Skyfall

[Frog in Suit]

FiS - Yes, hang all tweeds out in a leaky barn for a few days before they are actually worn!
NJS

Frog in Suit (who does not have a leaky barn at his disposal )

[NJS]

FiS - Yes, hang all tweeds out in a leaky barn for a few days before they are actually worn!
NJS

Frog in Suit (who does not have a leaky barn at his disposal )

An alternative for you might be to place a nail in a palm tree in the garden and hang them on that for a week or so!
NJS

[Frog in Suit]

FiS - Yes, hang all tweeds out in a leaky barn for a few days before they are actually worn!
NJS

Frog in Suit (who does not have a leaky barn at his disposal )

An alternative for you might be to place a nail in a palm tree in the garden and hang them on that for a week or so!
NJS

No palm trees in the garden, either. This is central Paris, you know (sooty rain most of the time, exhaust fumes and pollution all of the time...)
Frog in Suit

[NJS]

Frog in Suit (who does not have a leaky barn at his disposal )

An alternative for you might be to place a nail in a palm tree in the garden and hang them on that for a week or so!
NJS

No palm trees in the garden, either. This is central Paris, you know (sooty rain most of the time, exhaust fumes and pollution all of the time...)
Frog in Suit

Time to jump ship, maybe? Go somewhere and listen to the susurrating fronds and the sound of the sea,,,

[lxlloyd]

The James Bond of years back was a man of resplendent taste. Breakfast was his favorite meal, he wore a bespoke Chesterfield, and only the woman who kissed him could sense the Floris 89. Today, James travels in a track suit and sneakers. He has no time for breakfast and owns no overcoat. He shops at J Crew and sports designer cologne. The latest Bond girl has to buy his dinner jacket for him because he came to Monte Carlo without one. Does anyone really believe that he can tie his own bow tie? All this is rather sad. After all, how hard could it have been to make Daniel Craig look good?

That is true, but is it conceivable that a secret agent, who has undergone intensive military training and have had to rough it out with KGB spies, would look quite as immaculate as the Bond of yesteryear? I think that if JB were more than a mere fictional character, he'd probably resemble Craig, than, say, the polished looks of Pierre Brosman, Roger Moore or a young Sean Connery. Not that I'm disagreeing on the problems with Tom Ford's suits on Craig, but merely pointing out that the portrayal of Bond by Craig is in all likelihood more realistic.

I don't know, the guards officers were once renowned for their exceptional style.

My father is a guards officer. Until very recently (in my living memory) he was not permitted to go up to london without a three piece suit, stiff collar, locks bowler hat and black umbrella, which was not allowed to be put up (save for a lady) when it rained (a guardsman takes a taxi)... My mother can still remember not recognising him the first time she saw him in london in the 70s, meeting outside Fortnums, when she was meeting him for a day out in London from university in Durham. He is one of the few people I know that still dresses UP to go on an aeroplane.

My godfather was head of the guards unit of the SAS and in the same regiment, so same rules apply. And this was cold war era...

[lxlloyd]

*and of course the obligatory perfectly shined shoes... when I was little my school shoes were shines so assiduously that my teacher told me off for wearing patent. To which I retorted "No they're not... my Daddy's a guardsman!"

[NJS]

Yes, I am far from convinced that Bond (who is a fictional character after all) would look more like a thug than the naval officer that he was. Craig doesn't have that look. But, hey, the film producers rightly smell more money in presenting Bond as a gnomic thug and so that's what the world gets. Ian Fleming produced a sketch of James Bond that was published in a newspaper:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=james+ ... 4,s:0,i:94

That is not Craig. It is interesting though that revisionism hits even here...

[J.S. Groot]

It is interesting though that revisionism hits even here...

Interesting, perhaps, but hardly surprising. The James Bond universe is a brand. Brands evolve or they gradually hollow out and die. From that perspective it is only natural that characters are revised over a period of 50 years.

[Miles Messervy]

Unlike many, I'm not outraged by Craig's tenure as Bond, but one cannot overlook how terrible the suits look on SkyFall! Way too narrow and short, catering to the fashion designer-oriented crowd. I have even seen pictures with collars riding awfully up...

[NJS]

The films are a 'brand' and many of them are quite far removed from the books. In the novel OHMSS Fleming has Bond say that the money to have is ''not quite enough'', which seems ironic now! The controlling members of the Fleming family apparently have so far short of 'enough' that they have even despoiled Goldeneye to make it into a condo complex hideaway for celebrities,

The Bond of the books is not a terribly 'nice chap' but neiher is he a mindless thug. Craig is a very good actor but neither he nor the films are really James Bond anymore. Take away the names of the central characters, the music, the facsimile DB5 and the name James Bond and he could be any highly trained assassin in any modern action film.

The books remain as they were written and centre on a preoccupation with Britain's declining post-War world role; creating a central phantasy that the nation was still important. I think that the original appeal lay in that phantasy, rather than in the character. Things are quite different now as Britain, in world affairs, is very plainly too much the poodle of the US administration of the day to sustain any James Bond phantasy about modern Britain's position in the word.

NJS

[couch]

Alas, the fashion designer-oriented crowd apparently extends to writers (and headline writers) who should know better. No doubt some of you saw Manohla Dargis's (positive) review of Skyfall for the New York Times, headlined "What a Man! What a Suit!" which includes this quote:

Bond is wearing a silver-gray suit when he powers into “Skyfall,” the latest 007 escapade, but it isn’t cut for office work. The suit is seductively tight, for starters, and moves like a second skin when Daniel Craig in his third stint as Bond races through an atavistic opener that — with bullets buzzing and M (Judi Dench) whispering orders in his ear — puts him back on mortal, yet recognizably Bondian, ground.

I suppose today one should be grateful that a suit of any kind is described in positive terms in the cultural press, but this criterion--"seductively tight"--seems the antithesis of the understated ethos that Fleming's Bond, and the long tradition of the 'English cut' he follows in, represents. The suit is supposed to hint at the powerful physique moving beneath it while maintaining a perfect decorum, not exhibit the physique like a bathing costume. But I think much contemporary taste, including female taste, has lost the ability to appreciate understatement. So the Bond suit is now the equivalent of the tight superhero costume you might actually get away with wearing in public. Meanwhile the real movie superhero costumes are no longer just tight, but include artificially enhanced molded musculature (perhaps with bionic functionality)--the modern version of the Roman contoured plate armor. Based on anecdotal evidence, I have some optimism that people (including women) tend to outgrow this phase sometime in their thirties, and the power of understatement once more becomes appealing. I hope so.

[NJS]

In an interview, Craig seems to be wearing more of the sort of suit that Bond might properly wear! It seems to fit, for a start!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oI3SdWXcBw

NJS

[hectorm]

It´s an improvement.
But I´ll stick to the superb suits worn by Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes´s character) which make him look serious and don´t hamper him from entering into action when the time comes.

[jscherrer]

I'll offer this post from my newly started blog:

http://tailoredandstyled.wordpress.com/ ... all-style/

Would welcome your comments/discussion. I do have a distinct point of view of the style exhibited in the film...

Best,

Joe