From Grailed's Dry Clean Only:
There are few universally held opinions in fashion or in film, but the claim that Cary Grant’s grey flannel suit from North By Northwest is the greatest in the history of cinema—well, that’s about as close as you can get. Whenever there are lists of the greatest suits on film, the outfit Grant wore as Roger Thornhill (or is it George Kaplan?) ranks at the top of the list. Innumerable blog posts and “buy your own” shopping lists can be found online singing the praises of the suit and doing their best to put together a reasonable facsimile. Writer Todd McEwan once wrote an entire short story retelling North by Northwest from the suit’s perspective. He famously begins the piece, “North by Northwest isn’t a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it’s about what happens to his suit.”
Why has this particular suit endured for decades when other equally stylish fits have been relegated to the cinematic attic? It’s not just the movie the featured it, the man who wore it, or the just itself. There’s not one reason, but rather a confluence of forces that came together to cement the suit’s place in film history.
One of the most important reasons that the suit has endured is also one of the simplest: Cary Grant wears the same suit for almost the entirety of North by Northwest. Martin Landau's character Leonard remarks early in the film that Thornhill is a, “well-tailored one, isn’t he?” drawing our attention to the suit and, from there, Grant barely shifts his wardrobe in the subsequent two hours. The rare moments when he’s not wearing the suit are deployed to comic effect. Thornhill tries on one of “Kaplan’s” suits in a hotel room, but the sleeves are far too short. Later, he dons the ill-fitting outfit of a train porter to avoid detection. The final sequence of the film places Grant in a far too loose dress shirt that he is forced to borrow from an ally; this serves to make him look beaten down, desperate and even a bit ridiculous. In each of these instances, the clothes make the suit look better by comparison.
Hitchcock set out to make North by Northwest feel timeless....
....MUCH MORE
Just awesome, the stills alone are worth the price of admission. (your time)
Throw in the erudite commentary and I see why a (former) friend thought I could learn a thing or two from Mr. Grant.
