James Bond & His Tuxedo

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As 007 celebrates 50 years of cinematic prowess with a new film Skyfall, we want to focus on one of Bond’s most iconic wardrobe elements: the tuxedo. In the first part, I will discuss a few 007 dinner jacket outfits

Table of Contents
  1. 007 Dinner Jacket Outfits
  2. The Tux of the Matter

and in the second part Bond author Mark O’Connell ponders the longevity of 007’s signature look in his essay The Tux of the Matter.

No matter what Bond tuxedo style you go for, at the heart of your ensemble will always be the black bow tie. Learn what bow tie is best for you:

007 Dinner Jacket Outfits

In the cover picture, you can see the very first James Bond in Dr. No (1962). He is wearing a black shawl collar tuxedo with satin silk and a slim pointed batwing bow tie with a pleated shirt front and visible buttons. I would have to take a closer look at the buttons, but to me, they look more like buttons rather than separate studs.Personally, I prefer studs, but alternatively, off whiteI’d opt for a hidden fly, rather than visible buttons.

Roger Moore in Black Tie - Batwing
Roger Moore in Black Tie – Batwing

Here we see Roger Moore in a tuxedo with a slightly wrinkled silk faced lapel, neat turndown collar, and black batwing bow tie. Just like Connery he also shows white buttons in his tuxedo shirt.

Off White Silk Dinner Jacket in Shantung Silk - Roger Moore
Off White Silk Dinner Jacket in Shantung Silk – Roger Moore

I really loff-white, shantung raw silk dinner jacket, though I find the huge butterfly bow tie over the top. Once again, we can see a tuxedo shirt with wide pleats and visible buttons.

6x2 Dinner Jacket with Mother of Pearl Buttons
6×2 Dinner Jacket with Mother of Pearl Buttons

That very jacket has actually 6 mother of pearls buttons in the front and he wears it nonchalantly with the bottom button unbuttoned.

Brosnan as 007 in Dinner Jacket with Studs & Butterfly Bow Tie
Brosnan as 007 in Dinner Jacket with Studs & Butterfly Bow Tie

Pierce Brosnan wore suits by Brioni and his tuxedo shirts always featured studs. To me, the four studs always seem one or two too many because it looks less elegant.

Dalton as 007 with Clip on Suspenders & No Cummerbund
Dalton as 007 with Clip-on Suspenders & No Cummerbund

Timothy Dalton was probably one of the most poorly dressed Bonds, but then again suits of his decade lacked elegance quite often. In this picture, we see Dalton with clip-on suspenders and an exposed waistband. Historically that was unacceptable and even today a tuxedo with an (evening) vest or cummerbund is incomplete.

Sean Connery in Slim Shawl Collar in Thunderball
Sean Connery in Slim Shawl Collar in Thunderball

Here we can see Sean Connery in a dapper black dinner jacket with a slim shawl collar. As such, he wears a likewise slim bow tie. Just compare it to the bow tie Roger Moore wore with his dinner jacket. By the way, this is the cover picture of The Suits of James Bond – a site dedicated to nothing but the wardrobe of 007 and his opponents.

Lazenby with Ruffled Tuxedo Shirt Front
Lazenby with Ruffled Tuxedo Shirt Front

The shirt Lazenby is wearing here is truly ostentatious, and luckily it was only popular in the 60s and 70s. Note, the buttonholes on his cuff is off center in order to show more of the cufflinks.

Notched Bond Tuxedo with Single Galon on Evening Trousers
Notched Bond Tuxedo with Single Galon on Evening Trousers

Even James Bond would sometimes wear tuxedos with notched lapels. It is too similar to a business suit and as such in appropriate for proper evening wear.

Dinner Jacket with Boutonniere - Sean Connery in Goldfinger
Dinner Jacket with Boutonniere – Sean Connery in Goldfinger

Connery looked dashing his ivory dinner jacket with slim peaked lapels and bow tie. Since he opted for a red carnation buttonhole, he skipped the pocket square which is perfectly alright, and some may even argue the proper way to do it. Personally, I think you can add a handkerchief but only it you use a small flower and a little puff because otherwise it looks overloaded.
What is your most favorite and least favorite Bond outfit and why?

The Tux of the Matter

Daniel Craig as 007 in Dark Navy Tuxedo with Gapping Collar & Studs
Daniel Craig as 007 in Dark Navy Tuxedo with Gaping Collar & Studs

This Bond fan is not a fan of the tuxedo. When making notes for the designer for the cover of my 007 love letter – Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan – I put Blofeld’s Persian cat amongst the pigeons by requesting “no tuxedos.” It is so often an office party or mid-week opera night afterthought – a dog’s dinner suit of an ensemble that certain men tend to borrow or rent with scant regards for their measurements. Prom nights and Caribbean cruises are awash with baggy legged tuxedos, askew bow ties and sweating men balancing their plates and coleslaw-stained cuffs from the all-you-can-eat buffet. It is hardly fitting for the sartorial ideal that British royalty and Savile Row schmutter peddlers brought into popular circulation over 120 years ago. But then there is this James Bond chap. I may not be a fan of the tuxedo, but I am a keen devotee of James Bond. I may not like them, but I am most spitefully envious of the tuxedos as worn by James Bond over the years. Maybe that is because I am a bespoke Bond fan, a lapelled 007 follower who cannot fault much our man James puts on his back. I am even quietly envious of Timothy Dalton’s 1980’s anoraks and have always thought George Lazenby’s bobble hat in OHMSS to be on the “I want one” side of fetching. Or possibly it is because James Bond’s tuxedos fit him. No sagging prom-night shoulder lines or Bar Mitzvah ruffles here. Even Roger Moore’s flares come Bollinger-smuggling culottes are pretty sweet. Did I say that out loud? As Saint Matthew or some such quotable orator said as the first tuxedo rental possibly dined out at the Last Supper, a suit maketh the man. 007’s tuxedos are vital to his deportment as an upright chap (and horizontal lover) of the British Empire. Film lore cites how the first Bond film director Terence Young took that Edinburgh bodybuilder and Disney c-lister Sean Connery to Conduit Street’s Anthony Sinclair for a fitting prior to the very first Bond movie, Dr. No (1962).

Sean Connery in Goldfinger with Notched Lapel Tuxedo
Sean Connery in Goldfinger with Notched Lapel Tuxedo

As co-opted by author Ian Fleming and latterly exposed quite brilliantly by the current 007 (Daniel Craig), the onscreen Bond is a very internal character. Terence Young himself was not a million miles from author Ian Fleming’s bespoke chap about town template. He clearly thought the tuxedo could deliver an instant message about that insular spy. And it did. The very first moment, in fact. That debut glimpse of the youthful James poised at the gaming table of a deliberately ageing private members club is a stealthy steal of card-flicking fingers, a lit cigarette, and the bipolar hued tux. The suit may be black and white, but Bond was not as a society debutante seeds that most iconic of introductory primers, “Bond, James Bond” and that line – and 007 himself – is instantly carved on the tree of popular culture. As The Beatles were about to storm the universe with their velvet suits, and knitted ties and a mod movement was convincing Britain’s street youth to think about how they dressed, an off-the-peg sense of couture was tailoring the backstreets and mopeds of early 1960s Europe. But not the tux. That was still an expensive enigma, a perceived tag of the upper classes and their cigar-smoked private clubs after hours. Step forward Sean Connery. Like Bond himself, there is a sparse mystery about the tuxedo. The Bond films never show us where it is laundered. We never see Bond head down Savile Row for a fitting. That is the stuff of the Bond film’s publicity machine, not the character himself. “Bond will be wearing a midnight blue such and such dinner suit” – it is part of the necessary branding of Bond. And possibly it is the part of the enigma of 007. We don’t want to see 007 go food shopping (it was genre-shattering enough when Harry Palmer does it in a suit in 1964’s The Ipcress File). We don’t need to see him checking for sports news over breakfast. As Christopher Nolan’s Bat suit proved, it pops the illusion if we see identical spares of the tux in a wardrobe. Yet the tux is a facet of Bond. When it is injured, covered in blood, torn by a laser beam or the wit of a killer mistress, we know Bond is off track. Tom Ford’s tuxedo for Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale(2006) is almost a supporting character in its own right. The supposedly fledgling Bond not only has to be almost bribed into it by Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), the state of the tux is the state of Bond – from a shower soaked burst of hot water when he is comforting a terrified Vesper to being all that stands in the way of a remote-access defibrillator being attached to Bond’s tight pecs and what is blatantly missing when he stripped naked for some ball-busting torture. The tuxedo here is about distraction and displays of might at a high-level gaming table. Yet when it is gone and replaced by Daniel Craig’s designer abs, it is not the fact that Bond is naked that makes him vulnerable. He has never been so sorely without the tuxedo.

Dalton in Notched Lapel Tux with Studs
Dalton in Notched Lapel Tux with Studs

And tuxedos – like James Bonds, title songs and supporting actress’s hemlines – dip and rise with the times. Just as it was almost passé to have any action hero in anything other than a Die Hard gym vest or a Wal-Mart anorak, Bond took these sartorial pretenders to his throne by the scruff of a collared neckline they sorely missed and continued bucking the trend in order to maintain his autonomy on being a knight in sartorial armour. Admittedly Timothy Dalton’s own C&A anorak usage almost skirted round the tux in his debut 007 film – though he made use of one for a brief trip to a provincial Eastern bloc opera house in 1987’s The Living Daylights (see, even Bond succumbs to that mid-week opera night tux cliché). Though he did create a Mexican wave in the following Licence to Kill (1989), he stuck two fingers up at the costume girl’s duplicate rail of tuxedos to just show one being continually put to the test. And when the films surf a wave of confidence and boundary-pushing – such as 1964’s Goldfinger or 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me – 007 opts for an ivory white tux (could you imagine Christian Bale’s Batman going for a white Bat suit?!). This Bond fan had a much cherished signed Roger Moore photo in his bedroom for years featuring James in another white tux from A View to a Kill(1985). I probably prefer the statement of the white tux to the black (or blue, as in recent Bond outings). A white tux screams James Bond – and 1970s men in safari suits, scene-stealing cravats, and bikini-clad lovelies. Just the era I love to celebrate.

Daniel Craig as 007 in Tuxedo
Daniel Craig as 007 in Tuxedo

It was certainly the greatest tux apex as Moore’s Bond was a staunch defender. Though Pierce Brosnan’s reign as tux-bearer was an equally fruitful one with the effects of Die Another Day’s freezing cold ice palace apparently kept at bay if one dons a tuxedo. Maybe he learnt that from George Lazenby (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969) whose rather dandy-ish tux came replete with a frill neck straight out of the box marked Bar Mitzvah boy. Despite just one spin of the Bond tuxedo clothes rail, Lazenby braved quite a few looks, including a tux-kilt hybrid that once again ignored the alpine conditions around it to cut another dapper look just as the world was in flared denim and hemp t-shirts. However, just as that tux-missing torture scene from Casino Royale typifies, perhaps the greatest use of the tux in the Bond films is when it is not used. Donning the tuxedo is like a great many beats of Bond. There is a swagger when Bond emerges for a night’s schmoozing and chest-beating at some villain’s society shindig. It needs not to be seen so that when it does – as in the new Bond movie Skyfall when Bond attends a floating Shanghai casino and makes maximum Bond Arrivingeffect – it makes the same chest and wallet beating impact it did 50 years ago. So here we are – 50 years after a tuxedo sleeve was the first glimpse we saw of Bond.

As well as being an exciting time to be a Bond fan all over again as the world catches 007’s new cinematic bullet, Skyfall’s midnight blue tuxedo is itself designed by a film director (Tom Ford). Just as Anthony Sinclair and his Conduit cuts forged the image of Connery into the zeitgeist and beyond, Tom Ford has now put the tuxedo back on every magazine, bus shelter, billboard, and male wish list. If anyone else does it, they just look like a quasi James Bond.

When James Bond does it, he almost changes this fan’s mind about the benefits of a tuxedo. And now this 007 fan is faced with the reality of attending the world premiere of the new 007 movie. It’s mid-week and may well have a buffet. What to wear….?

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Reader Comments

  1. Insightful. We can take into consideration that Connery’s narrow lapels correspond to the 60’s sensibilities, while Moore’s bow ties were in keeping with the wider lapels and flared trousers of the 70’s.

    1. All bonds were influenced by the fashions of their time. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting to look at the different styles in 2012. Who knows what this decade will stand for in 50 years…

  2. I was lucky to have as my dinner partner George Lazenby at a Beverly Hills private garden supper. I recall that he wore a kilt in his movie with the formal lace jabot. He was more sedately attired on Rodeo Drive….

  3. Generally I love all Sean Connery’s Bond outfits with few exceptions only (e.g. his trilby hats) but my very favorite is his grey suit in “From Russia with Love”, combined with a light blue shirt (I think there is even a scene where he wears it along a white shirt), a dark blue knitted tie and a white handkerchief.
    Plus: there is this wonderful scene in Kerim Bey’s office after the mine explosion, where kerim nonchalantly wipes off dust with his handkerchief and subsequently puts it at least as nonchalantly back into his jacket’s front pocket.
    Can also wholeheartedly recommend the novel; imo the best of the series.

  4. Well, I too am a 007 fan, however, I think that Mr. Brosnan was the most well dressed Bond. His black tie ensembles were remarkable, and sartorially very correct. Even his lounge suits were wonderfully selected.

  5. It’s interesting to note how all the Bonds have sort of been one step ahead of current fashions, and then led them – in particular Tom Ford’s Skyfall dinner jacket has inspired copies at all end of the men’s fashion market, from Gieves to River Island -I’ve looked at this dinner jacket in more detail here:

  6. Basty, thanks for your comment. I think people have seen Bond as a kind of arbiter elegantiarum for decades now. Lately, dinner jackets seem to be more en vogue and so it does not surprise me to see so many followers.

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