There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent,” Ian Fleming wrote at the start of Live And Let Die, his second James Bond novel. “There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death…”
I’m clearly not taking refuge from danger or death’s shadow, but my muscles are still aching from the session at the Krav Maga gym four days ago, so I’m looking at today’s Becoming Bond assignment as my brush with that great luxury.
Jeff Farbstein, the executive VP, general merchandise manager at Harry Rosen, meets me at the Tom Ford boutique at the menswear giant’s downtown headquarters before the shop opens.
The Bond franchise switched to Ford to clothe Daniel Craig’s Bond with the latest film, Quantum Of Solace, after a long relationship with Brioni, the Italian clothier, dating back to Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye.
Jeff is very kind, describing to me how a good tailor will correct for things like my gut and poor posture by lengthening the back of a suit jacket, raising the back of the neck and tightening up the collar. He opens up a closet where they keep the standard size jackets for fittings and slips me into a two-button black suit jacket with a notched lapel and I look in the mirror to discover I’m 20 pounds lighter.
“He always looks like he’s just got the suit out of the dry cleaners,” Farbstein says of Sean Connery’s Bond, the unsurpassed prototype.
“Whether he’s standing or sitting, he’s always fresh — everything always seems perfect.” He shows me a beautiful three-piece light glen plaid suit that echoes the one Connery wears for most of the last half of Goldfinger; it’s a fine example of what Ford is trying to do with his bespoke line, and it costs $6,000.
Jeff says that someone like Bond would need at least five good suits, a couple of tuxes, two or three shirts for each, and a closet full of shoes and casual wear. I try doing the tally in my head, and it doesn’t sound like something you could afford on a civil servant’s salary.
Upstairs, Nello Sansone, Harry Rosen’s master tailor, describes to me how he’s cut suits for police officers, subtly adding room to the chest and armhole to accommodate the shoulder holster and gun, a process not dissimilar from designing a suit for a man with a thick wallet.
He slips me into a very Bond-like Canali tuxedo for a fitting — the sort of thing Bond would wear to a casino or embassy reception. Once again, the 20 pounds have miraculously disappeared. The tux costs $2,000, and the added shirt, tie, shoes, pocket square and other accessories bring it up close to three grand, but I’m looking at myself in the mirror, slimmer, straighter, taller, and I’m already making excuses to justify the expense, even if I’m reduced to wearing it to parent-teacher interviews.
