On Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, and the pinstripe shirt that defined an era.
Some films are remembered for their plot. Others for their cast. La Piscine — the 1969 Jacques Deray film — is remembered for neither of those things. It is remembered for the way it looked.
For the languid afternoon light on a stone-tiled poolside. For a green Citroën DS parked in a gravel drive. For Romy Schneider's hair across her face. For the way Alain Delon stood, three buttons undone, the cuffs rolled, a glass of something in his hand, looking like he had nowhere to be.
And for the shirt.
This is the second entry in our Anovair Heritage series. Where the Henley shirt traces its origins to a 19th-century English rowing club, the Delon Pinstripe Shirt traces its origins to a single summer on the French Riviera — and to the man who, more than any other, taught the world how to wear it.
La Piscine, 1969
The film is set in a villa near Saint-Tropez. Two lovers, played by Delon and Schneider, are spending the summer alone by the pool. A friend arrives with his teenage daughter. Tension builds, slowly, in the heat. Almost nothing happens for the first hour, and then everything happens at once.
But the plot is incidental. What people remember — what people return to, more than fifty years later — is the atmosphere. The blue water. The cigarette smoke. The way Delon and Schneider, who had been engaged in real life years earlier and never quite stopped loving each other, played their scenes with an intimacy no actor could have invented.
And throughout: the wardrobe. Minimal. Considered. Almost monastic in its restraint. White swim shorts. A linen jacket here and there. And the pinstripe shirts — pale blue, soft-collared, worn open, sleeves rolled — that Delon wore for nearly every scene that wasn't shot in the water.
The man
Alain Delon was born outside Paris in 1935. By his early twenties, he was the most photographed man in France. By thirty, he was one of the most photographed men in the world.
His face was famous before his films were — the kind of face directors built scenes around, the kind of face other actors quietly resented. But what made Delon endure wasn't only the beauty. It was the way he carried himself in a shirt.
He wore clothes like a man who had nothing to prove. The collar always slightly open. The cuffs always slightly rolled. The fit always close enough to suggest care, loose enough to suggest ease. He was Italian in his elegance and French in his coolness — the rare European who looked equally at home on the Riviera, in a Parisian café, and on the streets of Milan.
When he died in 2024, the obituaries called him the last great male icon of European cinema. They were not wrong.
The shirt
The Delon Pinstripe Shirt is built from the image.
A light blue pinstripe on white cotton — the exact pattern Delon wore in La Piscine, scaled to feel contemporary without losing the period. An Italian collar: soft, low, and just structured enough to hold its shape when worn open. Mother-of-pearl buttons, because plastic would betray the whole point. Structured cuffs that look intentional, whether buttoned at the wrist or rolled to the forearm.
The cut sits closer to mid-century proportions than modern ones — slightly trim through the body, with a clean shoulder line and a hem that sits well over trousers without needing to be tucked. It is a shirt designed to be worn in three modes: tucked into tailored trousers, untucked over linen, or thrown over a white tee on the way to dinner.
Why La Piscine still matters
Most films from 1969 feel like 1969. La Piscine doesn't.
What makes the film, and the shirt, endure is the same quality that made McQueen's tee endure: unselfconsciousness. Delon wasn't performing style. He was simply dressed for the heat, for the company, for the afternoon ahead.
That is the lesson of Riviera dressing, distilled. Clothes that work with the weather, the people, and the wine. Clothes that don't announce themselves. Clothes you forget you're wearing — until someone takes a photograph that the world refuses to forget.
How to wear a pinstripe shirt
A few principles to keep close.
Wear it open. The Delon shirt was designed for an open throat. Two buttons undone in the city, three on holiday. Never fully buttoned unless worn under a tie or a fine knit.
Roll the cuffs. A pinstripe shirt with the cuffs buttoned at the wrist reads as office-wear. Rolled twice, just past the forearm, it reads as Riviera. The difference is enormous.
Tuck it or don't — both work. Tucked into tailored trousers or chinos, the shirt looks intentional. Left out over linen trousers or shorts, it looks effortless. Avoid the half-tuck.
Layer it carefully. The pinstripe shirt is best worn alone in warm weather. In cooler months, it works under a fine-gauge knit, a linen blazer, or an unstructured wool jacket. Avoid heavy outerwear over pinstripes — the patterns fight.
The Anovair Delon Pinstripe Shirt
We made the Delon Pinstripe Shirt for the man who knows that style is not about doing more.
It is cut from 100% cotton, woven in a fine light-blue pinstripe, with an Italian collar, structured cuffs, and mother-of-pearl buttons. Designed to be worn open, untucked, sleeves rolled — the way Delon wore it in 1969, and the way it still looks best today.
Discover the Delon Pinstripe Shirt →
The villa in La Piscine still stands, somewhere outside Saint-Tropez. The pool is still there. The cigarettes have long since been put out. The film has been remade once or twice, never well.
What remains is the image. A man, a woman, the light on the water, the open collar of a pinstripe shirt — frozen in a summer that has, in some way, never ended.
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