Ralph Lauren
Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) in The Great Gatsby, 1974 — as worn by Robert Redford
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Archival photography to follow
The scene
In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) waits at Nick Carraway’s West Egg cottage for a meeting Nick has arranged with Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow). Gatsby has sent flowers and tea things, but fears she will not come. Their first exchange is awkward. Nick leaves them alone, and the rain stops before Gatsby invites them to his mansion. Still wearing his mustard-gold Ralph Lauren tie, Gatsby shows Daisy his rooms and clothes, then tosses shirts from his wardrobe toward her and Nick below.
Daisy is moved to tears. The tie belongs to an outfit assembled for this encounter, not for one of Gatsby’s crowded parties. Against his pale suit and blue-toned shirt, its strong colour makes his effort to impress Daisy visible even as he struggles to speak to her. Costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge enlisted Ralph Lauren to outfit the film’s men. Director Jack Clayton favoured pale pastels for the principal costumes but wanted the film’s overall look to feel golden.
The production built Nick’s cottage on the lawn beside Rosecliff in Newport, Rhode Island, which stood in for Gatsby’s estate. Beside Nick, Gatsby’s open jacket and its mirror reflection keep the low-cut waistcoat, shirt and knotted tie visible. Later, the dressing-room staging shifts attention from that point of gold to the shirts descending toward Daisy and Nick.
In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) waits at Nick Carraway’s West Egg cottage for a meeting Nick has arranged with Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow).
Ralph Lauren’s connection to this necktie begins with neckwear itself. In 1967, Lauren launched Polo as a line of wide, handmade ties while working with the Beau Brummell company. The early ties used Indian, Swiss and English fabrics, and their generous proportions departed from the narrower styles then common in American menswear. Polo had expanded into a men’s clothing collection by the time Lauren supplied clothing for the 1974 film The Great Gatsby. The tie worn by Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford) for his reunion with Daisy is broad, mustard-gold and silk. Its color recalls the gold-colored tie Fitzgerald gives Gatsby for the same meeting in the novel, where he pairs it with a white flannel suit and silver shirt.
That literary detail helps explain the choice of color, but it does not establish how the screen tie was made. Its weave, lining, measurements, method of construction and commercial model remain undocumented; specifications for other Polo ties cannot safely be applied to this one. Costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge selected Ralph Lauren to outfit the film’s male cast. Lauren’s own history describes the period menswear as coming from the contemporary Polo collection, apart from a pink suit designed specifically for Redford.
It does not identify a separate commission or stock number for the gold tie. Aldredge received the Academy Award for the film’s costume design in 1975. The film’s Gatsby look continued to draw fashion attention, and Lauren revisited its Jazz Age associations in a Spring 2012 women’s collection. Early Polo neckwear has an institutional afterlife: the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a Ralph Lauren linen tie dated around 1975, though it is not this silk film tie. No verified reissue or sale record establishes the availability or present whereabouts of Gatsby’s mustard-gold example.
Production Notes
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