Menswear Moments : Worth Winning (1989)

Last night I watched a smarmy, generally witless 1989 romantic comedy that I could not recommend for its plot, acting, or direction. I have seen this film before and have subjected myself to it repeatedly. Why would I do such a thing?

Because Worth Winning, with Mark Harmon, happens to be one of the best menswear movies of all time. Harmon plays an impossibly toothsome Philadelphia-based TV weatherman who agrees to a bet that he can get three selected women currently unknown to him to accept offers of marriage within three months. Of course he genuinely falls in love with one of them, the testiest initially, and yada yada yada. You can see where this is going.

But what makes the movie for me is that Harmon is an irresistibly natty jacket, tie, and braces guy. One of the reasons that I'm a boutonniere regular from spring through fall is that Harmon's character Taylor Worth (note the clothing pun) sports a flower in his lapel every day. This made a deep impression on the young businessman that I was, and I've enjoyed adding a flower to my outfits ever since. My favorite visual in the movie is of a pinstripe-suited Harmon walking past an open air flower kiosk as he talks to the camera (one of the movie's chief conceits), accepting a bloom from the prepared saleswoman, and fixing it casually in his buttonhole as he strides and yaps.

In the opening scene (ladies' day at the racetrack), Harmon is wearing a light checked double-vented sportcoat, an "odd" (as in non-matching) lapeled vest, dark trousers, perfectly knotted tie, and brown and white spectator wingtips. That sets the tone. As the movie goes on he wears a variety of suits and sportcoat/trouser combos, one nicer than the last, a lovely collection of braces, a lovely collection of watches, expensive Italian loafers, expensive black wingtips, white bucks and pastel socks, tab collar shirts, a Brooks Bros. lavender cardigan sweater-vest (called out in the dialogue), and so on. His casual wardobe is equally breathtaking -- pleated cotton trousers, slightly oversize linen shirts, and when he goes rustic at his Bucks County cabin, straight-leg jeans, a soft plaid shirt that's definitely a cut above Eddie Bauer, and topsiders without socks.

It's all too much, I need to go lie down now.