The Saint in Full Evening Dress

Posted on 5 April 2013 by Matt Spaiser

Also known as white tie, full evening dress is now worn primarily at state dinners, very fancy balls and a select few other occasions. For many occasions where it was once worn, black tie has now replaced it. Though James Bond never wears full evening dress, Roger Moore wears it in the 1962 episode of The Saint titled “The Charitable Countess.” The focus of full evening dress is the evening tailcoat. Bond has in fact worn a different type of tailcoat: a morning coat. Like the morning coat, the evening tailcoat has a waist seam and tails in the back. The evening tailcoat is either black or midnight blue, with black satin silk peaked lapels. Moore’s tailcoat, made by Cyril Castle, is cut with natural shoulders and roped sleeveheads, just as Moore’s lounge coats are. The front is double-breasted with three buttons down each side, but the front panels do not meet or fasten. Though not all tailcoats have breast pockets, Moore’s evening tailcoat has a welt breast pocket, adorned with a white linen handkerchief. There are four buttons on each sleeve, and all of the buttons on the tailcoat are in covered satin silk.

The trousers have a long rise, double forward pleats and a silk braid down the side of each leg. Because the trousers sit so high it’s necessary that they are held up with braces. Though we don’t see Moore with the tailcoat off, he is most likely wearing braces. The single-breasted waistcoat is made of white cotton marcella. It is low cut with three mother of pearl buttons and square-cut lapels, and it is most likely backless. The shirt’s front has a stiff marcella bib to match the waistcoat. The front of the shirt closes with two mother of pearl studs. The shirt has a stiff, detachable wing collar and single link cuffs (stiff, single-layer cuffs to wear with cuff links). The bow tie is also white cotton marcella to match the shirt and waistcoat. Moore wears the most traditional accessories with his evening wear: a black plush silk top hat and white kidskin gloves. However, he goes a step too far and carries a walking stick.

This is a perfect example of full dress. The only mistake is that in some scenes Moore is wearing the bow tie behind the collar points. The bow tie should always be in front of the collar points. More recently Roger Moore wears full evening dress in the 2011 television feature A Princess for Christmas, but it’s a most atrocious example of the style in every manner. It looks rather like a rental and fits very poorly. Full dress is very difficult to fit well when not bespoke, especially since the waistline of the tailcoat, the bottom of the waistcoat and the waist of the trousers all need to fit perfectly. The tailcoat’s waistline should mirror the waistline of the person wearing the tailcoat, though it can be adjusted to make one look taller or shorter. The waistcoat needs to be shorter so it does not show below the jacket’s waistline. And the trousers need to sit extra high on the waist so they are completely covered by the waistcoat. Cyril Castle fits all three parts perfectly for Moore.

See Black Tie Guide for more on full evening dress.

Almost Never Button the Bottom Button

Posted on 2 April 2013 by Matt Spaiser

Sean Connery has both buttons on his dark grey suit fastened in Dr. No.

Sean Connery’s tailoring in his Bond films is often admired for its clean, simple lines and limited colour scheme. But wearing suits didn’t come naturally to Connery, and on three occasions he makes the mistake of buttoning the bottom button on his suit jackets. The first is in Dr. No, when wearing tailored clothing was still very new to him, and presumably director Terence Young did not catch the brief mistake. The second is when Bond enters his hotel room in Istanbul and suddenly his bottom button is fastened, even though it was when he entered the lift. The third time came in Diamonds Are Forever. On neither of Connery’s suit jackets should the bottom button ever be fastened.

Connery fastens the bottom button on his linen suit in Diamonds Are Forever.

It’s typically advised that only the top button on a button two jacket should be fastened. This is because the front is cut away below the top button and the lower button doesn’t meet up with the buttonhole. Thus, fastening the lower button causes the jacket to pull across the hips. It restricts movement and makes it difficult to sit. Also, it shortens the perceived leg length, rather than extending the leg to the waist. But some button two jackets are designed to have both buttons fastened.

On a paddock-cut button two jacket, both buttons are meant to fasten. The button stance is raised, usually placing the two buttons equidistant above and below the waist. Placing both buttons higher means that the bottom button can be fastened without restricting movement. The front on a paddock cut is only cutaway below the bottom button. President John F. Kennedy, British politician Anthony Eden and the Duke of Windsor are known for wearing this cut. In his later years, the Duke of Windsor only fastened the bottom button on his paddock-cut jackets for a longer lapel line. Roger Moore wears a couple paddock-cut suits with button-three jackets in The Persuaders, which adds a third button at the top.

Cyril Castle made Roger Moore’s paddock-cut suit in The Persuaders. It has a slanted, flapped breast pocket and flared link-button cuffs

Noble House: Navy Pinstripe Suit

Posted on 31 March 2013 by Matt Spaiser

Noble House, a novel by James Clavell, was adapted into a television miniseries in 1988 starring Pierce Brosnan. The miniseries also features other Bond actors, such as John Rhys-Davies from The Living Daylights and Burt Kwouk from Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice and the 1967 Casino Royale spoof. Brosnan plays Ian Dunross, chairman of the oldest and largest of the British-East Asia trading companies. The character’s suits would most probably be made by a tailor in Hong Kong, and it’s likely that the clothes for the miniseries were made by a tailor in Hong Kong since that’s where it was filmed. The Hong Kong tailoring looks like Savile Row tailoring minus the English flair. The miniseries featured a lot of nice tailoring which holds up rather well today, better than what Timothy Dalton was wearing at the time as Bond.

Because Brosnan plays a business man he is dressed in a lot of stripes throughout the mini-series. Here we will look at one of his striped suits, a navy three-piece suit with alternating thick and thin pinstripes. The jacket is a button three, and although the lapels roll to the top button they still have a gentle, elegant roll. The shoulders are straight and built up with roping, but they aren’t as excessively large as the shoulders that were popular at the time. The jacket has 3 buttons on the cuffs, flapped pockets and a single vent.

The suit trousers have double reverse pleats but with a somewhat trim leg for the era. The waistcoat is the weakest part of the suit. It has 6 buttons with 5 to button, but it is more like a 5-button with an extra button added on to the bottom since the bottom button is ill-spaced and looks like an afterthought. The waistcoat is also too long, and the buttons are placed to far apart, for a less elegant look. Brosnan wears the suit with a white shirt with closesly-spaced blue pencil stripes, and it has a point collar and double cuffs. Striped shirts can work well with striped suits if the scale of the stripes are much different, but they are very close here and somewhat clash. This is a recurring problem with the clothes in Noble House. The tie is navy with white polka dots, tied in either a windsor or half-windsor knot. He also wears a folded white linen pocket square, which is far more sober than the puffed silks he previously wore in Remington Steele. The outfit is more business than Bond with two striped pieces of clothing, but if either the shirt or suit was solid it would be a great outfit for Bond.

Drape

Posted on 28 March 2013 by Matt Spaiser

In Dressing the Man, Alan Flusser defines drape as:

The manner in which a garment hangs from the shoulder or waist. For example, the English drape (or English lounge) is an intended style feature of men’s jackets or outercoats pioneered in the early 1920s by the Prince of Wales’s maverick tailor Frederick Scholte, inspired by the guards coat; it is characterized by fullness across the chest and over the shoulder blades to form flat vertical wrinkles for form, comfort, and the impression of muscularity. The draped silhouette dominated men’s tailored fashions throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

The classic drape cut has large, padded shoulders and a nipped waist, to emphasise and build upon a man’s V-shaped torso. Sean Connery’s Anthony Sinclair suit jackets were cut with a mild amount of drape, though his jackets do not have the built-up shoulders of the classic drape suit. Though Cyril Castle made some of Roger Moore’s suits in The Saint with a draped chest, the drape was mostly absent from his Bond suits. The extra chest fullness practically serves Bond, by not only offering extra ease in movement but also better concealing his PPK. Even though the chest is larger than usual, it doesn’t mean the suit is a size larger. Very few tailors still do a drape cut, and even Anderson & Sheppard who was once known for their drape now mostly cuts a trim, clean chest. Drape has a markedly old-fashioned look that isn’t in line with today’s trim fashions. Still, English tailors use drape in the most basic definition of the term: they allow the cloth to hang from—but also conform to—the body rather than cling to it.

A drape cut in The Saint

White Collar and Cuffs

Posted on 14 March 2013 by Matt Spaiser

Roger Moore wearing a navy bengal stripe shirt with a white collar and cuffs in For Your Eyes Only.

In the United States, the contrasting white collar and cuffs style has been all but tarnished by the 1987 film Wall Street. But it’s a classic style that has been around a very long time. It goes back to the days when collars were stiff and detachable, and men would pair white collars with a body of any colour. Now the collars come soft and attached. Some retailers call a shirt with a white collar a “Winchester” shirt—presumably named after the city in England, not the rifle—but I have not found an historical use of this term and believe it’s just a modern marketing term.

Bond wears shirts with a white collar and cuffs in For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill, made by Frank Foster. Though the style is best worn with double cuffs, Bond wears his with button cuffs. Likewise, a spread collar is the best collar to be in white, though point collars can work well too. White collars and cuffs are most stylishly paired with a body that includes white. Bond’s shirts have white in the form of bengal stripes, though it’s also common to see a white collar on an end-on-end shirt. Collars and cuffs typically wear out before the body of a shirt wears out, and the collar and cuffs of almost any dressier shirt can be replaced with white since it’s typically impossible to find the original cloth for replacements. And even if the original cloth is obtainable it’s not going to match a shirt that has been washed many times. Checks don’t mate so well with white collars because of the difference in formality and purpose. White collars are a rather dressy style and are excellent for morning dress. For everyday wear they work best with a suit or a dressier blazer but are best avoided wearing with other sports coats and without a coat or tie. And because of their daywear tradition they are best worn during the day.

Roger Moore wearing a pink bengal stripe shirt with a white collar and cuffs in A View to a Kill.

Though Bond only wears shirts with a white collar and cuffs in two films, Roger Moore wears them in his personal life, as well as in some earlier films and television, like in Street People and The Persuaders. In The Man Who Haunted Himself he wears a plain white detachable collar with a white self-stripe shirt. Pierce Brosnan occasionally wears shirts with a white collar—but not white cuffs—in Remington Steele, mostly with suits but occasionally with blazers.

Pierce Brosnan wearing a blue (probably end-on-end) shirt with a pinned white collar in the 1982 episode of Remington Steele titled “You’re Steele the One for Me”.

John Steed: The Man Two Girls Left For Bond

Posted on 25 January 2013 by Matt Spaiser

Before James Bond came to the screen in 1962, a few secret agents had already been established on camera. Patrick MacNee may be best known to Bond fans for his role as Sir Godfrey Tibbett in A View to a Kill. Years earlier in 1961 he first starred as John Steed in The Avengers with future Bond girls Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg, and by 1962 he had established himself as one of the dandiest spies known for his bowler and umbrella. His suits were English and had an Edwardian flair, just as Roger Moore’s suits in colour episodes of The Saint have. But rather than having narrow lapels, shorter jackets lengths and drainpipe trousers, MacNee’s suits are classically proportioned in all ways. MacNee chose to set his suits apart with unique details such as velvet collars and cloth-covered buttons.

For the first four season MacNee wore English-tailored suits. The clothes in the fifth series are credited to Pierre Cardin, though later in that series MacNee again starts wearing some of his own English-tailored suits from the forth series and earlier, like the suit pictured here that dates back to the first series. Patrick MacNee was even credited for designing his own suits in the sixth series of the show, which very much resemble the suits from the fourth series and earlier with the single-button front and velvet collar. He was not credited for his wardrobe before the sixth series, but they were most likely created at his direction.

This mid grey three-piece suit pictured in this article has a timeless cut that is undeniably the Savile Row cut, with a straight shoulder on the natural shoulder line, a fairly clean chest, closely-fitted waist and flared skirt. The jacket buttons one and has double vents, slanted flap pockets with a ticket pocket and a flap breast pocket. The jacket’s flared cuffs have a vent but neither a button nor an overlap. It’s a far more elegant option to not have buttons on the cuffs than it is to leave one open, as many choose to do these days. It also does a great job at framing the shirt’s double cuffs. Roger Moore later wore this style cuff on his adventurous double-breasted suit in The Man Who Haunted Himself. The waistcoat buttons six with very wide notch lapels and a straight bottom. All buttons on the jacket and waistcoat are covered in the suit’s grey cloth. The trousers have a flat front with cross pockets and plain bottoms.

MacNee wears a light blue shirt with a cutaway collar—a traditional cutaway that’s not as extreme and today’s fashionable variations can be—and double cuffs. The tie is mid grey with white polka dots, and it’s tied in a Windsor knot. MacNee often wore black ankle boots with elastic gussets with this type of suit, and a grey suede variation on occasion.

The images of this suit come from one of it’s few appearances in colour, in the fifth series episode “You Have Just Been Murdered.” Though we’re seeing this suit in 1967, it was quite an adventurous style for when it was tailored in 1961. This appearance of the suit lack’s Steed’s trademark bowler and umbrella, but we’ll see that and more the next time I write about The Avengers.

See the book Reading between Designs by Piers D. Britton and Simon J. Barker for a comprehensive overview of John Steed’s wardrobe.

The Saint: Funeral Suit and Coat

Posted on 18 January 2013 by Matt Spaiser

Roger Moore’s Simon Templar is well-dressed to a funeral in the Series 6 episode of The Saint, “Legacy for the Saint.” To keep warm in the cemetery he wears a charcoal grey car coat. The coat’s length is a few inches above the knee but is still considerably longer than a suit jacket so it can be worn over it. A car coat is shorter than the typical overcoat to make it easier when entering and exiting a car. Topcoats are often shorter as well, but they are also lighter and Moore’s coat is not. We don’t see much of the coat in “Legacy for the Saint,” but it makes another brief appearance in “The Time to Die.” The coat is cut with natural shoulders, buttons three, and has 3 buttons on the cuffs and a single vent.

The Saint in a charcoal car coat

Under the coat Moore wears a three-piece suit made by Cyril Castle in charcoal with a very narrow-spaced light grey stripe. The suit coat has softly-padded shoulders, a draped chest and nipped waist typical of Castle’s tailoring, and like all of Moore’s single-breasted suits in The Saint this one buttons three. The suit coat is characteristic of the 1960′s Neo-Edwardian style, with narrow notched lapels, slanted flap pockets, double vents and single-button gauntlet cuffs. The length of the jacket is slightly shorter than the typical length, though not nearly as short as fashionable jackets today. The waistcoat buttons six with notch lapels and a straight bottom. And in his waistcoat pockets he wears a pocket watch with a fob chain. The trousers have a flat front with plain hems.

Moore’s ecru Frank Foster shirt has a spread collar, plain front and cocktail cuffs, and this is the first episode we see Moore wearing cocktail cuffs. The turnback of the cocktail cuffs in The Saint has a much wider spread compared to the cuffs he wears later in the Bond films. They have some similarities to the Turnbull & Asser cuffs Sean Connery wore, but these lay flatter, as Foster prefers.

Though Moore does not often wear black, the funeral setting of the episode makes this the time to include black into the outfit. Moore wears a narrow, black satin silk tie and a black silk pocket handkerchief folded with two points. A black suit for a funeral is not necessary, and for someone who isn’t an immediate family member of the deceased a black suit can come off as excessively somber. Templar wears the perfect amount of black for attending a friend’s wedding. And the shoes are black as well, of course.

“Card Sense” Jimmy Bond

Posted on 28 November 2012 by Matt Spaiser

The first on-screen appearance of James Bond came with the “Casino Royale” television play on CBS’s Climax! in 1954, with Bond played by American actor Barry Nelson. In this production James Bond is an American agent with “Combined Intelligence” and nicknamed “Jimmy.” But also, he isn’t the best-tailored character, wearing an oversized dinner jacket. British agent Clarence Leiter (Michael Pate) in his black dinner suit and Le Chiffre (Peter Lorre) in his light-coloured, double-breasted dinner jacket both looked better tailored than Bond.

Bond wears a light-coloured dinner jacket, which has been coloured “buff” in cover art, and I concur with the artist’s choice of colour. The dinner jacket is full-cut and very similar to the tailoring in Licence to Kill, with wide shoulders and a low button stance. The dinner jacket buttons one and has a shawl collar. It has no vents, jetted pockets and three buttons on the cuffs. The buttons are darker than the cloth, suggesting brown horn.

Bond’s trousers are black and are most likely help with with braces. Sometimes you can see a hint of something dark under the jacket, and that is probably the braces. The shirt has a soft point collar, double cuffs and a placket front with 3 onyx studs, and the cufflinks match the studs. Bond wears a black satin batwing bow tie and a black satin cummerbund. The flower in his lapel is most likely a red carnation, which doesn’t look so appealing on black-and-white television. He also wears a pocket square, which is either red—to match the flower—or black.

The Suits of James Bond

Category Archives: Television