Brioni for Bond again

[Matt Deckard]

I believe Brosnan was the first Bond to sport an Italian Brioni suit, though why not let the brits dress their top agent?

In Casino Royale you see Bond given a jacket by Vesper. The jacket is tailored and comes in a Brioni bag. In Die another day you see bond unwrapping a Brioni shirt.

What's your take? should Bond wear Saville Row?

Should he wear Hong Kong? does it matter?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Should Savile Row tailors pay oodles of bucks for product placement? Because that's what it boils down to, for better or worse. Brioni shelled out the cash, so it got the Bond exposure.


The last few Bond films have been an orgy of product promotion. Watches, pens, clothes, sunglasses ... you name it.


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[Matt Deckard]

I know I know... so did Asten Martin and BMW and Omega.

I just think some parts of the character should remain intact... like his Lock hat and Morland's Cigarettes.

 

[JamesT1]

Well, if you recall in the movie, Bond wasn't too happy with the fact that he had to wear the new DJ, maybe this was due to the fact that it was italian. He did have to wear it to fit in with the gangsters anyway.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I just think some parts of the character should remain intact...

One aspect that is and will always(?) remain intact: Bond's Britishness. Never will you see a Bond that is not British born, or at least from a crown colony.


I think that a James Bond with British/Indian, British/Jamaican, British/West Indian, or British/Hong Konger parentage would be a BIG success with today's audiences.



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[Matt Deckard]

He wasn't unhappy. He simply told her he already had a dinner jacket.

Then when he put the jacket on he stated that it was tailored (guess the one he brought wasn't).

 

[JamesT1]

He wasn't unhappy. He simply told her he already had a dinner jacket.

Then when he put the jacket on he stated that it was tailored (guess the one he brought wasn't).

I assumed the "it's tailored" comment to mean that he was suprised that it was tailored, even though he never wore it infront of a tailor.

I would like to think James Bond would be unhappy if a women dressed him and made him wear Italian Suits. In Thunderball (book) he didn't like Whomever was the bad guy (forgot his name) because he could tell he was wearing an Anderson and Sheppard suit.

If there is one thing James Bond hates, it's ostentation.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

James Bond would be unhappy if a women dressed him ...

And he's never unhappy when a woman does the opposite.


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[farnham54]

Another major factor for the Brioni switch was the sheer number of suits required for Bond and his Stuntmen. The Saville Row tailors can't pump out the 50 or so suits required for each movie in an economical fashion, because they generally have one tailor working on each suit.

Brioni, on the other hand, use an assembly line process where several different tailors work on the same suit. They can easily accomdate the numbers, where Saville Row types could not without charging a great deal of money and taking a great deal of time--the producers do not want to wait a year just for the suits to be ready.

Cheers
Craig

 

[Matt Deckard]

It is about a 10 week turnaround for a suit bespoke from Saville Row.

 

[farnham54]

Exactly my point, Matt--10 weeks for a suit from Saville Row. That's one tailor working on a suit for 10 weeks--even if he remade the same suit over and over again, and cut the production run down, you are still looking at less then 20 suits per year, and that doesn't take into account the differences in sizes between Craig and his Stuntmen (which although slight, do make a difference in the look of the suit). That's not enough; the stuntmen tend to go through them like nobodies business (Leastways, not MY business--I would cringe to see such nice suits being wrecked like this).

In the 'old days' of Connery, the stunts were a lot less extreme when it came to wrecking things, and so only a few suits are needed, but that is not the case now.

Cheers
Craig

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Simple solution:


-- Don't have the stuntmen wear actual Savile Row suits. Have them wear Thai replicas. No one's going to get a clear view of the suit during an action scene, anyway.

-- Have more than one Savile Row concern make Bond's suits. Parceling out the work will speed things up, give Bond the benefit of sartorial variety, and better help the Row as a whole.


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[Matt Deckard]

Problem's could come if the HK suits look better than the UK suits.

 

[farnham54]

Marc,

Don't get me wrong--I don't think Bond should be wearing Italian suits. He should be wearing British suits (But perhaps, and Off-the-row tailored suit that wouldn't cost an extra grand just because it's "saville"--He was a public servant, after all!)

Just stating as to why they went with those choices for the films.

Cheers
Craig

 

[JamesT1]

Marc,

(But perhaps, and Off-the-row tailored suit that wouldn't cost an extra grand just because it's "saville"--He was a public servant, after all!)

Cheers
Craig

Back in the Connery days, his suits were from a tailor on Conduit street.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

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The point is that no filmmaker would bother to get new Savile Row suits made for his stuntmen. Perhaps one has to live in Hollywood to know this.


Let me give you a taste of what Hollywood actually does. For such costume epics as Titanic, it buys up beautiful vintage pieces from around the world (literally). Then, it destroys them during the filming. Most of the vintage pieces, already fragile, become torn and ragged. Then, many of them are taken apart, repieced with parts of other costumes, and put in costume house storage. Others are sold. The rest go to rag houses. That's what Hollywood does. Why? Because in most cases, it's cheaper to buy vintage than to reproduce it.


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[farnham54]

Marc,

I agree and completley understand, but there is another hollywood addage that I'm sure you'll agree with: Time is money.

No costumer in their right mind would spend thousands on a Stuntsuit if they could get the exact same one done in Hong Kong or Thailand for less. But to match the Saville Row suits (Even Craig would go through several) to one in hong Kong, on top of the months required to get the saville row suit (even two suits, at Matt's cited 10 week turnaround, is still 2.5 months) would take a lot of time.

They wouldn't get Craig's suits made in Saville Row, nor would they get them made in two different places, not when Brioni can do the whole shebang in good time for a reasonable price.

Sad to say, often they will destroy vintage stuff--it breaks the heart; the only consolation is it's preserved on screen.

Cheers
Craig

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Sad to say, often they will destroy vintage stuff--it breaks the heart; the only consolation is it's preserved on screen.

Yes, Craig, I agree with you about Brioni: it's a mass manufacturer which can profit greatly from exposure in the Bond films, and is willing and able to pay Hollywood for it.


As for the vintage stuff being preserved onscreen, I only wish that were the case. Most of the vintage stuff goes on the backs of minor characters and extras; the camera often shows them for two seconds, and in motion! In the case of Titanic, some absolutely incredible pieces of vintage clothing were edited out of the final film. Others were shown for a split second and/or were blurry. Nonetheless, nearly all of those clothes -- visible or not -- were damaged during filming, many irreparably.


(Remember the scenes where passengers were sliding on their backs or bellies down the sinking ship's slanted decks? Think of what that did to their clothing.)


How do I know this? My best friend sold a large cache of pristine Victorian/Edwardian pieces to Titanic's filmmakers. He got to find out its ultimate fate.


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[Matt Deckard]

Often times Box cutters are taken to 30's clothes which are used for depression era scenes like those in Cinderella Man and Seabiscuit. Pristine clothes that survived the ravages of time only to be ravaged by those seeking to make it look as though they didn't

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Yup.


In defense of my friend, he ended up selling his stuff to the Titanic folks because he was having a terrible time trying to sell it to anyone else. The museums didn't want it because it wasn't 19th century "designer", i.e. Worth, Patou, or Poiret. Barbra Streisand didn't want it because she had just recently stopped collecting Victorian dresses. The shoppers at the vintage shows didn't want it because Victorian/Edwardian was out of fashion in the mid '90s. (Ironically, it came back into fashion two years later -- thanks to Titanic.)


My friend's collection came from seven(!) giant steamer trunks that were full of a rich Kentuckian family's entire wardrobe. The clothes, including dozens of dresses and daysuits, were made in Paris between 1870 and 1925, and in absolutely pristine condition. They had been sitting in those trunks since the early 1930s, when the family moved to Los Angeles and put them into "permanent" storage.


I apologize for the fftopic: , but I just wanted to clarify things. Back to Bond!




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