How to dress like Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro. The iconic actor is famous for his challenging guy roles—his film career spans decades. He is best known for bucking the system and setting new standards with directors like Scorsese, Cimino, and Coppola. He earned two Academy Awards and snagged six (6) nominations. In his long career of controversial gangster roles, he also created new fashion styles that will resonate for years, showing that you, too, can be stylish while being a tough guy.
1. Godfather 2 (1974)
De Niro plays a younger Vito Corleone, the father of Al Pacino's character Michael Corleone in Godfather 2. The narrative often switches between Michael and Vito's points of view, and we see Vito's dealings in his rise to power and the style in which he does so. In his humble beginnings, he would wear blue-collar fare, but as he rose within the social circles of his community as an influential member, so too did his style and choice of clothes.
Here, we can see one example when he tries to "convince" a landlord to evict a widow who asks Vito for help. He wears a brown wool Chesterfield overcoat with a black and white pinstripe waistcoat underneath, buttoned high over a contrasting light and navy blue pointed collar and placket shirt. He also wears a light grey silk cravat tie with a square printed pattern, which is the outfit's focus—relatively understated but holding its own against the landlord he is with.
When he visits Sicily on that fateful day to meet with Don Ciccio, Vito is wearing a bespoke brown woollen suit with many custom features, showcasing classic Italian men's fashion and showing that he has fully grown with money and power. He is in his full ability to exact revenge on his family's killer. The suit has been designed personally by Van Runkle, made by Western Costume Co, and tailored specifically for Robert De Niro, and featured various obscure vintage features not generally found on modern suits, such as short, wide squat peak lapels which were typical of the 1920s, and welt breast pockets that slant towards the middle alongside his hip jacket pockets, also welted and slanting a lot more than usual. If anything, the woollen suit shows how foreign Vito is to the natural clime of Sicily and serves (figuratively and practically) to hide his true identity and intent to kill Don Ciccio.
2. Taxi Driver (1976)
This visceral film is made with Scorsese about Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle and his descent into madness. Bickle's wardrobe style changes throughout the movie, reflecting how unhinged he becomes as he devolves himself into the film.
However, if he wants to step it up a notch, like going on a date with Betsy, he would rely on a red maroon blazer with notch lapels, which is in keeping somewhat with the era's style (near left).
When he gets involved with unsavoury plots and hears out a victim of one of them, he doffs his work jacket and unbuttons his flannels. This also foreshadows his tipping point for his following stylistic change.
When he decides to go all out and cuts his hair into a mohawk, he switches his work jacket for an even more aggressive M-65 olive drab field jacket, indicating he is going past the point of no return into his spiral into madness and has nothing to lose from taking names as he careens haphazardly towards the end of the film. This look laid the foundations of the punk style that others will try to emulate, with the same nihilistic and visceral attitude that Di Niro brought to the look.
3. Casino (1995)
De Niro portrays casino mogul Sam "Ace" Rothstein in Martin Scorsese's crime epic set in the 1970s. Tasked by the Chicago mob with running the Tangiers casino in Las Vegas, he looks the part, being as vivid as expected of a casino mogul. With over 70 outfits in the film, Ace's style ranges from flat-out flamboyant to deceivingly subtle.
Another example is this finely checked Glen plaid blue, light grey, and gold suit with a coral windowpane overcheck. Note the ludicrously notched wide lapels to offset their width. Such an elaborate and densely patterned suit would be versatile with any of his loud but monochrome dress shirts and ties, like the sky-blue shirt, matching tie, and pocket square he is wearing here.
And the best of the last is the first suit we see Ace wear in the film. It is an apricot-coloured linen suit jacket with the same broad, notched lapels he favours with his other suits. The coat has white slacks, a matching pastel pink silk dress shirt and silk tie, and a champagne yellow pocket square.
4. The Irishman (2019)
In this extraordinary three-and-a-half-hour-long gangster epic, De Niro plays Frank Sheeran, and the film chronicles his rise from a World War 2 veteran finding work as a truck driver to being a trusted mob enforcer. In this film, however, director Scorsese wanted his wardrobe direction to move from the striking style he used in his previous crime films to a more understated style. Since this movie is a biopic, the costume department researched the wardrobe of the real-life characters in Sheeran's biography "I Heard You Paint Houses" by Charles Brandt.
In the beginning, Sheeran can be seen wearing a fleece-lined leather bomber jacket with a cloth peak cap to serve as his de facto "uniform" alongside flannel shirts of various checker patterns and grey flannel slacks. This look will sometimes change as the story progresses, from having a scarf to having a woollen beanie hat to having a fedora on jobs.
In this example, Sheeran is wearing a brown-flecked suit when he receives the fateful call and will wear it again throughout the rest of the film. The suit jacket has narrow, notched lapels, welted breasts, and low hip pockets with the flaps tucked in to show the jetting. The sleeves are roped at the shoulders and finished with three buttons on each cuff. For pants, he wears double reverse-pleated trousers. He pairs this suit with various skinny ties, such as a red and gold bicoloured tie.
In another instance, during the trial, he wears a three-piece wool twill suit in charcoal grey, which is in line with the sombre mood of the trial. The suit jacket has wider notched lapels, and the shoulders are now fully padded. He wears a diagonally striped blue, grey, white, and black tie.
And there you have it—four instances during his illustrious (and infamous) acting career in which Robert De Niro's style can be examined and where you can emulate or modify it to suit you best.
