Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan’s new-ish drama on the Paramount Network, is a show about jackets. OK, fine, it’s not. It’s a show about a family and its patriarch, a bastard of a man played by Kevin Costner who will go to extreme lengths to protect the kingdom he’s built, a gigantic ranch called Yellowstone. (Yellowstone—the show and the ranch—is set in Montana, rather than Wyoming, where most of the actual Yellowstone is. Why anyone would bake this unnecessary tidbit of confusion into their business or their television show is beyond me.) It’s a show about family, deceit, and power; it’s a show about the government-sanctioned subjugation of Native Americans; it is also, apparently, a show about entrapping Kelly Reilly in yet another thankless role.
But it should be a show about jackets. Because as many negative things as you could say about Yellowstone—it’s clichéd, it’s operatic, it’s a not-as-good Succession with cowboy boots—you cannot deny that Kevin Costner wears some boss freakin’ jackets in it. Boiled down, Yellowstone is frontier-jacket porn (which is probably just regular porn to Justin Timberlake), and through three episodes, Costner has worn sport coats dirtied by time and hard work, the kind of vests that inspire entire Eddie Bauer catalogs, and incredible two-tone coats that’ll make you want to abandon your family and become a rancher. My pitch for Season 2 of Yellowstone is “Less dialogue, less murder—way more jackets,” because the show is truly at its best when Kevin Costner is just standing in front of a mountain amidst horses, looking rugged in a cool coat. As a tribute to those bright spots, here is a collection of every piece of outerwear Costner has worn on the show so far.
The Old Yeller (but With Horses) Fleece Vest
Note: This is the very first scene of the show. Costner’s character, John Dutton, and the horse he was towing have just gotten into a car accident, and if you’re wondering if the horse makes it, then you haven’t noticed the gun in Costner’s left hand. And if you’re now wondering if there’s a close-up shot of Kevin Costner shooting a horse in the head, my answer is you’re sick … but you’d probably like Yellowstone.
This is just an all-time absurd way to kick off a TV show—and a really good microcosm for Yellowstone in general. A great man named Michael Bay once said on the 1999 DVD commentary for Armageddon, “You never kill a dog; as a filmmaker, you must learn that,” and I would like to add horses to this rule and direct Taylor Sheridan’s attention to it. Pretty decent vest, though.
The Canvas Coat for Fathers Trying to Convince Themselves to Love Their Sons
No offense to Carhartt, but this is my least favorite jacket on Yellowstone. What’s up with that hood? Real men like John Dutton don’t need hoods; they have cowboy hats for whenever God tries to dump weakness water (rain, to you cowards) on them.
The Man’s Man’s Vest
This is a vest that a lot of New York City bankers wear under their suit jackets. John Dutton wears it when he’s duct taping ranch hands to unruly wild horses (a thing people do, I guess?) and spitting out axioms like, “Resistance is the kind of thing that defines itself.”
The All-Purpose Sport Coat
It must have been a warm day during Wednesday night’s episode of Yellowstone, because John Dutton mostly just wore this sport coat. He wore it to jail to threaten a reservation leader; he wore it into town; he wore it to sneak up on his children on multiple occasions:
The most important thing to know about this jacket is that you will never own it. Even if you find it on Orvis’s website, it will never be just like John Dutton’s. His is weathered, covered in the dust kicked up by horses, tailored only by years of being the most masculine landowner this side of the Snake River. You got that, cowboy?
The Dad Vest
Although, apparently sometimes even John Dutton wears the vest that every father wears to Little League games.
The “Let’s Round Up Them Cattle” Flannel Jacket
Good stuff right here—that thing’s a beauty. Also, notice how sunny it is and how Dutton’s son isn’t wearing a coat? That’s how elite of a coat-wearer this guy is: He does it in all temperatures. Screw being comfortable—John Dutton’ll leave comfort to those city boys.
A bonus about this coat is that it’s also the perfect piece to wear when your adult son is gunned down in a conflict with Native Americans over stray cattle and instead of contacting the authorities you take his lifeless body to a wooded area to mourn alongside your horse, which is exactly what happens in Yellowstone.
The Horse Whisperer Suede Vest
Sometimes after a long day, you just wanna hop into a stable, sit down in some hay, and think about life while a horse brays nearby. And when those times come—and golly, they will come—that’s what this vest is for.
The Perfect Jacket Does Not Exi—
Holy mother, look at that thing. It’s like if John Wayne was reincarnated as a puffer. That high collar! Those orange flaps! When John Dutton wears this jacket on Yellowstone—which he does frequently, as any man who owned it should—everyone knows they can’t mess with him, like when Tiger Woods would wear red on Sundays in the early 2000s. In the first episode, Dutton basically tells a rival, “I’m going to bankrupt your company and force your family to live in squalor for the rest of their days,” and the guy doesn’t even offer a retort. Because the jacket. And because Dutton is on a fucking horse when all of this happens:
God bless Yellowstone for bringing this image—and all of Kevin Costner’s jacket looks, honestly—into my life.