Villanova's coach has a deal with Hugo Boss and another with a local custom clothier, Gabriele D'Annunzio, who has hand-made for Wright about a dozen suits in the last three years, including the three Wright was planning to take with him to Detroit for this weekend's Final Four.
Wright says he puts little thought into what he wears, but that can't be altogether true. D'Annunzio uses the finest wool fabrics for the suits and tailors them to accentuate Wright's broad shoulders. The shirts, with D'Annunzio's signature piped breast pockets, have tall collars to account for Wright's long neck and reflect a quarter-inch disparity between his arms. And Wright orders his size 13 leather shoes from a dealer in Atlanta.
The coach's carefully tailored look, along with his effervescent personality, has come to define the 47-year-old, who will make his Final Four debut tomorrow night when the Wildcats play North Carolina.
But beneath the suit and the smile is an unapologetically demanding man few outside his inner basketball circle ever see. It is that tough coach, the one who will unload a stream of obscenities if one of his players doesn't dive for a loose ball or hustle on defense, who has led Villanova to its first Final Four since 1985.
The suit is nice. The substance is something else.
"The man is two totally different people," said Atlanta Hawks guard Speedy Claxton, who at Hofstra was Wright's first marquee player. "That guy is like Jekyll and Hyde."
Sense of style
In 1979, the students at Council Rock High School voted Jerold T. Wright best-looking and best-dressed in the senior class. Wright was a clotheshorse even back then.
The process came naturally. Wright was the oldest of Jerold and Judith Wright's four children, and the strikingly tall Judith was fashionable in an era when clothes tended to be flashy and outrageous.
