Skyfall: The Costumes

Previously: Part 1: Bond as a blunt instrument. and Part 2: The new Bond Girls.

You thought Bond Season was over? Well, it's never over. I gotta be suitblogging 24/7, or else I wither away and die. Bond costumes are always a big deal because the films rely so much upon 007 coming across as the coolest guy you could possibly imagine, which can sometimes be a little tricky when you're dealing with a man who wears a two-piece suit every day of his life and spends most of the time interacting with other men in two-piece suits. But hey! They managed it. And will almost certainly be ignored at the Oscars for their trouble, because when it comes to costumes nobody ever nominates movies set in the present day.
The lynchpin of Bond's style is his timelessness. His staple outfit in the novels is a navy blue suit with a black silk knit tie, a costume that can be handily reintroduced at any point during the five-decade history of the films. While Bond's style does evolve somewhat over the years, the only slip-ups have been when he tried to be too on-trend, such as that period in the '70s when Roger Moore thought it would be a good idea to start wearing flares. In many ways 007's character is rather conservative, meaning that while he does come across as stylish and timeless, he's also the type of guy who'd be tremendously out of place in mainstream modern culture. Even back in the '60s he was overtly and manfully ignorant of popular culture, claiming that the Beatles were unlistenable. The James Bond brand has survived this long in part because it's so damn hard to make him seem out of date.

It goes without saying that Bond films are going to be immensely stylish all round. But if you know me at all (or my philosophy re: character-driven costume design, anyway) then you may be able to guess why I enjoyed the costuming in Skyfall so much. Much of the film's success stems from the fact that all of the side characters are fully-fledged people rather than being two-dimensional stereotypes, which immediately makes them easier to design for. And of those characters, pretty much all of them (the exceptions are Kincaid and Sévérine, and to a certain extent Eve) wear some variation of a suit most of the time they appear onscreen. For a high-profile, high-budget movie like Skyfall, a great deal of thought must go into costume and character design, but when so many of the characters have to wear "similar" outfits then it gets much more interesting.
More detail on Bond's own costumes is hardly even required. Once again Daniel Craig goes into battle wearing a selection of fashionably tailored suits that look so tight they might as well have been sewn around his body. Like several other movies in the franchise, Skyfall's first act shows Bond getting knocked down and having to drag himself back from a combination of gunshot wounds and alcoholism. Luckily, Naomie Harris is there to help him shave off his angst-beard. (Gotta love an angst-beard.) For a while he slums it on the beach with an unnamed girlfriend and predictably Bond-like quantities of booze, but soon enough he ditches the wrinkled trousers and grungy leather jacket and it's back to Tom Ford menswear for the rest of the movie. Since the filmmakers expect the audience to have at least a passing familiarity with Bond already, there isn't much need for any further extrapolation, costume-wise.

Tanner is the Agent Coulson of MI6. Bland in appearance, he nevertheless seems to be fairly high up in the hierarchy, and cares deeply about his job. He wears the most "normal" suit of them all, looking like an everyday businessman compared to Bond's expert tailoring. Ralph Fiennes' Mallory is at the other end of the scale, wearing old-fashion and heavily masculine suits with high-waisted trousers held up by wide braces. This fits in very well with his character, who at first represents the British government before evolving into a younger version of the type of gentleman's-club, ex-military M we saw in the earlier films.
I really liked the new Q. While Ben Whishaw looks like a bit of a dweeberoo, his character was unexpectedly confidant and funny. Most action/adventure movies require a geek character to do some dramatic typing and shouting about subroutines and firewalls while the hero shoots at things, but they generally tend to go the route of one-note nerd stereotype. But rather than reeling off Whedonesque pop-culture references or freaking out in the face of danger, Q is calm and witty, an excellent foil to the dark sarcasm of the rest of the MI6 crew. He and Bond are physical and philosophical opposites, but they warm to each other quickly as Q earns Bond's respect with far more ease than most people. Q's clothes have a vintage/hipster aesthetic, with him wearing a no-doubt expensively geek-chic zipper cardigan and an oversized anorak that makes him look even tinier and younger than he already does. (N.B. The day I found out Ben Whishaw was an entire decade older than me was the day I started looking up cursed portraiture on Etsy. That is some Dorian Gray shit right there.)
As the female head of a government agency, M's fashion choices are in some ways more limited than those of her male counterparts. Appropriately for a person who relies upon anonymity, she wears the most unobtrusive suits possible, in dark or neutral colours and with a reasonably feminine cut. My favourite outfit of hers was for the journey to Scotland, where she was bundled up in a warm woollen coat and a blanket for the long ride in Bond's chilly and uncomfortable Aston Martin. (N.B. I very much enjoyed this hint at Bond's value of style over substance: the beautiful but impractical vintage car.) Oh and as a side note for the true nerds: I'm pretty sure the grey trenchcoat she wears to visit Mallory at the beginning of the film is meant to be the same one she wore in Casino Royale.

Something I picked up on during my second viewing -- and probably qualifies as costume design conspiracy theorising -- is the similarity between Helen McCrory's outfit during the enquiry scenes and one of the suits worn by M earlier on in the movie. Helen McCrory's character is a government minister who leads the questioning during the enquiry into MI6, and she seems particularly keen on taking M down. The suits in question are both made from a kind of rough, tweedy fabric tailored softly around the body with a collarless neckline. I think I noticed the similarity partly because M's suits are usually rather more traditional in cut and fabric, and partly because Helen McCrory's character bears more than a little resemblance to M herself. Not only do they have the same upper-class accent, but Helen McCrory is somewhat facially similar to Judi Dench -- although of course this could all just be coincidence. But I like to interpret this scene as the younger, more idealistic and rule-abiding M interrogating her older and more cynical counterpart.

Eve's costumes showed a very strong sense of personal style, mostly following a warm colour palette of golds and oranges that suited Naomie Harris beautifully. Although the gold dress she wore during the casino scene was the most memorable of her costumes, I particularly enjoyed the outfit she wore at MI6 headquarters. The soft blouse and mustard-yellow skirt stood out from the horde of grey-blue suits in the background and fit perfectly into the kind of Topshop business-casual fashion one sees a lot of in central London. When she returns at the end of the movie to begin her new role as Moneypenny she's considerably more formal, wearing a tight blue dress with asymmetrical seams similar to those of the gold casino dress.

Sévérine undoubtedly wears the most ostentatious costume in the movie, in the form of her translucent black evening gown. As the polar opposite of Bond's low-key, timeless suits, this costume will start looking dated almost immediately, for all that it took six months 60,000 hand-applied crystals to create. The whole look, from Sévérin's dramatically dark lipstick to her claw-like false nails, is purposefully attention-grabbing, but it only really works because Berenice Marlohe is so stunning. My opinion is that the dress is a lot of effort for comparatively minor effect, since tattoo-inspired crystal patterns on sheer black are kind of tacky, and the whole style seems about ten years too old her. I guess Sévérine is meant to look vampy, but the reality is that she's crammed into a weirdly rigid bustier and ultimately ends up looking rather more Liza Minelli than femme fatale. This was my least favourite of all the outfits she wore throughout the film, although I admit that it does fit her character fairly well.

Despite the importance of Silva's role, I actually found his costumes to be among the least interesting in the movie. Appearance-wise, most of Silva's impact was down to a combination of styling (the unnaturally blond hair and eyebrows) and Javier Bardem's performance. Silva is a character who looks far, far better in motion than he does in pictures, mostly because it takes a very skilled actor to sell that level of ridiculousness. Not everyone could carry off that wig, for one thing. And as for the costumes, I suspect he was intended to have slightly bad taste? He isn't badly dressed, as such, but the loud Prada shirt combined with a dark waistcoat and pale jacket looked purposefully weird compared to Bond's more sombre style. Still, I far preferred that outfit to the black leather coat he wore for the final showdown, which almost made it seem like Silva was purposefully dressing up as a supervillain.

Click here for previous James Bond posts.

Read More

Skyfall: the new Bond Girls.

Previously: Skyfall: Bond as a blunt instrument. 

In the form of Judi Dench's M, Skyfall gave us two things I never thought I'd see in a Bond film: an awesome female character who is emphatically not a Bond Girl, and a secondary character who has real impact on the plot. The latter is almost more surprising than the former, because Bond movies are by nature such a one-man show. The formula is simple: someone melodramatic, weird, and probably foreign wants to torpedo the world economy and/or build a giant space-laser, and Bond has to stop them. Along the way, Bond is helped or hindered (in the case of most Bond Girls, usually both at once) by various other characters, but ultimately he's a lone wolf. Skyfall is the only movie I can think of where a secondary character receives so much screentime and is so clearly vital both to the story and to Bond as a character.
Judi Dench's M was partly inspired by real-life MI5 director general Stella Rimington, the first woman to hold the job and the first to have her identity revealed to the general public. While Rimington served from 1992-1996, Judi Dench's M was in the job from 1995 (GoldenEye) until the present day, making her 77 years old at the time of her decision to fight Javier Bardem's campy cyber-terrorist supervillain using home-made nail bombs and a sawn-off shotgun. If you don't think that this is the best thing ever, then you're clearly a slug, because, well... do you know how many old ladies you see in roles like this? The list pretty much begins and ends with Helen Mirren in RED. And before you all rush to the comments section with your various Favourite Old Ladies Who Get Shit Done (although obviously I would very much appreciate that list), remember that for every fifty Dumbledores in popular culture, we get maybe one or two Professor McGonagalls. M's role in the earlier movies was mostly that of a generic representation of The Man rather than a person with much background of his own, but Judi Dench's M grew into a fully-fledged character in her own right -- in many ways, an antihero as compelling as 007 himself.

Judi Dench is the one actor who appears in the "old" Bond movies as well as the post-Casino Royale reboot series. M's characterisation as a calculating, rational leader provided a counterpoint to Bond's rebellious streak, even as Bond transformed from slick, charming Pierce Brosnan to the rather more aggressive Daniel Craig. Skyfall gave M a far greater role than before, however, as she provides the motivation behind the villain's mania as well as a link between Bond's glamourous world of espionage and the more mundane problem of the government enquiry into MI6.
Although Eve and Sévérine are the most nuanced and interesting Bond Girls the franchise has seen so far, their characters are very old-school. Classic Bond Girls typically fall into one of two categories: helpful, independent women (often spies) like the Mary Goodnight character in the novels, and disturbed and/or morally ambiguous sexpots who either betray Bond after they sleep together, or die. While these two stereotypes are founded in Ian Fleming's rather formulaic writing, Eve and Sévérine are both much more than the sum of their parts. I already wrote a bit in my previous post about how satisified I was with Eve's transition from badass action hero to Miss Moneypenny (which was very much in-keeping with the film's overall theme of the blurring definition of what it means to be an "active" agent), but Sévérine's role, though smaller, was just as interesting.

Female sexuality in Bond films has always been slightly incomprehensible because one of Bond's defining characteristics is that he's totally 100% irresistable. In the past, this particular detail has lead to all sorts of charming scenes such as Sean Connery wrestling Honor Blackman's previously-lesbian Pussy Galore into submission (Goldfinger, 1964). Up until very recently the Bond franchise was a transparently misogynistic series about an even more misogynistic character, but we've finally reached the point where the filmmakers have worked out that it's possible to keep Bond in-character without the film itself being sexist. The scene between Sévérine and Bond in the casino was my favourite example of this.

Sévérine could easily have been created by Ian Fleming himself. Beautiful, mysterious, and troubled, she grew up in the sex industry and spends her life trapped and used by evil men like Javier Bardem's Silva. Bond may be able to help her but she can't fully trust anyone, and in the end Bond's priority is saving the world (and M), even though he finds time to sleep with Sévérine on the way. But instead of this being a case of a sexy Bond Girl stereotype falling into bed with Bond, Sévérine's actions seem far more like an act of desperation rather than her just being another notch in Bond's bedpost, and her death was the first time I've ever actually cared about the demise about one of Bond's seemingly disposable love-interests. Bérénice Marlohe made impressive use of her limited screentime, ramping up the visibly crazy-eyed pessimism as she tried to broker a deal with Bond in front of a horde of armed guards.
Unfortunately, Sévérine was the focus of my least favourite scene in the movie; the one scene where I was truly disappointed in Skyfall's ability to tell a feminist James Bond story. Fifty years ago, Bond walking in on a woman in the shower wouldn't have raised an eyebrow because Connery's (and Ian Fleming's) Bond was, quite frankly, rather rapey -- plus he existed in a far less "realistic" world than Daniel Craig's. But this time round, even though there was a kind of tacit agreement between Bond and Sévérine, I was still pretty weirded. The way the scene was edited made it look like he'd just shown up and stepped into her shower unnanounced, which is particularly worrying when you realise that the only thing Bond really knows about Sévérine is that she's functionally a prisoner in her own home. I suspect, or at least hope, that the creepy subtext there was unintentional, since it actually seems a little out og character for 21st-century Bond. While Daniel Craig's Bond is significantly more brutal than many of his predecessors, he's also written as having more emotional intelligence (not to be confused with actual emotion, for all that Daniel Craig admits to having cried over the Skyfall theme song) than his 20th-century counterparts. Although the Bond we see in Skyfall has learnt from his "mistakes" in Casino Royale, he doesn't seem like someone who'd exploit an civilian victim for personal vain -- although he would prioritise the mission above helping her, if necessary.

I feel like Skyfall has really moved the Bond universe past the gender roles it's been relying upon for the past half-century. Not in a "sexism is over!!" way because, uh, no, but but more in the sense that the division between field and desk agents is highlighted rather than the division between Bond (as action hero) and his love-interests. In the past, Miss Moneypenny was Bond's anchor to a more comforting view of MI6 -- a friendly face to act as buffer between his action-filled existence and the sometimes stuffy environment of M's office. But while scenes set in MI6 Headquarters used to centre around exposition and Bond's various clashes with government beaurocracy, Eve Moneypenny and Ben Whishaw's Q show us a different side of "office work". For the first time we get to see Q (in a very different incarnation from the avuncular Desmond Llewelyn) in an active, frontline role. Balancing out Bond's return to old-fashioned, stripped-down violence, Q's job as MI6's resident computer expert means he's the only person who can fight Silva on his own terms. And Ralph Fiennes' Mallory, originally introduced as something of an antagonist to our beloved M, turns out to be much more than the conservative bureaurocrat he first appears.
Silva's infiltration and destruction of MI6 HQ proved that there's really no such thing as a safe desk job any more. Although Eve was clearly uncomfortable with her role in Bond's injuries and the subsequent loss of M's hard-drive, she was still a badass and capable agent, holding her own when Silva attacked the government enquiry near the end of the film. Her transition from field agent to M's bodyguard/personal assistant is the living embodiment of the blurring lines between what counts as a "dangerous" job in MI6. And if anything, it highlights Bond's role as the last of the true field agents, the ones whose job is purely that of a Licence To Kill rather than having to deal with the politics of the London offices.

Part 3: The Costumes.

Read More

Skyfall: Bond as a blunt instrument.

When Daniel Craig was first cast in the role of 007, the aim was to revitalise Bond as a more realistic action hero like Jason Bourne. Unfortunately, Casino Royale never quite lived up to that -- and the less that's said of Quantum of Solace, the better. The two main problems with Casino Royale were that it's damn difficult to make an accessible thriller about the unavoidably static environment of a card game, and also that the writers of had the wrong idea of how to make Bond "serious" in the first place. After twenty films of varying levels of quality and ridiculousness, I understand the reasoning behind trying to make a grittier 007, especially since the genre has been parodied so often already. But in the case of Casino Royale, the filmmakers' idea of how to make Bond more realistic was to excise much of the humour of the old-school films, and add more angst. As an origin story for the character we see in Skyfall, it works. As a Bond film, it was slick but not very much fun.
I'm honestly rather surprised by how excellent Skyfall turned out to be. I'd heard good things, but the concept of a well-written Bond film with nuanced characterisation hadn't even occurred to me. The phrase "best Bond ever" comes to mind, although it's probably unfair to compare a lightweight post-war spy movie with a  big-budget thriller made in 2012. Either way, this was a smarter, more modern Bond that still gelled perfectly with the legacy of the series as a whole. Rather than going for the "any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic" gadgetry of the Pierce Brosnan era, the cyber-terrorism plot of Skyfall forced Bond back into his original role as a blunt instrument. And yes, Skyfall is a movie that manages to use the term "cyber-terrorism" in a non-embarrassing fashion. Who even knew that was possible?

Low-tech Bond was an inspired idea, with 007 being handed a gun and a radio at the beginning of the movie and resorting to DIY seige warfare by the end. It all fit together impressively well with the cerebral nature of Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva, a villain whose power lies in his ability to hack into spy satellites but who is eventually defeated by the deliciously medieval method of a knife to the back. Not only did this brutal, low-tech theme make for entertaining viewing, but it made the character of James Bond necessary. There's always a certain level of disbelief-suspension required when you're watching a Bond movie, because what the hell is up with a secret agent who walks directly up to the enemy and introduces himself with his real name on every single mission? But in the case of Skyfall, we have a story that's all about the importance of real, ground-level agents -- both in the sense that MI6 is fighting against growing popular opinion that they're an outdated force in a world of ephemeral cyber-terrorism, and in the more specific sense of Bond proving his worth as a field agent.

source

I watch a lot of action thrillers, and it's very rare for a movie to get the balance right between the "OMG technology!" details like real-time GPS tracking (and, uh, invisible cars. Thanks, Die Another Day), and the more viscerally exciting stuff like people kicking each other in the face. In many cases, the kicking-each-other-in-the-face scenes can come across as superfluous because the technology seems so utterly all-powerful when compared to the fallibility of the human body. In Skyfall, however, we got the almost unheard-of combination of well-scripted action sequences and intelligent inclusion of up-to-date technology that isn't presented as a luddite-baiting threat. The 007 I saw in Skyfall seemed infinitely more useful than the character that appeared in any of the other recent Bond movies, because he'd come full circle and arrived back at his Cold War assassin starting point: a weapon to be pointed at the enemy and then let loose.
In many ways, Daniel Craig is the closest we've got to Ian Fleming's Bond since the 1960s. Fleming's Bond was ruthless and very much a product of the Second World War, and I'm fascinated by the way he's changed and evolved over the decades. Sean Connery is the most canonically similar, primarily because his movies were made more or less during the same time-period as the novels. Roger Moore was the silly, lightweight Bond, George Lazenby never really got a chance, and Timothy Dalton was darker and more introspective. Then came Pierce Brosnan, a slick '90s charmer who specialised in industrial espionage and dressed like a businessman. It seems weird to say that Skyfall has given us the "best" characterisation of Bond since the character is so malleable and often superficial, but while watching Skyfall I couldn't help but feel that this was a film that had really thought about who Bond would be in the world we live in today.
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you've probably noticed that my #1 goal in life is to ruin everyone's fun by complaining about poor female representation in movies. Well, James Bond is the one instance where you'll ever hear me express a desire to restrict the role of female characters. More specifically, I don't want a Bond Girl to come within ten miles of making 007 "fall in love". The Bond franchise is notorious for its treatment of women as disposable sex-objects, but Casino Royale's solution to this problem never really sat right with me. As a semi-reboot of the series, Casino Royale began with a softer Bond, allowing him to develop deeper feelings for Vesper Lynd than earlier Bonds had for their love-interests. But although Vesper was considerably more three-dimensional than most previous Bond Girls, I could never really get onboard with her and Bond's relationship. Rather than making Bond more interesting by showing that he's emotionally vulnerable, Casino Royale just reminded me of all the annoying movies I'd seen (I'm looking at you, Christopher Nolan Batman franchise) where female characters are only there to be killed off so the male lead can feel some feelings

Skyfall is the first time I've been satisfied by a Bond movie both as a feminist, and as a fan. The female characters are more interesting and well-written than ever before, and when it comes to Bond's attitude to women, Daniel Craig's characterisation is impeccable. He may be sexist, but the movie itself isn't, which is always an important distinction to make. I'll go into more detail about the female characters themselves in a separate post, but for now I'll just say the way Daniel Craig's Bond treated Eve and Sévérine was a very clever mixture of old-school Ian Fleming 007, and a realistic portrayal of how a professional of Bond's calibre would act in 2012. One thing I really enjoyed was the flirty back-and-forth between Eve and Bond, which was a great modernisation of Cold War-era Bond's interactions with the many female agents he encountered. Eve is demonstrably a cool and fun person, and Bond clearly respects her and recognises her as a kindred spirit while still being very subtly protective of her. One thing all the iterations of 007 have in common is their rather condescending attitude towards their love-interests, but in this case it really worked for me.
I doubt that Bond would ever say to a male agent: "Being out in the field; it's not for everyone," because even in the 21st century he still secretly thinks that women need protecting more than men do, and he's generally just more emotionally open to women. But at the same time, he knew that Eve would be better off as a desk agent in the long run because although she's adventurous and tough and capable, she isn't a fucked-up murderer like Bond. Ten years ago, Eve's transition from badass field agent to Miss Moneypenny would have come across as a sexist tale of Bond safely putting a woman back in the office and out of harm's way, but in Skyfall this was her choice. Eve Moneypenny is awesome, but Daniel Craig's Bond is a stone-cold bastard, and he knows it. The reason why Skyfall succeeded where Casino Royale failed is because rather than going out of its way to be "gritty", Skyfall shows the balance between the danger and importance of Bond's job, and how much enjoys it. Daniel Craig's Bond, like the original Ian Fleming character, is an alcoholic womaniser who will cheerfully headbutt you in the face, laugh, and then murder a room full of people for queen and country. And the writers of Skyfall managed to put that character in an incredibly high-stakes situation and allow him some believably humanising emotional leeway in the form of his relationship with M.

Part 2: The new Bond Girls. 
Part 3: The Costumes.

Read More

The iconic menswear of James Bond.

In the run-up to Skyfall I've had a few requests for Bond-related costume posts. Well, I'm afraid that's probably not going to happen, except maybe for Skyfall itself. The reason for this is I try to write about things that are slightly off the beaten track, costume-wise. There are some TV shows and movies that already get a lot of mainstream coverage for their costumes, either because they're showy and beautiful like Downton Abbey or Titanic, or because style and product placement are an acknowledged feature of the story. The James Bond franchise definitely falls into that second category, with Bond's suits being some of the most iconic movie costumes of the past 50 years. Just try counting how many lazy dudes you see at Halloween parties this year, wearing a tux and claiming to be 007.
The character of James Bond is all about style: signature cocktails, well-tailored suits, and vehicles and weaponry whose serial numbers are lovingly recited in every single movie. There are entire books dedicated to Bond's costumes, to his accessories, his gadgets, and the love-interests who are purposefully written as being less memorable than his trusty Walther PPK. There have been whole museum exhibitions catering to fans of Bond props and costumes. Basically, as a casual watcher rather than a hardcore 007 nerd, I have little to offer. It'd be the blogging equivalent of an English undergrad thesis on Pride & Prejudice. HOWEVER! I am able to offer you a plethora of links to other, far more well-informed people!

First of all, there's Clothes On Film's guest blog on the topic of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which provides a kind of prologue to Daniel Craig's suits in Skyfall. Also on Clothes On Film is a similarly suit-nerdy post on Dr No, and if you want more in this vein then I suggest checking out the author's home blog, The Suits Of James Bond. If you want to look like Bond yourself then there's always Affordable Bond, or the clothing section of the exhaustive Bond Lifestyle site.

If you're more into Daniel Craig specifically, I liked this short video from behind the scenes on Skyfall. Then you can segue neatly into Designing Bond's Look with costume designer Lindy Hemming, an interesting glance at how Bond's style has developed over the years (including the awesome first shot of Sean Connery's turnback cuffs in Dr No). The thing I enjoyed most about this video is the way it accidentally highlights how godawful Pierce Brosnan looks to a modern eye. Not physically, of course, but the fact that his power-tie/business suit look now makes him look like a corporate douchebag of the first degree. I suspect that in 15 years he'll look fine again, thanks to the Law Of Vintage. 1995 is too close to the present day for Brosnan to seem retro and cool like the vintage styles of the earlier Bonds, so instead he just seems dated and embarrassing.

I love the slavish attention people pay to Bond's suits, although I do wish other modern-era movies got a fraction of the costume-based attention Bond receives. It's mostly down to the fact that audiences don't really think of Bond's suits as costumes; they're more like an extension of the whole 007 fashion/booze/status-symbol industrial complex. The Bond franchise is one of the few instances where a film's content actually invites product-placement, because the whole point of Bond is that he's super cool all the time, and that means he has to have all the best accessories. Bond's image is so important that the actors tend to become Bond in the public eye -- something that I've definitely noticed with Daniel Craig. Craig's Bond is the biggest bruiser since Connery, and looks like the kind of guy who would headbutt you during a barfight. Like Lindy Hemming says in the clip I linked above, his suits are very "mean", very tightly fitted -- even though he's the most muscular Bond so far. Daniel Craig clearly loves this look himself because it's what he wears to most red-carpet appearances, which is slightly unfortunate because his own suits are (inevitably) not quite as well-tailored as what he gets to wear as Bond.

The result is that in real life, Daniel Craig often ends up looking like the proverbial condom full of walnuts, tailored to within an inch of his life but missing the mark he previously set whilst in-character. I realise that this is a nitpic because Daniel Craig usually looks great and has excellent dress-sense when compared to most male A-listers, but seriously, Dan, if you're reading this: stop trying to strangle yourself with your own clothes. Your suits don't have to be that tight. The main problem seems to be that he knows what look he's going for (ie, the look he has when he's playing Bond, basically) but in real life there are more things to consider than the suit being tailored close to the body. The key thing that differentiates Bond's suits from a normal outfit of the same style is that they're action costumes and therefore have been designed with movement in mind, meaning that they're a lot more relaxed and flexible than a typical suit. Daniel Craig on the red carpet usually looks like he could barely manage to crouch down or move his arms in a full circle, never mind leap out of a helicopter and wrestle some supervillain down a lift-shaft.

Read More

Links post: James Bond, Starfleet uniform bras, real-life Zoolander, and more.

There will be more image-heavy posts than usual this month because I'm at the Edinburgh Festival, working full time and going to shows most evenings. I don't have as much time as usual to write reviews but we should be back to regularly scheduled programming come September! A quick question for readers, though: It's been a few weeks since both The Dark Knight Rises and the final installment of The Hollow Crown were released -- is it worth it for me to post reviews for these in the next couple of weeks, or is it too late and/or already talked to death by other people?

The 10 best Bond outfits. Kind of baffled by this list, to be honest. Pierce Brosnan's rollneck jumper is an iconic 007 outfit? Really?

Handpainted Starfleet uniform bra. And by "Starfleet uniform" I don't mean regulation underwear. They come in Redshirt red, Command gold and Science blue, all with the Starfleet insignia, and you can even send your own bra off to get Starfleeted. I love Etsy. Or I would if I had any money.

10 real-life Zoolander moments. Funny, but kind of missing the point of Zoolander as satire. Fashion is ridiculous -- and? Karl Lagerfeld shipping icebergs halfway across the world to garnish his shows will never not be ridiculous and reminiscent of the actions of tinpot dictators throughout history, but mocking fashion for looking like "Derelicte": not so much. Also, the male model fight club sounds like it'd be pretty popular.

Jack Kirby: costume designer. Renowned comicbook creator Jack Kirby once designed costumes for a college production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar! This phot gallery is AMAZING. If only all college theatre had ridiculous costuming like this! Colour me impressed.

Costumes by Nicolas de Larmessin II. These 18th century costumes/grotesques are surreal to the point that I don't think most of them could have been made in real life. I do hold out some hope, though. People used to put a lot of effort into their fancy-dress costumes. Particularly if it was servants putting the effort in for them.

Fisherman.

Wine merchant.

And finally, an ~educational link: Why do we wear pants? The surprisingly deep history of trouser technology.

Read More