Summer style: Men's movie fashions through the 20th Century

Forget your check shirts, shutter shades and plimsolls as despite being this summer’s hottest trends, they’ve got far to go until they can compete with some of cinema’s most enduring and popular summer styles. Over the decades, film has captured every trend in fashion circles, however fleeting, ill-advised or downright ugly, a 24/7 surveillance on style that has never shied away from anything. Instead it has endured to bring us every possible kind of costume – from those determined by profession, location, era and culture, and so we’re dusting off the archives to see how our silver screen heroes dressed when the sun shone.

The turn of the century didn’t mark a new dawn in clothing for men. They continued in the same starchy, formal dress of the Victorian era with top hats, frock coats and high-collared shirts still all the rage in smart circles, trends that persisted into the 1910s. However, this look softened come summer time with three-piece suits in lighter colours and fabrics and the introduction of the sporting blazer and straw boater hats. In cinematic terms, we’re very much in the territory of famous filmmaking duo, director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant with great examples to be found in the form of Daniel Day-Lewis’s Cecil Vyse in A Room With A View and Johnny Depp’s J. M. Barrie in Finding Neverland.

The arrival of “the roaring Twenties” brought with it a shift in attitudes. The world was left reeling after the Great War and so stolid conservatism was ditched for a more decadent, flamboyant philosophy as people enjoyed life while they could. This hedonistic spirit saw women embrace flapper style clothing (cloche hats, strings of pearls, straight waist dresses) and men gamely joined in.

A fantastic specimen of “jazz age” dress comes in the immaculate form of Robert Redford’s Jay Gatsby in the adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Despite being produced in the 70s, this, the third big screen version of the doomed love affair between Jay and Daisy (played in the film by Mia Farrow) is pure 20s glamour thanks to sumptuous styling from Ralph Lauren and much of it is summer wear. The colours are soft and pale, the costumes perfectly coordinated with Jay impressing whether looking formal in three piece suits or enjoying a leisurely jaunt in his cricket jumper. Details and accessories are both important, look out for Peter Pan collars, French cuffs, newsboy caps and driving gloves.

The jazz age look matured and scaled back in colour, luxury and ambition as the 30s beckoned and America’s finances were crippled by the Great Depression; however the dedication to clothing quality was still very much on show on British soil in dramas such as 2008’s Brideshead Revisited (read more on the film’s fashions here) and the critically acclaimed Atonement.