Our Times: Orange County Community News

Can you dig it?

Big bad John Shaft is a clotheshorse. He’s sweet on slick leather Armani. The man’s down with Kenzo lace-up boots. And the detective, in the new film “Shaft,” knows how to accessorize: hip to Helmut Lang sunglasses, Missoni skullcaps and Quinico wool scarves.

Yep, that Shaft is a bad mother, so shut yo mouth, as the theme song by Isaac Hayes goes, because Shaft is still the man.

For sure, the Mac Daddy of Duds cuts a classy screen figure in designer urban threads. Take the scene in the movie where the detective is being pushed and shoved in a bar.

“Get your hands off the Armani,” Shaft growls as if he were protecting a foxy lady.

Some 30 years later, the new Shaft, as portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson, is seeking the style appeal of the original film that starred Richard Roundtree, who back then was a big bad dresser too--and that’s good. For sure, Roundtree’s Shaft, as that movie’s tag line read, was hotter than Bond, cooler than Bullitt.

When the original “Shaft” hit theaters in 1971, men copied Roundtree’s sexy image by replacing their shirts and ties with turtlenecks and their suits with black leather jackets.

When the movie opens today, audiences will see an updated Shaft, “a debonair man that women would love to date and men would want to emulate,” the new film’s costume designer, Ruth Carter, said, predicting that Shaft chic--updated leather jackets and luxurious turtlenecks--will strike again.

“This ‘Shaft’ is about paying homage” to the original movie’s style, said Carter, adding that her mission per director John Singleton’s order was to find the “baddest leather jacket in the world.”

Weeks before “Shaft” was shot in New York City in September, Carter searched out leather shops in Soho, Harlem, Midtown and Greenwich Village. She accumulated 80 leather coats she kept under lock and key until finally, one--Armani’s--emerged as the quintessential Shaft jacket.

Armani’s creation--as well as other wardrobe pieces--”spoke to the heartbeat of New York City,” Carter said, adding that Armani’s clothes epitomize the New York look more so than L.A., where the designer has made his mark by dressing celebrities for the Oscars and Pat Riley when he coached the Lakers in the 1980s. He also was one of the first designers to gain movie notoriety when his clothes appeared on Richard Gere in “American Gigolo” in 1980.

Carter--who has served as costume designer on 25 films, including “Love and Basketball,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” and “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” put Jackson in 60 costumes (and the “Shaft” cast in more than 300 outfits) that were mostly buttery-soft leathers and suedes--including one of her own designs--luxe jackets, cashmere turtlenecks, hip boots and way cool sunglasses.

While Armani gets center stage, she also used a variety of international designers--Versace, Valentino, Trussardi, Maharishi, Rod Keenan and Dries van Noten--to reflect Shaft’s changing status from police detective at the start of the movie to an ex-cop-turned-underground sleuth in the middle of the flick to the guy who saves the day at the film’s close.

Carter, who was an Oscar nominee for “Amistad” and “Malcolm X,” said she reflected those changes in Jackson’s urban, edgy wardrobe by dressing him, respectively, as “classic Shaft, rebel Shaft and the new Shaft.”

The defining style moment of Shaft’s signature Armani look comes in the final scene, when the detective is decked out totally in Armani, most notably the black leather jacket with a cashmere collar.

“This jacket is just an exquisite slab of leather,” Carter said about Georgio Armani’s creation, which is lined with fused wool and has raw-cut edges, unfinished seams, no top stitching and no padding. “To see it and touch it just makes you wonder, ‘How was this coat put together?’ ”

Only Armani--whose devout fans include Ricky Martin, Glenn Close and Tina Turner, among others--knows, and he’s not spilling his secret. But for $2,500, Carter said, any man can claim the jacket. Already, the jacket, as worn by Jackson, is featured on a mammoth billboard in Times Square.

Unlike Los Angeles, New York “is not trendy,” Carter said. And New Yorkers, though chic, she added, are clone dressers: dark colors, simple lines, almost a uniform approach to style, a look “which is very fashion driven.”

So it made sense, Carter said, that Shaft, in the year 2000, should wear Armani.

She contacted the Italian designer and asked for his help with the project.

Via faxes and e-mail, Carter said, Armani, who doesn’t speak English, “told me I could pretty much do anything I wanted with his clothes and that he would follow my lead” as the film’s costumer.

Carter said she told Armani that she was especially interested in the designer creating jackets for Jackson. But because Jackson has a small face, the garments “couldn’t have zippers, buttons, flaps and epaulets, which would overpower his face.” The look “had to be simple and clean.”

Carter and Jackson soon were in Milan, flown there in a private jet by Armani. The two were front row at the designer’s fall 2000 men’s show and later attended a party at Armani’s home, where she was given a tour of the showplace by Armani’s sister. Armani even asked Carter to take notes on his show, keenly interested in her opinion, “which I thought was very sweet of him,” she said.

Back in Los Angeles, Carter collaborated with Armani by relying on sketches of several pieces, including two suits, turtlenecks and at least five leather jackets that were faxed over until the “Shaft” jacket caught Carter’s attention.

“Ours was a true collaboration because at no time did I feel that I had to stand back” and let Armani take over, Carter said. “As a matter of fact, I almost felt if none of Mr. Armani’s clothes or jackets had worked for the film that I could send the clothes back and they would send something else.”

Armani too was pleased with his collaboration with Carter, he said via an e-mail interview from his Milan office.

“Together, our challenge was to update a film icon still vivid after 30 years--bringing ‘Shaft’ into the 21st century while showing reverence to the past.”

*

E-mail Michael Quintanilla at michael.quintanilla@latimes.com.