The suit is no longer the daily uniform of the average city worker. The suit is no longer what most men wear when dining out at a fine restaurant or when attending the theatre. The suit is no longer the symbol of respect that is once was. So why does James Bond still wear a suit all the time, especially when it makes him seem out of place or removed from the modern world?
When the James Bond film series started in 1962, the suit was the standard uniform in the western world for middle-class and upper-class men, and James Bond is a part of the latter. James Bond comes from money, which is how he can afford the luxuries that aren’t provided to him by the British secret service, though it is not clear how much of Bond’s lavish lifestyle is paid for by the British government. Ian Fleming’s Bond was educated at the prestigious colleges Eton and Fettes (where his father attended), whilst in the films, Sean Connery’s Bond states in You Only Live Twice that he studied Oriental languages at Cambridge University. Considering Bond’s preference for pleasure over work, he certainly didn’t attend these schools on merit. Stating that his tailor is on Savile Row in Dr. No further identifies Bond as a member of the upper class.
A man like James Bond in the 1960s would have worn a suit for everything: working at an office, travelling by aircraft, dining out (dress codes used to be more common), having drinks, attending the theatre, paying respects at a funeral, and so on. Bond was not exceptionally dressed for a spy on film in the 1960s since all spies were well-dressed in suits, from John Drake and John Steed to Napoleon Solo and Maxwell Smart. Suits allowed spies to blend in because they operated amongst the middle and upper classes who also wore suits, though Steed and Smart were too dandy to truly blend in any any crowd. In all of the James Bond films up to A View to a Kill, James Bond continued on as the same man with the same dressed-up values he was taught as a lad in the 1930s and 1940s. And these values still fit in with the world through the mid 1980s, though by then James Bond was an anomaly amongst action heroes by the way he dressed.
Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan’s Bonds grew up in a different post-war era, but suits were still very common for businessmen in their times as Bond.
In the modern era, James Bond is still a product of the upper class. Vesper Lynd sizes up James Bond in Casino Royale as a man who came from money. Vesper says about Bond’s clothes when she meets him on the train to Montenegro, “by the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally you think human beings dress like that.” Even Daniel Craig’s Bond was raised with old money values, which include the “proper” way of dressing. Though Craig may play the roughest Bond yet, the character’s background that Skyfall reveals by way of a family estate in Scotland still portrays Bond as a member of the upper class. Craig’s Bond does not care how the rest of the world dresses, so long as he is following the way he believes he, an upper class British man, is supposed to dress. It should be noted that the way someone dresses today is no indication of their background, and wealthy people do not necessarily dress up all the time like Bond does.
James Bond’s cover has always been that of a businessman who works for a London company called Universal Exports. Even today, countless businessmen in large cities all over the world, such as London, New York and Tokyo, dress for business in a suit and tie. Many working people are still wearing suits and ties in smaller cities. Suits are even more common amongst men who do business internationally, as James Bond certainly does. It still makes as much sense today as it did in the 1960s for James Bond to wear suits, at least in some settings. It follows that in London James Bond should almost always wear a suit.
Much of the time that James Bond seems to be inappropriately wearing tailored clothes, we have to remember why he put on his suit or dinner jacket in the first place. He dresses up for business or for a night out, and then he finds himself in an action-packed situation wearing the wrong thing. That is part of the charm of the way the character dresses, but it sometimes requires a suspension of disbelief.
As James Bond is usually travelling abroad on business rather than on holiday, it should make sense that he’s wearing a suit rather than dressing down. This can rationalise most of James Bond’s suits throughout the series, but there are certainly many times when he looks overdressed of out of place in a suit. Starting with Dr. No, James Bond certainly looks out of place in his suits in Jamaica, as do the other Englishmen that Bond meets with. Bond and the other Englishmen wear suits because of the social norms in the upper class in the 1960s, but it also draws attention to colonisation. The English clearly don’t look like they belong in Jamaica. Through the rest of the 1960s, James Bond still dresses as an Englishman—on business or on holiday—would be expected to dress wherever he is in the world. He never looks out of place in his own world.
James Bond had become a parody of himself in the 1970s, and the traditional way he dresses now often makes him look like a fish out of water even more than it did for the colonists in Dr. No. The first time James Bond truly looks out of place by the way he is dressed is due to his ivory dinner jacket at the Las Vegas casino in Diamonds Are Forever. Bond is dressing for a Monte Carlo casino rather than a Las Vegas casino, appearing like he is unaware of the difference. Then Bond dresses in a black dinner suit to scale the Whyte House. He’s assuming he’s about to meet Willard Whyte, so he wants to be properly dressed for that occasion. But to be properly dressed for this rescue mission he should have worn the standard tactical black turtleneck.
Even more absurd in Diamonds Are Forever is when a pinstripe-clad James Bond lands on Blofeld’s oil rig during the climax of the film, and his inappropriate choice of dress is made apparent when his three-piece suit is immediately damaged. This scene establishes that the character is expected to wear a suit whatever the occasion.
Most of the suits that James Bond wears throughout the 1970s fit the settings, considering the old-money character that James Bond is established to be. Roger Moore still has his inappropriate suit-wearing moments, beginning with in Live and Let Die when the leisure suit he wears for hang-gliding reverses into a beige suit so he can be “properly” dressed when he meets Solitaire. The reversible suit is absurd, but it fits in with the parody that Bond has become. Being “properly” dressed for meeting people no matter the situation continues in The Man with the Golden Gun when Bond brings a sports coat with him to Scaramanga’s island, when the type of casual colonial garb Scaramanga prefers would have been a far more practical choice for Bond to wear.
Moonraker sees James Bond dressed out of place in his dinner suit at Carnival in Rio, but he is not the only man in a dinner suit there. It’s the kind of festival where anything goes. However, the dinner suit shows that James Bond does not know how to dress for the evening if he’s outside of his element. He is still wearing his dinner suit the next morning—sans bow tie—presumably because he stayed out the entire night.
Dressing Bond in a dinner suit for Carnival fills the obligatory black tie scene that every Bond film since The Man with the Golden Gun has featured. Usually the scene is at a casino or a formal dinner, and occasionally the scene is a dressy function or an opera. The scenes almost always feature appropriate occasions for black tie, but the Moonraker black tie scene is a stretch (as are many other elements on the film).
Overall, Roger Moore dresses more casually than the two Bonds who came before him. He usually does not wear a suit or a sports coat in inappropriate settings. As for the suits he wears, the wide lapels and flared trousers of his 1970s suits help him to fit in with the people around him. Whereas if Moore dressed more traditionally like M does, he would have stuck out in his surroundings even more than people think he does. When Moore wears a suit, he’s not usually the only who does so.
In Moore’s 1980s Bond films, he only wears suits when they are truly appropriate, whether if he’s in London or if he is dressed as an English businessman abroad. His country wear in A View to a Kill is exactly what his cover James St John Smyth would wear in such a setting. Later he’s dressed believably in a tan suit as reporter James Stock in San Francisco.
Timothy Dalton never dresses up inappropriately in his films. Even in at the start of The Living Daylights when he is reminded at the symphony that he’s on a mission and not attending a “fancy dress ball”, his velcro-equipped dinner jacket means that he is appropriately dressed for both. In Licence to Kill, Bond’s dark suit that he wears to the airport may seem out of place in Key West, but he’s likely flying either back to London or somewhere else on business where such a suit would be appropriate.
Bond once again became a parody of himself in the 1990s. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond prefers to dress in tailored clothing for many more occasions that he should, similar to how Sean Connery was overdressed in much of Diamonds Are Forever. The era of the suit had ended by the 1990s, but Bond still wears suits to pay homage to the way the character dressed in the 1960s. He’s sometimes in a suit when nobody else is.
In GoldenEye, Bond is overdressed in his navy suit for meeting Janus in a statue park. Though a proper Englishman would dress in a suit and tie for any business meeting, the circumstances of this meeting should have called for something more casual and tactical. For instance, a leather jacket. And why is Bond wearing a suit when we first see him in Cuba? Sean Connery provided classy examples of warm-weather casual clothing in Thunderball that would have been far more appropriate.
In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond has a more limited tailored wardrobe, but his choice of a flannel suit for infiltrating Carver’s newspaper headquarters is questionable. The suit helps him fit in with people on the streets of Hamburg, but he would have fit in just as well wearing something more casual and more practical. In The World Is Not Enough, his suits are almost always appropriate as he’s usually representing the British government. His most questionable suit in this film is the navy suit at the caviar factory. Bond may have come dressed up from a fancy dinner with Christmas Jones, but she is not quite dressed up to his level. The only reason Bond is dressed in a suit in this scene is because the audience will accept Bond in a suit.
Die Another Day sees a more sensible use of tailored clothing, though Bond again finds himself in a suit in Cuba when he has no reason to be wearing a suit. He’s just wearing a suit because he wants to wear a suit, no matter how impractical of a choice that is. His linen suit is a suit for leisure and not one for business. He’s more dressed up than he has to be, but without a tie he does not look out of place either.
Daniel Craig’s Bond continues to wear suits often, but he also dresses in plenty of casual clothes, especially for the action scenes. His casual linen suits in Casino Royale are stylish and paint Bond as a professional man without looking like he’s going to the office. Vesper Lynd feels that is Bond overdressed in more formal suit when she meets him on the train, but other men are dressed like Bond. Bond dons a suit and tie because he’s dressing for a business meeting. Vesper herself is also dressed for business. Bond’s striped three-piece at the end of Casino Royale is his most out-of-place suit, as he is neither in the city nor is he conducting business. But costume designer Lindy Hemming uses the suit to display that Bond has matured rather than to dress him for the setting.
Quantum of Solace starts off right where Casino Royale ends, and thus Bond is still in a suit. Though his three-piece suit has magically turned into a two-piece suit, the suit makes more sense when we see him arrive at a government facility with other similarly dressed men. Craig’s other suits in the film fit with the occasions as well, with the exception of his brown suit in Bolivia. It does not suit Bond’s cover of a teacher on sabbatical. It may be a brown suit, but it does not resemble the “geography teacher” look.
Skyfall beings with Bond in a grey sharkskin suit in Istanbul. We can only assume that he’s dressed as a representative from Universal Exports. His fellow agents are dressed similarly, so we know it’s not only James Bond who is wearing a suit for this dangerous mission. A few well-dressed men can also be spotted on the street, so Bond does not entirely stand out. Nevertheless, this suit is not practical for what Bond’s assignment ended up being.
Bond’s blue Prince of Wales check suit at the beginning of Spectre makes no sense. Why is Bond wearing a suit under his skeleton costume? This is a perfect Bond-being-Bond moment. There are people on the street in less formal tailored clothing, but Bond is the only one who looks dressed for business. The casual Brunello Cucinelli jacket and knitted tie later in the film as well as the damier check suit at the end of the film continue to show Bond as a character who wears tailored clothing because he wants to wear it. Whilst in Casino Royale Bond wears suits because he believes that he has to, by the time of Spectre Bond is wearing suits because he enjoys wearing them.
Some of the concepts addressed in this article can be found in the 1996 book Dressed to Kill: James Bond — The Suited Hero by Jay McInerney, Nick Foulkes and Nick Sullivan. However, the way much of the world views the suit has changed much since then. More than even today, many people have a hatred for the suit because in many’s eyes it represents corrupt politicians or dishonest bankers. To others, the suit represents a prison of conformity or a prison of colonisation.
For James Bond, the suit is still a symbol of respect and style. The suit is how James Bond chooses to express himself. The suit a symbol of the character’s heritage. And most importantly, the suit is Bond’s way of keeping the British end up.
Should Bond wear more suits to play up his heritage, or should he wear fewer suits to keep with the times?
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