Transcription
In 1959, a journalist asked Cary Grant how a boy born Archibald Leach in a working-class Bristol terrace house became the most elegant man in the world. Grant thought about it for a moment and said, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person or he became me." The objects on this list are the evidence of that becoming. Not costumes, not props, choices made deliberately, refined over decades, kept because they worked and because they said something he wanted said without words. Almost everything on this list is still made. Some of it costs what a dinner costs. Some of it costs what a car costs. All of it is worth understanding. This is Cary Grant's life item by item.
Uh let's look at the guns first. No need to bother the people. I've always had the notion that the secret of success is to start at the top. Think how lucky I am to have been seated here.
The Kilgour suit. Start here because everything else follows from it. Kilgour French and Stanbury on Savile Row number eight, Clifford Street, to be precise, was where Grant had his suits made for the better part of four decades. He discovered the house in the 1930s when he first had money enough for a bespoke commission and he never left. The silhouette he built there became the silhouette the 20th century associated with masculine elegance. Structured shoulders with no padding, a suppressed waist that followed the body rather than creating a shape over it, a two-button stance that sat low enough to lengthen the torso and trousers cut with enough room in the thigh to move freely without breaking the line.
Grant had an unusual problem for a tailor. He was broad across the shoulders, narrow in the waist and hip, and almost perfectly proportioned in a way that most ready-to-wear cuts either ignored or overcorrected for. Kilgour solved it by cutting to the body rather than to a standard block. The result was a suit that looked inevitable. Not dressed up, not dressed at all in the theatrical sense, simply correct. In North by Northwest, the gray suit Grant wears for the entire film, chased across a cornfield, dragged through a train, suspended from the face of Mount Rushmore, never loses its shape. That was not an accident of cinema. That was Kilgour construction. The house still operates on Savile Row. A bespoke commission begins around £4,000 and climbs considerably from there. The canvas structure, the hand-stitched lapels, the fitting process across three or four appointments, all of it unchanged from the house Grant walked into in 1935.
The Turnbull & Asser shirt. Grant was specific about his shirts in a way that went beyond preference into methodology. The collar had to sit without gaping. The cuffs had to be exactly long enough to show a precise half inch below the jacket sleeve. The fit across the shoulder had to allow a full arm extension without pulling the back. He found all of that at Turnbull & Asser on Jermyn Street, the London shirtmaker founded in 1885 that had been supplying the English aristocracy for three generations before Grant ever walked through the door. What he returned to most consistently was a plain white poplin cut to his measurements with a semi-spread collar and double cuffs. The choice was structural. Against his perennial gray and navy suits, white created the sharp contrast at the collar and wrist that kept the eye moving upward. It was also impossible to misread. In every lighting condition, on every screen, in every photograph, the white shirt read clearly and correctly. Turnbull and Asser still makes bespoke shirts on Jermyn Street. The ready-to-wear line begins around 200 pounds. The bespoke program requires two to three fittings and begins considerably higher. The house still holds the royal warrant. The poplin is woven in the same weights Grant would recognize.
The Brioni suit for travel. When Grant was working in Hollywood through the 1950s and flying transatlantic regularly, he discovered Brioni of Rome, founded in 1945 on Via Barberini by Nazareno Fonticoli and Gaetano Savini. Brioni was doing something specific that interested him. A softer, lighter construction than traditional Savile Row, built for movement and for heat with an unlined or half-lined jacket that traveled without destroying itself. Grant wore Brioni when Kilgour was too structured for the occasion. Summer weight wools, cream and ivory tones, jackets cut to be worn without a tie and still maintain their line. The Italian house understood his body the way the English one did, which is to say, they understood that the best tailoring is the kind that disappears. Brioni still operates. The bespoke service runs through their Rome atelier. Ready-to-wear begins around $2,000 for a jacket, considerably more for a suit. The house remains one of the few Italian tailors still cutting and sewing entirely in Italy.
The Rolex Submariner. Grant wore a Rolex Submariner reference 6538 through the mid to late 1950s. The large crown, no crown guards, matte black dial with gilt printing. A diver's watch worn by a man who never dove for anything except a script he wanted. The choice tells you something about him. The Submariner was not a dress watch. It was not a jeweler's watch. It was a tool built to survive 100 m underwater. And Grant wore it with a bespoke suit and a white Turnbull shirt because he liked the contrast and because he did not believe in using an object for less than it was capable of. The reference 6538 is now among the most sought-after vintage Rolexes on the market. Auction prices for clean examples have exceeded $50,000. That is not what you will pay. The current Submariner, reference 124060 in steel, begins around $10,000 at authorized dealers. The proportions are larger than Grant's reference. The logic is identical. A precision instrument made to last, worn without ceremony, chosen once, and worn for decades.
Guerlain Mouchoir de Monsieur. This is the fragrance almost every Grant biography omits and almost every perfume historian knows. Guerlain introduced Mouchoir de Monsieur handkerchief for a gentleman in 1904. It was designed to be applied to a pocket square, which was then folded and placed in the breast pocket of a jacket, releasing fragrance slowly over the course of a day rather than in an immediate burst. The scent itself is restrained. Bergamot and lemon at the top, iris and violet in the middle, a dry powdery base of vetiver and sandalwood. Cool without being cold, refined without being fussy. Grant used it in exactly the way the house intended. Applied to the square, not to the skin. A decision that meant the fragrance traveled a distance with him through a room rather than arriving before he did. Guerlain still produces Mouchoir de Monsieur. It sits in the house's heritage collection, around $150 for 100 ml, and is among the most underknown great men's fragrances of the 20th century. The formulation has remained largely stable for over a century.
The Dunhill cigarette case. Grant quit smoking in 1957 as part of a sustained effort to understand his own psychology more clearly. The same year he began LSD-assisted therapy sessions at a clinic in Los Angeles, a fact he spoke about openly in interviews at a time when openness on the subject took real nerve. Before that, for the better part of two decades, he carried a slim silver cigarette case by Alfred Dunhill of London. The house, founded in 1893 on Duke Street, had been making smoking accessories for three generations. The case Grant carried was a simple engine-turned silver rectangle monogrammed that snapped shut with the particular authority of something engineered rather than manufactured. He stopped carrying it after he stopped smoking. He kept the ritual of the object, the deliberate reach, the considered pause, the small performance of self-possession that the case had enabled. He transferred the ritual to other things. Dunhill still makes silver cigarette cases, beginning around $350, and has expanded into a full luxury accessories line across pens, leather goods, and time pieces. The engine-turned silver is still available, so is the monogramming.
Church's Consul Oxfords. Grant wore plain-toe Oxford shoes by Church's of Northampton with a consistency that approached doctrine. The house, founded in 1873, has been making Goodyear welted shoes in the English Midlands for six generations. The Consul is a clean, plain cap toe in black calf, built on a last that fits the foot correctly across the ball and through the heel without demanding a break-in period. Grant's reasoning was architectural. The plain Oxford in black against dark navy or charcoal trouser resolved the silhouette downward without drawing attention. It was a closing statement, not a punctuation mark. The shoe completed the look by disappearing. He had his Consuls resoled rather than replaced when the uppers still held. A decision that reflects the same philosophy as every other purchase on this list. Buy correctly once. Maintain what you have. Discard nothing that still works. Church's still makes the Consul in Northampton. Around 400 pounds. Same last, same welt construction. Same family that built them in 1873. The resoling service is available through Church's directly. If you buy them correctly you will not need the second pair for a decade.
The Loden coat. In the 1950s and into the 1960s when Grant was photographed off-duty in Europe, on the streets of Monaco in Rome, on set between scenes, he returned repeatedly to a dark green Loden coat. The Loden is an Austrian tradition. A coat cut from boiled wool that is water-resistant wind-blocking and built for Alpine weather. The weight is significant. The drape is not elegant in the tailored sense. It is elegant in the functional sense, which is a different and arguably more interesting kind. On Grant who was 6 ft 1 and moved through spaces with a physical confidence that cameras read as stillness the heavy Loden sat across his shoulders with the authority of a piece of architecture. Loden Frey of Munich, founded in 1842, is still the definitive source. Prices begin around 400 euros for the classic coat. The boiled wool is still woven to the original specifications. The dark forest green Grant preferred remains in the standard range.
The Hermes pocket square. Grant wore a pocket square in almost every photographed public appearance of his adult life. The fold was always the same, the TV fold, a clean horizontal fold that showed a straight line of silk across the top of the breast pocket rather than points or puffs. Controlled, deliberate. The equivalent in fabric of a well-placed pause in a sentence. The squares he returned to most were Hermes, 90 cm pure silk twill, hand-rolled hems. He was not sentimental about the print. He bought what interested him seasonally and wore them in rotation. The square changed, the fold never did. Hermes still produces the carre 90 in silk twill, around $450. The hand-rolling is still done by hand, 3 mm per stitch, 1,500 stitches per square. Of all the items on this list, this one has the most precisely maintained manufacturing standard over the most years.
Casablanca sunglasses by Oliver Peoples. Grant wore sunglasses the way he wore everything, purposefully and then daily until the choice became automatic. In his later decades, particularly through the 1970s, he favored a rounded tortoise shell frame with a slight browline structure, the category that Oliver Peoples would later canonize in their classic American optical revival work. Oliver Peoples was founded in Los Angeles in 1987, drawing directly on American optical traditions from the 1940s and 1950s that Grant had navigated first hand. Their Gregory and Casablanca models in honey tortoise are the closest modern equivalent to what Grant wore through his last two decades. Both begin around $500 at Oliver Peoples boutiques. The frames are cut and polished in the same Italian factories used by the great optical houses. On the right face in honey tortoise, they create the particular quality of looking completely at ease while being completely correct.
The Shetland crew neck. This is the off-duty uniform of a man who could have worn anything. In every photograph of Grant at the compound in Palm Springs, in the garden, at the weekend, he wore a plain crew neck sweater in natural or gray Shetland wool. No cable, no pattern, no visible branding. Occasionally paired with khaki trousers and the Church's Oxfords. Occasionally with gray flannel. Always with the same easy authority that the rest of his wardrobe carried. The Shetland crew neck is made from the fleece of sheep raised on the Shetland Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. The wool is finer than standard worsted, lighter than traditional lambswool, and develops a particular softness with washing rather than pilling or degrading. It is also warm in a way that synthetic fabrics have never successfully replicated because it traps air and breathes simultaneously. Jamesons of Shetland has been producing Shetland knitwear since 1893. Their plain crew neck in natural or mid gray runs around 90 pounds. Still made in Shetland, still using Shetland fleece. The alternative at slightly higher price is John Smedley of Derbyshire. In production since 1784, whose Sea Island cotton and merino crew necks achieve a finer finish while maintaining the essential simplicity Grant was after.
LSD therapy at the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills. This one is not purchasable. It is here because it belongs. Between 1958 and 1961, Grant underwent more than 100 LSD-assisted therapy sessions at a clinic in Los Angeles under the supervision of psychiatrist Mortimer Hartman. He spoke about this publicly, repeatedly, and without embarrassment in Esquire, in Look magazine, in interviews that his publicist reportedly begged him not to give. He said it saved his life. He said it was the only thing that had helped him understand who Archibald Leach was and why he had spent three decades trying to become someone else. He said he cried for the first time in 40 years in one of those sessions, and that the crying was a relief he had not known he needed. Grant was, for most of his career, considered one of the most effortlessly natural performers in the history of cinema. What his friends and collaborators understood was that the effortlessness was the result of enormous and sustained interior work. The therapy was part of that work. It is here not as an endorsement but as a context. The objects on this list were chosen by a man who had done the unusual thing of genuinely trying to understand himself. That is the thing most style guides leave out. The objects are the surface. Understand what is below them.
The Claiborne navy blazer. In his later years, Grant's off-duty uniform collapsed into its simplest form. A navy blazer, white or blue Oxford shirt, gray or khaki trousers, the Church's Oxfords. He bought blazers from multiple sources across his life, but photographs from the 1970s show him repeatedly in a clean single-breasted navy with gold buttons and a natural shoulder, the American version of a silhouette he had learned in England and spent 40 years refining. The Ralph Lauren Polo navy blazer, beginning around $398, is the closest modern equivalent to what Grant was wearing through his last two decades. Natural shoulder, two-button, gold buttons, lined in silk. The garment that requires no explanation because it already contains every explanation. Buy it once, have it properly fitted at the shoulder and chest, keep it for the rest of your life.
Floris number 89. Floris of 89 German Street, founded in 1730 by Juan Floris, who came to London from Minorca with a gift for making things smell like somewhere else. No. 89, named after the shop's address, is a classic English gentleman's cologne. Bergamot, sandalwood, neroli, and a touch of lavender. It reads as formal without being stiff, English without being fussy, correct in every room it enters. Grant wore it for formal occasions, particularly in his later decades when the Hollywood chemistry of performance had given way to the quieter chemistry of a private man who chose his appearances carefully. Floris still operates at the same address it has occupied since 1730. No. 89 runs around $180 for 100 ml. The formulation is maintained according to the original specifications. The shop is worth visiting if you are ever in London for the same reason the Church's factory in Northampton is worth visiting, to understand that some things are still made the way they were made when the people who first chose them were young.
The Montblanc 149. Grant kept the Montblanc 149 at his desk for personal correspondence. The pen entered production in 1952 and has not been redesigned since. Black resin barrel, gold-plated nib, the white star at the crown that became the emblem of a certain kind of considered private life. He wrote letters by hand, a habit he maintained until late in his life, addressed to friends, to studios, to colleagues he wanted to thank properly. The handwriting was, by all accounts, meticulous. The same quality of attention he brought to a suit fitting, he brought to a page of personal correspondence. The 149 runs around $850 through Montblanc boutiques. The nib sizes range from extra-fine to broad. Grant would have chosen medium for the clarity of line it produces across a full page without bleeding or skipping.
Royal Briar playing cards by Cartamundi. Grant played cards. Gin rummy was his game, by most accounts, and he played it seriously at home, on sets between scenes, on transatlantic crossings. He carried a deck of cards the way some men carried a book, as a portable form of attention, something to do with the hands and the mind simultaneously, while the world was otherwise engaged. Cartamundi's Royal Briar remains the closest to the quality of cards he would have known, linen finished, casino weight, made in Belgium by a house that has been producing playing cards since 1765. A single deck runs around $12. A serious set of two decks in a case, around $30. The game he played with them is free, requires two people, and will teach you more about reading other people than most formal education offers. That is not a small thing.
The Hermes travel bag, the Haut à Courroies. Grant traveled with a large Hermes Haut à Courroies, the tall bag with two external straps that predates the Birkin and the Kelly, and was originally designed as a saddle carrier. He used it as an overnight bag, the way the bag was always intended to be used, stuffed without ceremony, carried by hand, subject to the indignities of actual travel, and emerging from them looking correct. The Haut à Courroies runs on the primary market from around $5,000 for box calf to considerably more for exotic leathers. The vintage market is active. A 1960s example in good condition carries a gravity that no new bag achieves, which is the nature of objects that have been somewhere and done something. What it tells you about Grant is this. He did not buy bags for occasions. He bought them for life and used them accordingly.
The Penguin Classic paperback. Grant read constantly, biographies primarily, histories, the occasional novel. He kept books the way he kept everything else, carefully and for a long time. His personal library, assembled over decades at his homes in Beverly Hills and New York, ran to several hundred volumes, many of them annotated in the precise handwriting the Mont Blanc 149 produced. The Penguin Classic paperback is both the object and the habit, around $15 to $20, depending on the title. Grant carried them on flights, on location, on weekends at the compound. He did not treat them as disposable. He treated them as the cheapest luxury on any list, which is precisely what they are. The title that recurs most consistently in accounts of his reading life is Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, the Penguin edition. A soldier emperor in the 2nd century AD writing to himself in a private journal he apparently never intended to publish about the difficulty of remaining himself under conditions that demanded he be something else. Grant identified with that particular problem. The paperback costs under $15. It is the most important thing on this list.
Aqua di Parma Colonia. For summer, for travel, for the months when the Floris felt too heavy and the Guerlain too powdery for open air, Aqua di Parma was founded in Parma in 1916. The Colonia is a citrus cologne, bergamot, lemon, lavender, rosemary, and a woody base that reads like the Italian coast in a glass bottle. Grant wore it during the years he spent regularly in Europe, particularly on the Riviera, where the combination of light, salt, air, and heat called for something that moved with the weather rather than against it. The yellow bottle and yellow cap have not changed in over a century. The formula has remained stable. Around $130 at Sephora for the 3.4 oz. There is a category of product, and this list contains several of them, that has simply been correct for so long that changing it would constitute an error. Aqua di Parma Colonia is the oldest example on this list of something that succeeded so completely at what it was trying to do that no one has ever found a reason to revise it.
The Ferragamo Gancini loafer. By the 1970s, when Grant had stepped back from Hollywood almost entirely and was living a more private life divided between Beverly Hills and the East Coast, his shoe choice shifted. The plain toe Oxford remained for formal occasions. For everything else, he moved toward the Salvatore Ferragamo Gancini loafer, a clean slip-on with the house's signature horse bit adjacent hardware, made in Florence in the original workshops Ferragamo had built in 1927. Ferragamo had been Grant's contemporary in Hollywood. The cobbler from Bonito, who had crossed the Atlantic at 16 and built his craft fitting the feet of Greta Garbo and Mary Pickford before returning to Florence to make shoes for the world. They shared a generation and a commitment to the premise that craftsmanship is not a luxury. It is the minimum acceptable standard. The Gancini loafer runs around $650 through Ferragamo boutiques today, made in Italy in the Florence workshops on lasts maintained from the original patterns. The hardware is solid brass. The leather is full grain calf. Grant wore them without socks in summer, which is either the most or least surprising detail on this list, depending on how well you've been paying attention.
There is a thing that connects every object on this list. None of it was chosen to impress. All of it was chosen to work. The Kilgour suit to move in. The Church's shoes to last. The Mont Blanc to write clearly. The Meditations to think clearly. The Acqua di Parma because summer on the coast requires nothing more complicated than citrus and sunlight. Grant spent the first 30 years of his life becoming someone he'd invented. He spent the next 30 discovering that the invention was more real than the original. The objects accumulated along the way are the record of both journeys. He died on the 29th of November, 1986 in Davenport, Iowa after a stroke hours before a one-man show he had been scheduled to give that evening. He was 82. He had been married five times. He had one daughter. He had been, by most critical accounts, the most naturally gifted screen comedian of the 20th century and he had never been nominated for a competitive Academy Award. The Academy gave him an honorary Oscar in 1970. He accepted it wearing a suit that fit him exactly right. Everything on this list is linked in the description below organized in the order it appeared in this video. Choose carefully. Take your time. He would have. Thank you so much for watching. If you like this content, please check out the channel for more videos like this. I'll see you in the next one.