you could actually see him deviating from that color scheme. He wears this dark three-piece suit and he has a collar that’s very classic, very long. Today, you’d see a much more spread collar. In the 70s also you had these big, bold oversized collars, and I think this would be okay for the 1940s, with the exception of the tie space. This collar has a lot of tie space, which is something you saw later on in the decades. In the 40s, you simply saw less tie space.

The tie is kind of a brown, red, and blue paisley tie, which stands out a little bit, but again it’s hard to tell. He also wears a pocket square in a kind of a crown fold to just underline the somber importance of the event. If you take a closer look, you can also see that it’s a double-breasted suit that has a vest underneath of it, which for 1945 is something you still could have seen because central heating was just starting to really become mainstream, and up until then places are a little cold. So, I think that extra layer underneath the double-breasted layers kept you extra warm.

Since he was an older guy, it’s realistic that he could have worn that kind of style, but today, you’re definitely not going to see that unless you go custom. Also, during World War II, there was a fabric shortage, so double-breasted suits, in general, fell out of favor because they use up more fabric than single-breasted suits. I could argue Vito wearing this kind of a suit just shows them that he’s from the older guard, or maybe that he’s disregarding the needs of the common man or society, in general.

Casual Attire

Later in the movie, you can see Vito wearing a much more casual outfit. It consists of this shirt that is grayish with an orangey overcheck, which is unusual with slightly contrasting gray wool pants. There are tones of olive green muted blues and orange in his shirt.

If you look at his collar, it doesn’t have collar stays, but he buttons it up all the way, which is kind of a funny look. It’s not a really 1940s thing, but it’s odd, but it also has a pocket and you can see it’s not neatly ironed. It’s just a shirt for comfort.

Later on, you can also see him wearing a dark gray cardigan as a form of outerwear. If you take a closer look at the shoulder of the shirt you can see that the seam is outside of his actual shoulder, so it’s cut a little too big. I don’t know if it was intentional, or just an oversight.

Now that he’s not in the helmet of the family anymore, he spends more time in his garden playing with his grandson, which is also seen in his last scene, he has the same kind of gray trousers that he wears again, right, because it doesn’t have to change so much.

His shirt looks kind of whitish or off-white, sometimes hard to tell in the sun. The shirt is definitely cut looser, which was much more typical at the time because shirts typically weren’t worn on their own, so they were really there for comfort and to protect your outer clothes, so they were cut really roomy and not slim fit at all. So, that’s pretty accurate of a shirt that someone would have worn at the time.

He also still wears his hat outside because that’s what men did; they wore hats especially the ones of the old guard.

Michael Corleone

Military Uniform

So, next up, let’s look at the outfits of Vito’s youngest son Michael. He’s first introduced coming to his sister’s wedding after the war wearing his kind of greenish-brown military uniform and dragging along his girlfriend, Kay, who is not Italian.

The uniform is a standard olive green jacket, and the shirt has a tan color that you would have seen in US uniforms at the time. When he’s introduced he doesn’t want to have anything to do with a family business and he’s aspiring to do his own thing that is a little more socially acceptable.

There are epaulets on the shoulder, but then a half belted back and a center vent. Nevertheless, though, if you’ll take a closer look, you can see the stereotypical Italian bracelet. 

Brown Corduroy Jacket Attire

Later on, you see glimpses of his outfits but they’re not really full outfits. So, the next full one comes quite a bit later when they discuss the assassination attempts and you can see him wearing a kind of a brown corduroy jacket. He has this kind of button-down collared shirt with a fine white and maybe grayish stripe; it’s a tie that has orange-brown and white in it, with kind of a bolder stripe, it’s definitely a pattern that would have been popular maybe more in the 50s, I’d say, so it’s probably pretty accurate.

He’s wearing a wristwatch with a leather band. He’s wearing dark socks and gray pants. They seem to be flannel, but it’s hard to tell. And actually, the shoes, upon close inspection, they are bluchers named after the German General von Blücher and they’re like a derby variation.

Oh yeah, on another zoom in, you can see the corduroy, which is brown and at the time it’s a very classic fabric, it’s actually made in the same way as a velvet just with a cut in ridges. You can see this jacket here in that close view has a machine-stitched hem, which is something that became more popular in the late 50s, sometimes also earlier 50s, higher-end handmade suits typically would have hand-picked stitching and not as strong machine stitching. You would also see that later on in the 70s, so maybe that’s what they chose there.

In general, having a button-down collar with a tie can be a hotly discussed topic and to learn more about where you can wear them together or not, we answer that question on our website, too.

In other scenes, you can also see that same outfit with kind of a brown single-breasted overcoat, and very kind of classic clean somber look, but again utilizing these earth tones; no stark contrasts of white shirts.

Ivy League Suit

Yeah, when he tries to get his father out of the hospital, you could even argue that it has this kind of Ivy League or Trad style look. After all, attended college, and he looks a little more educated than his brothers because of that. When I say educated, I mean he just looks more like someone in an Ivy League school would have looked than the brothers do. The brothers are more flamboyant; they’re noticeably different compared to Michael. And again you can see maybe there’s an orange in his tie, and that’s a hint that his innocence will soon, yeah, be over. 

And no, I’m not the only one making up this Ivy League term. There’s this one scene where Sonny refers to Vito’s odd trousers and jacket combination is an Ivy League suit.

And obviously, as you know, the suit comes from the French word suivre, which means to follow, and it’s referred to a jacket and pants out of a matching fabric. So a combination can never be a suit. That’s what I reference Ivy League kind of comes into play here.

Three-piece Flannel Suit

If you look at Michael’s next outfit here, he actually wears this kind of gray three-piece flannel suit with a button-down collar shirt, again, that he wears with a tie, striped that looks like a white maybe a gray, could also be a kind of washed-out dark blue – hard to tell exactly in the picture. 

You could argue that the typical business colors of red and gray, which we made a video about, are a very kind of common business color combination and he wears that here to indicate he’s serious about business.

Of course, he has different plans and doesn’t intend to honor anything that’s agreed on and walks out, killing a cop and the guy who tried to assassinate his father.

Take a closer look there you’ll see some collar gap, which is generally something Hollywood has issues with a lot of times; that fit is not a hundred percent and it’s just surprising because in British productions, oftentimes they just get that right every time.

Sicilian Attire

As Michael heads off to Sicily, you can see him wearing this kind of striped vest, which is too short for him, walking around with his bodyguards, and a flat cap.

Wedding Suit

The next major outfit again is then him wearing his like black wedding suit. It’s a black double-breasted wedding suit that he wears instead of a morning coat. In Sicily, at the time, you know maybe morning coats weren’t the style anymore, but you still had that boutonniere, and this time it’s worn through the buttonhole, not pinned onto it. It’s a big white carnation and interestingly, he wears a Winchester shirt, which means it’s a white-collar with a different colored body.

Even though the carnation is so big you can see him with a little bit of a pocket square, and sometimes it actually blends together, but if you look closely there’s actually a pocket square and a carnation.

Double-Breasted Gray Suit

Last but not least, one interesting outfit worn by Michael is his double-breasted gray suit. It has this kind of faint stripe. He has this kind of light blue or off-white shirt with kind of a black and white striped silk tie. He’s wearing it with a Homburg hat and it’s actually was somewhat of a renaissance for the Homburg hat because it has this brimmed curl, it’s an older hat and the history goes back to back to Homburg, a town in Germany where the then Prince of Wales would often come for vacation and he picked up that hat and made it popular.

As you imagined, in the 70s hats had already fallen out of favor, but this movie for a short while actually managed to make him more popular again, especially the Homburg, which is what was also known as The Godfather Hat. I mean, even RUN DMC adopted that Homburg hat and it had mainly to do with this movie, I’d say.

If you notice one thing, he rarely actually wears a pocket square even in the last scene, maybe it’s because he just doesn’t care about it. I think in the 30s you would have seen men with pocket squares across the board. Here, he only wore it for his wedding day, and I think that maybe it’s just part of a style of the 70s; pocket squares weren’t really popular anymore, but maybe it’s just a symbol at their mafia that they can do whatever they want.

Sonny Corleone

Double-Breasted Tuxedo

Next up, let’s look at the oldest son of the Corleone family, Sonny and you can see him wearing a tuxedo especially a double-breasted tuxedo with peak lapels, and it’s not a 4×1, which would mean you had four buttons and one closing button, but it’s a six-two meaning six buttons with two closing buttons. Considering this is right after the war and during the war single-breasted jackets were the number one thing, you can see that he likes to be flashy and more flamboyant. 

You could have certainly seen those and you can see it’s definitely a wider cut, which in the mid-40s, you know, some of the tuxedos could have been still from like the 30s because if it was a 40s suit, they would have been a little trimmer in the pants. You can see there’s still quite a bit of shoulder padding, there are no vents in the back, which was very common and typical.

Same if you look at the tuxedo of his father, that was also ventless and you can pretty much only see it in this dancing scene with his daughter here. That was the proper way to do it because the idea of no vents in the back meant that you get a clean silhouette.

You can see that he has no pocket square, but he actually wears the same white tie shirt, with stiff and double cuffs that are not folded, so they’re not traditional and double cuffs, but it’s a white tie shirt with a double-breasted tuxedo. It’s kind of a more unusual look but I don’t know if they would have actually done it like that in the 40s.

You’re going to see his pinky ring and he has the T-bar cufflinks, which again, there would have been more double-sided cufflinks.

I mean throughout the movie, Sonny is kind of the impulsive one, kind of a hitman of the family. Again, he’s also wearing an adjustable bow tie that is pre-tied, again not something you would have seen, just doesn’t look great.

Grey-Black Suit

In this next scene, you see him beating up his sister’s husband because he abused her and he’s just, you know you can see his tie is not really tied, and he’s wearing this kind of grey-black suit; the vest isn’t really done, but he still has black and white spectator shoes that just yell like, “Look at me!”

Overall, his impulsive nature is portrayed through his clothes. He’s just never really put together. 

It’s not thought through, it’s just whatever you know comes to mind in any given situation.

So, was it accurate for the 1940s? It’s hard to imagine for me that someone would have been so open, because again, it was not common that you just showed your shirt in public on the street, right? It must have been pretty different but maybe he just didn’t give a **** about dress codes at the time.

Gray Double-breasted Suit

In his final scene here, he has another unfinished outfit. It’s kind of a gray double-breasted suit that he’s wearing without a tie has kind of blue overcheck and a shirt is light blue, too, which is fine but typically and traditionally, at that time, a double-breasted suit was a little more formal than a single-breasted one because it had the peak lapels, had more of that military influence. So, not wearing a tie would not have been something a typical 1940s man would have done.

Obviously, after his Tommy gun, the suit is hardly recognizable but overall, he’s not someone to look up to for genuine 40s style or classic men’s style, in general.

Fredo  Corleone

Black Tuxedo

Next up, let’s look at another brother Fredo Corleone. In this short opening scene you can just see him saying hi to Kay, talking to Michael and it’s very obvious that he has this adjustable bow tie, a pre-tied, seems like they all had it–he has that big carnation and for him, if you take a closer look here you can actually see that he does neither of a cummerbund nor a vest, so you see the end of the bib and the shirt underneath just bunching up.

Definitely not something that a person his position would have worn like that. I think it was an oversight of the costume designers here; they just thought it didn’t matter or what, but not very historically accurate.

Otherwise, you know, he’s wearing the same kind of stiff shirt with the T-bar cufflinks here, too. 

You don’t see much in the movie, once, quickly, when the dad’s assassinated, it’s just more obvious that he can’t kind of get his gun out quickly enough. He has more of a softer side, some may call it effeminate, even.

Disco Vegas Attire

If we look at him here later he’s sent to Vegas and he’s kind of welcoming Michael, he has this kind of creamish, off-white, or even yellow sport coat that he combines with a black shirt with like a disco collar. And no, it’s not just like a classic collar from the 40s and I get it, right, Vegas was always out there and he also had this bandana, which was dark with a pattern on it.

In contrast, you see Michael, for example, with a somber dark business suit, the kind of reddish tie and he tells him to get rid of all the women in the room and come to business and he’s wearing his kind of aviator-ish sunglasses with a disco style.

Definitely flamboyant, and more like of an Elvis impersonation, in my mind. And as you can see like Michael doesn’t take him seriously because of that. So, they use clothes to underline the characters, their moods, and what they want to communicate.

Yeah, look at that, I mean definitely that classic point collar from the 40s and 50s was shorter than this disco collar. He has a brown belt and a checked pair of pants that you can see here in the background, definitely something that’s louder. He’s also wearing a ring on his ring finger. There’s kind of this obvious rift between Michael and Fredo and I think that’ll carry over into The Godfather II.

Tom Hagen

Gray Suit

A more interesting style approach from a classic point of view is definitely Tom Hagen the consigliere, and then later the lawyer of the family. When he’s first sent to LA to speak with Woltz to give Johnny that role that he desires, he wears this typical kind of lawyer-ish gray suit. You can see him strolling down the street. It’s like a gray fedora hat, gray suit, white shirt, navy tie.

The suit is double-breasted and upon close inspection, you can see nice peak lapels. It’s kind of an interesting fabric, it almost looks like a herringbone kind of stripe, but it has an element of pinpoints in it, as well. You can take a closer look at it at the dinner when he sits at a dinner table listening to what’s going on.

They’re just having dinner. His counterpart wears this kind of blue blazer with white piping. Early on, you could see him like this tiny sweater when they were in a horse stable. Tom, on the other hand, is just very sober; also his whole mannerisms are all better matter-of-factly very rational, just as you would expect it from a lawyer.

Even though his suit is double-breasted, he doesn’t wear cufflinks with it, which is something back in the day because a double-breasted was more formal, people wore shirts with cufflinks with it. Also, especially in this scene, you can see there’s a terrible collar gap going on and they didn’t really pay attention to that which is kind of sad, because I think it would have looked even better and would have made him look more proper, like a lawyer who got his bespoke suits.

You can see though there’s some shoulder padding, but it’s not super strong, so it’s realistic with what you have worn at that time, in terms of padding and silhouette. I still think the collar gap is just too much. No tailor would have let you out a door looking like that.

Other Lawyer Attires

Throughout the film, he always dresses like that picture lawyer, you know, white shirts, dark suits, kind of patterned silk tie. The most disheveled you can see him is where he has taken his jacket off, but still, then you know he looks so much better than Sonny does, for example.

How accurate are The Godfather’s costumes?

I think they want to get that classic feel of the 1940s, but there are definitely some 60s and 70s influences, and it’s overall not a hundred percent historically accurate. But no American movie I’ve ever seen is or was.

The British, on the other hand, are just miles ahead in that department. And sometimes, the outfits are a bit oversized. If you look at the suits of the B-cast or the C-cast, you can sometimes see really wide lapels and low gorges, which is not something you would have seen like that in the 1940s. So, part of the 70s modern trends made their way into the movie.

Also, some of the ties in the movie are worn quite a bit longer than they would have been worn in the 1940s, but in the late 60s in the US, Ralph Lauren had these super wide ties, but if you go back in time, ties were a lot shorter than they are today, and they were oftentimes, they ended the belly button, which in combination, they were designed for high-waisted trousers.

So, they got far and they tried to use the more high-waisted pants but with the longer ties so it doesn’t quite mix as well.

What menswear styles did you appreciate in The Godfather? What other movies do you want us to review? Post your answer in the comments section!