30 Years Later, Robert De Niro’s ‘Casino’ Suits Still Epitomize Vegas Glam

You probably don’t remember the suits Robert De Niro wore in Heat. You’re not supposed to. They were gray, simple, designed to blend in—exactly what his character needed. But when Casino arrived in cinemas, just three weeks prior in November 1995, De Niro’s wardrobe went in the opposite direction.

In Martin Scorsese’s Las Vegas epic, De Niro plays Sam “Ace” Rothstein, based on casino boss Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, as he tries to keep his empire afloat and hold his loose-canon best friend and ex-wife in check. Costume designers Rita Ryack and John Dunn created Ace’s wardrobe—and they really went for it. “It was a pleasure to design Bob’s wardrobe,” Ryack tells GQ. “He had around 70 costume changes, all of which had to be built from the shoes up. And no actor but De Niro could have pulled them off.”

Those bold suits are now legendary: burnt orange, mint green, pastel pink—the full embodiment of Vegas excess. There’s a long-running rumor that the costume budget sailed past $1 million; in reality, Ryack and assistant designer Maggie Morgan were actually struggling to make ends meet. “We were in a tough place,” Morgan says, “because the costumes were still severely under-budgeted by the studio. But I remember the crew being entertained by the variety of styles and wide spectrum of color in those costumes. The daily on-set reveal of Bob’s costume was always a moment.”

The colorful wardrobe was deliberate. Ryack said she wanted Ace’s clothes to become flashier as his world became more chaotic. “No one else could pull off audacious clothing like that without appearing cartoonish,” she once told the Los Angeles Times. “De Niro still seemed sexy and dangerous.”

The first look sets the tone: a hot-coral jacket, matching shirt and tie, and white flared trousers. Scorsese had asked for something bold for the opening. Morgan remembers one last-minute fix. “When my fellow assistant designer, the late Debra Tennenbaum, and I checked the costume the day before shooting, we realized that he needed to have peach socks to match the outfit, not the ivory ones we had. Luckily, the socks were sheer nylon, which is very dyeable. So we dipped them the night before—just in time for exploding on screen!”

“Armani has actually been given credit for designing De Niro’s clothes, to my horror. He was not involved!” says Ryack of that widely circulated photo of the designer visiting the Casino set. “But we were knocked off by most of the men’s designers. You could find knockoffs for the film everywhere.”