Few clothing items are as iconic on Yellowstone as Kayce Dutton’s time-worn, waxed canvas jacket; a costume piece that Luke Grimes was immediately drawn to.
If you picture Kayce – the always even-tempered yet indecisive heir to the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch – chances are you’re picturing him in this jacket. It’s a classic Western wear piece, one that many of us have owned a version of ourselves (including this Outsider). Mine was an Eddie Bauer waxed tan suede, bought at a far more blue-collar price a good 15-years-ago. But Kayce’s? Only the best for a Dutton.
The proper Yellowstone Kayce Dutton jacket is a $400 waxed canvas Riders Jacket masterpiece from SoCal-based Freenote Cloth. Hand-picked by the first season’s Oscar-winning Costume Designer Ruth Carter, the jacket was presented to the actor behind Kayce as part of his initial costume fitting. And once Luke Grimes put that jacket on, his Dutton son truly began to take form.
The Jacket that Brought ‘Yellowstone’s Kayce Dutton to Life
“It’s one of those things where you go to your initial costume fitting for a new character putting some different things on like, ‘This feels like it might be right.’ And those initial fittings actually really help inform things for me,” Grimes told Gear Patrol during a recent chat.
“I mean, at that point, you don’t really have it all figured out. You’re still figuring out, who is this person?” he says of the process of first becoming Kayce. Costuming is, he adds “such a big part of it” for the actor.
Clothes doth make the man, as they say. And for Grimes, that canvas jacket belted Kayce Dutton
‘The first time I put that jacket on, I was like, ‘Oh, this feels right’
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“I think the first time I put that jacket on, I was like, ‘Oh, this feels right.’ This kind of starts to paint a picture of what this guy might look like and who he is, you know?” Grimes continues of the most iconic wardrobe piece of his career. “This jacket looks like he’s had it his whole life. He probably grew into it a little bit.”
Grimes has, too. The jacket has now been a staple for Yellowstone‘s Kayce Dutton for five seasons, or nearly six years of filming. It’s the same one, too; something he says is very on-brand for his character.
“He’s an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ kind of a guy,” Grimes says. Looking at photos of Luke/Kayce wearing the jacket a few seasons back reveal just how much his work on the show has worn it in, too.
Grimes may have had a predisposition for the piece becoming a part of Kayce’s look. “I’ve loved those sort of wax canvas jackets for a long time and that’s a great one. It’s got this really cool wool lining, which, because we shoot in the summertime isn’t the greatest thing at all times.”