From hats to suits and, needless to say, through frames (both prescription and sunglasses), the actor has been the demiurge of a unique style that, 100 years from his birth, continues to establish him as an unmatched style icon, from Rome to the world. On the occasion of Milan Fashion Week we look back into his wardrobe.

“An actor does everything to become famous, and then, once they succeed, they put on a pair of dark glasses so they won’t be recognised.”

This quote from Marcello Mastroianni could summarise the actor’s entire attitude towards life. He always avoided stardom, sidestepping it with elegance and disillusionment, much like the label of “Latin lover,” which he always found hard to bear. Elegance, the very same that Mastroianni embodied, from Cinecittà to the rest of the world. In fact, one could argue that, film after film, Mastroianni defined an aesthetic style that was quintessentially Italian yet at the same time universal and immediately recognisable. Of course, Marcello was never a fashion designer— nor did he ever want to be, having graduated from a technical institute and being the son of a carpenter and a bank clerk from Isola del Liri, Lazio. And yet, while Albini in Milan and Brioni in Rome were redefining the standards of Italian menswear during the so-called Hollywood on the Tiber days, Mastroianni became its leading figure simply thanks to his effortless charm. A concept, that of “effortlessness,” that is now so cherished by men’s fashion and lifestyle magazines, which elevate it to the essential asset of the modern dandy.

This September, Marcello Mastroianni would have turned 100. CAM Sugar is celebrating the actor and icon by dedicating an entire month to him, with insights in both words and music such as the playlist Mastroianni 100, available on all digital platforms.

What better way to rediscover the actor than through fashion, the element that, along with cinema, keeps his myth alive decades after his passing. Mastroianni, never an enfant terrible — unlike his French nemesis, Delon — but never truly aged, remains impeccably preserved as a dandy in the dozens of Instagram pages that celebrate his style daily. We revisit his style through films and the key elements of his wardrobe.

Eyewear

There isn’t a respectable image of Mastroianni where the actor isn’t wearing glasses, whether they are sunglasses or prescription ones. Similar to other icons of the silver screen (and style) like Steve McQueen and his Persol 714s, entire models of glasses have gone down in history associated with Mastroianni’s face. Among these are the Persol Ratti glasses, worn by the reporter Marcello in La Dolce Vita and named in honour of the company’s founder, Giuseppe Ratti. Also from the Turin-based brand is the model 714, worn in Divorce Italian Style and originally designed for the tram drivers of the Piedmont capital. Wearing the same model used on set by the actor, director Pietro Germi explains in an interview for RAI: “Perhaps Mastroianni has some Italian traits that interest people abroad, somewhat stylised, meaning less folkloric and more accessible to an international audience. Mastroianni has [something] quite Italian but also universal.”

Equally memorable is the model worn in 8 ½ during the bar scene at the spa, where director Guido Anselmi rocks calmly in a white garden chair. This frame has been the subject of speculation on enthusiast forums for years, with its brand still uncertain, although many companies have reissued similar models over the years, including Prada. A similar cult surrounds another pair of glasses worn by Mastroianni: the oversized, space-age ones with yellow lenses from The Tenth Victim. As the frames change, so do the characters Mastroianni brings to life. After all, the actor is often a projection of Federico Fellini’s tangled thoughts on the big screen, and so the frames of one follow those of the other. Anselmi, the director in crisis of 8 ½, wears black, sober glasses, reminiscent of a 1960s intellectual, which progressively become larger and squarer in the 1970s (first with the Yves Saint Laurent-style model in Dirty Weekend, 1973) and in the 1980s (City of Women, 1980) like the ones Fellini himself wore.

Even when there are no glasses on screen, this accessory keeps resurfacing in defining Mastroianni’s iconography, such as the eyepatch that characterises his costumes in La Grande Bouffe.

Tailoring

If Mastroianni is unimaginable without sunglasses, the same goes for his dark suit. It was costume designer Piero Gherardi, Oscar winner for his work in La Dolce Vita, who transformed Marcello from an actor with potential into a global star and an embodiment of Italian style. He did this with a black two-button suit, which blended with the darkness of the night the reporter let himself drift into. Yet, it’s the white suit, its chromatic and moral opposite, worn by the actor in the cryptic finale of the film that made history (of both cinema and fashion). Here, as he kneels on the sands of the Roman coast, the camera captures his black shirt paired with a silk cravat of the same colour. From afar, this optical illusion suggested a turtleneck — as Italian say, a dolcevita sweater — a term that originated with Fellini’s masterpiece. This is the look with which Mastroianni is illustrated on the massive posters that accompanied the film’s presentation at Cannes, in front of which the actor and the director posed for photos.

Black and white alternate once more, this time without moral undertones but in op-art fashion, in Elio Petri’s sci-fi classic The Tenth Victim. Here the tailoring is futuristic, under the influence of Pierre Cardin’s couture.

The black suit returns time and again in Mastroianni’s career, but it would be unjust to overlook other equally memorable sartorial choices. Marriage Italian Style, for instance, offers one of his most elaborate sartorial compendiums, from the pinstripe grey suit worn with a gardenia in the buttonhole to the beige one, all strictly double-breasted as Neapolitan dandyism dictates.

And then there are the sporty, gentleman driver looks with suede driving gloves. Not to forget about the double-sided trench coat worn in The Assassin, a perfect early 1960s match with Piero Piccioni’s jazz soundtrack; as well as the total black outfit of Pret-à-Porter, a film about Paris Fashion Week in which Loren and Mastroianni reunite two decades later, with hyperbolic 1990s looks in the style of contemporary Balenciaga or Bottega Veneta designs.

Then there’s his off-screen elegance where, without a costume designer, Mastroianni’s style was let free to shine: from the wide-lapelled white blazer worn while leaning against the bar of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes to his airport looks, with flared trousers and white bucket hat, no to mention his psychedelic-flavoured white fur coat .

Mastroianni was so effortlessly cool that even the pyjamas he wore in 8 ½ came with the fit of a tailored suit.

Grooming

Mastroianni’s style is a delicate balance, where excess is rarely reached, but the parts come together to create a sublime whole. Marcello wouldn’t be Marcello without his quiff, the quintessential mid-century Italian hairstyle. Occasionally, a hat tops it off, from the beret in Big Deal on Madonna Street to the cowboy hat Fellini chose along with the whip to tame the concubines in the harem of 8 ½. Then there’s the moustache, introduced by Vittorio De Sica in Marriage Italian Style to emphasise Mastroianni’s Mediterranean features, further exaggerated by Germi in *Divorce Italian Style*, when the actor’s hair is slicked back with pomade.

But there’s also the dishevelled, working-class Mastroianni in The Pizza Triangle, one of his most flamboyant performances alongside Vitti and Giannini, and again in The Tenth Victim. Unusual and with short, bleached hair (à la Steve McQueen), Mastroianni presents a future that never was, seemingly foreshadowing the punk Lou Reed of the 1970s, a trend reaffirmed today in street style.

Legacy

It’s no secret that Mastroianni was so timeless that he continues to influence our culture across a range of fields. Starting with fashion, where the slim, 1960s look, with dark suits and ties that Marcello championed, remains a point of reference: from Tom Ford’s Gucci to Hedi Slimane’s Céline, and also Dolce & Gabbana, who often revisited Mastroianni as their ideal of the sophisticated and charming Mediterranean man.

The Italian beverage industry has also explicitly paid tribute to Marcello and La Dolce Vita, with Martini dedicating an entire campaign to the Roman nightlife of the early 60s between 1996 and 1997, accompanied by the tagline “La vita è un cinema, baby”.

Persol has recently been inspired by icons of cinema for one of its campaigns, as have many other brands—from Moscot to Cult Frames—that have designed models in honour of the actor. Fiat, on the other hand, celebrated La Dolce Vita and Marcello and Anita’s iconic dip in the Trevi Fountain by featuring the film’s theme in the soundtrack for the Fiat 500 Electric advert, sung by Katyna Ranieri, one of the many unreleased gems rediscovered from CAM’s archives. It is precisely from this catalogue that were hand-picked the tracks for Mastroianni 100, now available on all digital platforms.

Opening image: Marcello Mastroianni in Piazza Duomo, Milan, 1960.