How To Dress Like James Bond This Summer
Five ways to earn your license to kill in the heat with the most stylish summer outfits 007 has donned over the years.
Under most weather conditions we experience in Western Europe, a well-cut suit that makes you look as if you ‘went to Oxford or wherever’ will do. However, with more humid, hot, and sticky temperatures on the way, how can you keep your cool but still dress to kill?
James Bond has been one of those style inspirations at the forefront of the minds of many men, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. If you ask those gents, who are not the nerdiest of sartorial enthusiasts but understand enough to know good style when they see it, then Bond’s style is usually in the top five of inspirations.
I confess that Bond is also a figure I model my own style on. His clothes are just elegant and sartorial enough to make replicating those outfits interesting and easy, but just simple and masculine enough that you are afforded the modesty and comfort of dressing in such a way just about anywhere.
With that said, here are five ways to earn your license to kill in the heat with the most stylish summer outfits 007 has donned over the years.
“All right … by the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally you think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain, my guess is you didn’t come from money, and your school friends never let you forget it.”
No Time To Dive with some swimming trunks
Contrary to the baggy knee-length swimming shorts with excessive room, Bond has never been too shy to show off that brutish body.
Swimming trunks, or ‘short shorts’ as they can be called, actually offer more freedom despite their skimpy associations since they almost stick to the body like an extra layer of skin. Arising from the waters to reveal your adonis physique is much easier when you are not walking over to your towel dripping wet for the next half hour.
Both Sean Connery (with Claudine Auger in Thunderball) and Daniel Craig (in Casino Royale at the British Colonial Hilton Hotel, Nassau, Bahamas) have offered us iconic scenes of their own shorts moments that should inspire you to own a pair yourself this summer.
Navy Polo for the Royal Naval Reserve Commander
The Intelligence Officer (his correct title, contrary to mere ‘spy’) has a way of making simple clothing look masculine and elegant at the same time. Plenty of his outfits consist of items you can buy in a broad price range and more or less from anywhere.
The Navy Polo has the unmatchable ability to combine functionality with form. The short sleeves can make one’s emaciated or chubby arms look and feel like a set of PPKs.
The polo looks best when worn with at least the top two buttons undone. Top buttons done up on a polo can look too self-conscious.
Brown tailoring for maximum Anglo-Italian effect
This iconic scene from Spectre of Bond and Madeline waiting for their transport provides us with multiple visually stunning angles from which to observe this imperial brown and khaki combination.
The separates featured in Spectre are made from a Gabardine cloth from Brunello Cucinelli, and Daniel Craig is such a big fan of Cucinelli that he often wears them in private or for public events, thus cementing the effectiveness of modern Anglo-Italian tailoring – the perfect recipe for summer dressing.
Gabardine cloth in light brown and khaki completely defines the old British imperial look. Cotton is rarely recommended for intense summers due to the unflattering creasing (unlike the charming creasing of linen), but gabardine cotton can have the sleek and smart effect of a worsted suit without looking as if you should be in the office.
Black shirting in the summer is a winner
When temperatures reach the point of stifling, people - inaccurately - think black is a colour to thwart in one’s summer outfit options. They could not be more wrong.
While it’s true that black ‘attracts the sun’, the fabric of the clothing itself will mostly determine how hot you feel. With linen and seersucker at your disposal, opting for black helps you maintain that dark and illustrious mystique it so often does year-round while keeping you cool. Not least, you will stand out a bit more since most people will avoid black.
If in doubt, consider a black shirt for nighttime when evening wear should be a little smarter and darker anyway.
Real Intelligence Officers wear pink
Should you be in the no-go camp when it comes to black in the summer, then perhaps pink is crying out for you.
Pink can be a precarious colour for most men during cooler months, the acceptability of pink on men in modern times notwithstanding. However, pink is really easy to wear in the summer, especially in more subdued pastel tones that simply add a lightness to everything.
Due to that lightness, it’s also easy to wear with other light colours (almost as easy as wearing white) such as white itself, light blue, and grey.
Connery demonstrates this masterfully by letting the pink do the talking.
When on the breathtaking sand of Paradise Island, what other colour could be more fitting for shummer? Sorry, I mean summer… of course.
