Retail Matters Podcast: Breaking Fashion Boundaries: Forty Years of “Miami Vice” and its Lasting Impact on Menswear

On Sept. 16, 1984, the Anthony Yerkovich-created series Miami Vice premiered on NBC and went on to revolutionize television with its ultra-stylized visuals, cutting-edge MTV-era music and unconventional fashion highlighting the riveting weekly adventures of hard-bitten undercover detectives. “The ambition of the show was to break the form of everything that had come before,” the series’ executive producer Michael Mann tells THR.

In the Casablanca of ’80s Miami, boat-dwelling Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) and suave New Yorker Ricardo Tubbs (Philip Michael Thomas) drove luxury cars, averted explosions and busted drug lords in bold and unexpected designer outfits. Crockett’s jacket-over-T-shirt signature triggered a paradigm shift in the traditional concept of menswear, which endures 40 years later. “It changed the way men dressed in the world,” says Emmy-nominated season one costume designer Jodie Tillen. “It gave men permission to wear pastels.”