Saturday, August 15, 2026

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By Alicia Kennedy

Welcome to Big Style, a portal to a world where clothing meets culture. This week, we welcome our first guest writer, Alicia Kennedy, author of the food and culture newsletter, From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, and the digital magazine Tomato Tomato. She’s also the author of  "On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites," a memoir about (basically) trying to be a vegetarian Anthony Bourdain.

Have thoughts, questions or feedback? Reach us here: bigstyle@newsletters.cnn.com 

Mentioned in this issue:  Pierre Cardin suits, coastal New England, clam bakes, Clarks shoes, cooking as craft, custom Michelin Man T-shirts, Antonio Banderas, iconic travel wardrobes.

HOW TO DRESS LIKE TONY BOURDAIN

In "Tony," Dominic Sessa takes on one of the culinary world's most celebrated enigmas. (Courtesy Seacia Pavao for A24)

If you’re going to make a movie based on the first chapters of Anthony Bourdain’s breakout memoir, there will be one piece of clothing a close reader might look out for: a seersucker Pierre Cardin suit. In “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” Bourdain writes, “I pulled into town, I remember, wearing—God help me—a spanking-new light blue Pierre Cardin seersucker suit.” To add insult to injury, he notes, “The shoes, too, were blue.”

Director Matt Johnson’s “Tony” adapts the chapters that chronicle Bourdain’s formative time cooking in Provincetown, Massachusetts, as a teenager, the years that inspired him to drop out of Vassar College to enroll at the Culinary Institute of America. The young Tony (only his mother, he says in the film, called him Anthony), as played by Dominic Sessa, is a motor-mouthed, pedantic nerd who walks around with nunchucks tucked into his bell-bottom jeans. A leather jacket, a Stooges T-shirt and jet-black sideburns accenting a head full of curls attempt to cover up how insecure and unhappy he is. He calls himself a writer, but we never see him put pen to page. He’s lying to Nancy, the girl he followed to Provincetown, about everything in his life because he’s ashamed to be working at a restaurant known for lobster rolls, oysters and French fries. This Tony is lost and desperate to be found, and the kitchen is what finds him.

And about that suit: Costume designer Chloe Karmin knows people will be looking for it, but she decided on a denim pinstripe rendition instead. “A seersucker suit is really — it's hard for me to get behind,” Karmin told me. “I couldn't find a Cardin that was both, and I couldn't find one with the right lapel. Something can be so perfectly spelled out to you by the wearer themselves, and you can get it on the actor, and you can think about the place and the location and realize, 'This doesn't do what we need it to do.'”

Antonio Banderas (left) and Leo Woodall (right) portray loosely interpreted versions of formative industry influences in Anthony Bourdain's early life. (Courtesy Bob Gruen for A24)

The denim suit still feels true to the spirit of the ridiculousness Bourdain was conveying when he wrote about that summer, where he describes riding into town on the ferry from Boston looking utterly out of place. When the film's Tony sees Nancy kissing a pizzeria coworker, he gets drunk and kicked to the curb by the chefs who will later embrace him. The sight of him passed out on the sidewalk in pinstripes and white dress shirt sets up the stakes of his transformation: from “a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout” (in his words) to a humbled culinary school hopeful who decides to go by the name his mother preferred — and the name the world will come to know him by.

“Tony” shows a boy trying on different ways of being in 1975. “It's about Anthony Bourdain finding his own palette, his own style, and trying on lots of different influences. And not until the end does he really arrive at this sort of rock and roll chic that flouts the dress of the time, or what's stylish,” said Karmin. Throughout the film, Sessa is back and forth between pointy-collared, short-sleeve button-downs, tiny T-shirts and flood pants — a wardrobe that Karmin consciously wanted to differentiate from the kind of over-styled approach of the likes of Harry Styles, who clearly has a thing for the '70s.

“Rarely do you get to portray someone who's written about themselves so thoroughly,” said Karmin. “I was able to trace a lot of his references at different points in his career. He loved R. Crumb; he loved Tintin.” These references to his youth, as well as the filmmakers’ and the audience’s understanding of who he would be when he became famous, also informed the costuming: “Knowing the uniform that he ended up in wasn't a chef's uniform — it was one of a traveler, of effortless rock and roll chic, the sort of ironic smart-ass who looks cool.”

Bourdain's personal style was casual and unpretentious. (Courtesy Discovery Channel/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Chef's whites, a rite of passage. (Courtesy Seacia Pavao for A24)

Bourdain was no stranger to fashion — even having worn the unfortunate suit in his youth is a sign of an inclination toward the finer things in life — and he continues to be revered not just as an icon of the kitchen and of using food as a means of understanding the world, but as someone whose timeless traveler wardrobe provides endless inspiration. I reached out to his longtime assistant, the writer Laurie Woolever, to hear about how style was a constant in his life and learned that he was quite particular. When Vogue came calling in 2015, for instance, he noted his preference for Rag & Bone, neutral colors and “no prints.” He was regularly in Clarks sand-colored desert boots, to the point that they sent him a pair.

There’s always been a through line between caring about the craft of cooking and knowing how significant the messaging one sends with their style can be. Bourdain, as we the public understand him, knew that and “Tony” shows him figuring it out. In the end, after having Nancy take photos of him that he claimed would be on the back cover of the book he wasn’t writing, he sees himself in various outfits but lingers over himself dressed for the kitchen, knife in hand. He realizes that this is going to be who he is for a while, and the audience knows his time as a writer will come.

From Pinterest to TikTok, there are guides on how to dress like Anthony Bourdain, the style icon. But the Tony of the film is extremely of-his-time, and that was intentional. Those wanting to replicate it will have to get into the piles at thrift shops, as Karmin did to dress Sessa for the role. “He can't go into Free People or Urban Outfitters and get his look,” she noted. “It has to be a mix of references and deep-dives into other worlds that we couldn't possibly have reconstructed in a mass market.”

Bourdain posing inside the walk-in refrigerator at Les Halles on Park Avenue in New York City in 2000. (Courtesy Bruce Gilbert/Newsday RM/Getty Images)

A brooding stare, unruly curls and a lone cigarette are essential Bourdain style components. (Courtesy Bob Gruen for A24)

And so they dug: “We went all over Cape Cod. We went to the vintage houses. We remade graphic T-shirts,” she said. “When I thought it really needed to happen, I sort of redrew a 1920s Michelin Man, an old advertisement, and then with our graphic designer, we created a new T-shirt.” It foreshadowed that “he would basically become his own Michelin Man in a whole new way.”

Watching “Tony,” it’s hard not to think about this inevitable future. The film lingers on shots of heroin use and a conversation about suicide. But Sessa, with Karmin’s costuming, gives life to the thoughtless young lout who would become a guide to the world for 18 entertaining years — from “Kitchen Confidential” through “Parts Unknown.” Perhaps this portrayal will introduce a new generation to his perspective — and get them digging through thrift stores just as it might inspire them to try a new dish.

MUSIC, FASHION, SPICES

After spending weeks obsessed with Charli xcx’s “Music, Fashion, Film,”  I’m getting ready for Boy Harsher’s new album to come out in September with the singles on repeat. My friend and I decided that “Jeans” is the song of the summer.
I go through a lot of Burlap & Barrel za’atar. I buy the “chef’s container“ and have been convincing others to get into this lifestyle. Whenever my husband makes hummus, I sizzle some smashed garlic cloves in olive oil and add a healthy amount of za’atar at the end, just to let the flavor bloom, then pour it over the dip while it’s still hot. This is essentially a South Asian cooking technique called tadka, and I'm going to use it more.
I’ve been into culottes for a while and don’t particularly care about whether they’re in or out of trend, but my favorites of late are the Vero pants by Puerto Rican designer Sally Torres Vega. Her clothes are so light, made for the tropics, and this might be niche, but they crucially suit my unruly curly hair with a perfect museum-curator type of polish. My ideal essence.

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