Cary Grant’s Suits: The Not-So-Strange Journey

Cary Grant has been dead since 1984, but his suits live on, according to a new Wall Street Journal article titled The Strange Journey of Cary Grant’s Suits. [2024 note: Article is now dead, and the Wall Street Journal blocks the Archive.org memory machine, so we have removed the link.]

The journey of Cary Grant’s suits wasn’t that strange, truth be told: His suits were given away decades ago by Jennifer Grant, his daughter with actress Dyan Cannon. Even his overcoats went in the end:

About eight years ago on a chilly evening, a homeless man on the beach here was handed a cashmere-wool blend overcoat that formerly belonged to Cary Grant. The man wasn’t told of the coat’s provenance, so he didn’t know he had received one of the last items remaining from the wardrobe of one of Hollywood’s best-dressed legends.

Most of Cary Grant’s suits went to a charity for men who needed clothes to look for work.

It’s rather cheery to think of some down-and-out guy showing up for a job interview in one of Cary Grant’s suits from North By Northwest, but if one ever did, nobody was the wiser: the donations were all done anonymously.

Grant’s monogrammed pajamas went to Goodwill, where some customer probably had a laugh holding up the embroidered CG and saying “Look at me, I’m Che Guevara!”

The truth is, anyone’s clothes look better when they’re holding a cocktail glass and sitting next to Ingrid Bergman or Sophia Loren. No mystery there!

Now see more photos of Cary Grant in nice clothes »