When we first meet Big Mistakes protagonist Nicky Dardano, played by the Netflix series’s showrunner and co-creator Dan Levy, he looks like he’s dressed to knock on doors somewhere in midcentury America: pleated khakis, tucked-in shirt, necktie, browline glasses. It’s almost a little Wally Cleaver. But then the details begin to assert themselves. The foulard tie has a certain retro zing; the leather belt hangs just right. His shirts and trousers are perfectly roomy and rumpled in a way that feels lifted straight from a menswear influencer’s Instagram feed. For a character who supposedly doesn’t care about clothes, Nicky looks uncannily in step with the current moment.

Big Mistakes follows Nicky—a high-strung, people-pleasing pastor—and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) as a series of poor decisions pulls them deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld of the New Jersey suburbs. “We imagined that he got his clothes from the leftovers bin of a church charity drive,” says Courtney Wheeler, the show’s costume designer. She compares his look to “those grandpas who have that accidental drip.” The idea was simple: Nicky is a little stuck in his ways. He has a uniform, and he’s been wearing versions of it for years. Think loose chinos and jeans, rotated with a steady supply of relatively unremarkable button-ups.

The costumes began, as these things often do, with a mood board studded with vintage imagery. Wheeler’s references included the late Brazilian F1 driver Ayrton Senna and a young Richard Gere—two icons who favored unassumingly simple attire. “Nicky’s not trying to be cool,” Wheeler says. “His look was supposed to be stuck in a certain time and place.We liked that it was accidentally stylish—not because he was trying to be.”

That idea carried through in the sourcing. Much of Nicky’s wardrobe is vintage, pulled from eBay and a handful of well-curated NYC secondhand shops, including Fine and Dandy, Ending Soon, and Crowley Vintage. Ralph Lauren pleated chinos are paired with old button-ups from Armani and Christian Dior, alongside less glamorous department-store labels like Macy’s and Sears. The ties—a mix of new and vintage from Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren, and Drake’s—feature classic patterns that are just a little offbeat.

Spencer Pazer / Courtesy of Netflix