Vitals

Roger Moore as James Bond, cheeky British secret agent

New Orleans, Spring 1973

Film: Live and Let Die
Release Date: June 27, 1973
Director: Guy Hamilton
Costume Designer: Julie Harris

Background

Ah, Roger Moore’s divisive first outing as James Bond. After getting heat for basing Lazenby almost entirely on Connery’s characterization, the producers (and Moore himself) decided to go a new direction with the Bond character in Live and Let Die. Moore’s “Bond for the ’70s” replaced cigarettes, martinis, and the sleek Walther PPK with cigars, bourbon, and a Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum. (OK, so he still carried the PPK at the beginning, but you know what I mean.)

Moore’s wardrobe was also different. Where Connery primarily had two looks—a dark suit or a casual collared shirt and trousers—Moore began diversifying Bond’s attire. If a situation called for a safari suit, dammit, Moore was gonna wear one!

Live and Let Die is underrated in that it did what Casino Royale was lauded for thirty years later; the screenwriters kept the nexus of the main story, updating it for the time period. Previous films were made close enough to the time that the novels were written that the stories hardly needed updating. In 1973, the novel Live and Let Die was almost twenty years old. A story about coin-smuggling gangsters from Harlem would hardly be compelling for 1973, so it was updated to a heroin-smuggling ring with shout-outs to popular films at the time such as Dirty Harry, Bullitt, and the increasing popular “blaxploitation” fare such as Shaft and Coffy.

The movie itself is admittedly weird. The voodoo, sexism, racial overtones, the ’70s in general… but it is enjoyable. The new pace is quick and a refreshing change that is better suited to the winking Moore than the disinterested Connery of Diamonds are Forever. Yaphet Kotto was also a charismatic double villain as Kananga/Mr. Big (spoiler alert), despite how badly-written the character was, setting the stage for several easily-escapable “death traps” that Mike Myers would later capitalize on parodying as Austin Powers. Kananga even says to Bond “Let me tell you exactly how it works” before sending Bond to be slowly dipped into a pool of sharks while loosely tied to a a metal pole and Jane Seymour. A review from The Incredible Suit highlights ten instances in which Kananga’s hubris (or poor writing) failed to kill Bond.

Live and Let Die was a halfway mark for the Bond series before things got too comical… Well, almost before things got too comical.

What’d He Wear?

Bond fans, especially sartorial enthusiasts, protest some of Moore’s looks, citing too many safari suits, leisure suits, and “old man” suits of the ’80s. However, Moore only wore safari suits when on missions in warm climates (where they were both practical and fashionable in the ’70s), his only real leisure suit was the denim gear he sports while fishing in Live and Let Die, and his “old man” suits were actually finely tailored Douglas Hayward suits for a man who was, indeed, growing older. Most Moore critics fail to mention that he looked very fashionable for his era, as did the Bonds before and after him. The scale of sartorial timelessness is more an indicator of the times than of the man.

As a treat for sartorial bloggers, Live and Let Die includes a scene of Bond getting tailored. There was a similar scene in the novel of Bond being measured for suits in his New York hotel room, but the film shows Bond in command rather than the literary Bond being forced to submit to “Americanization” at the hands of Leiter and the CIA. Lucky for all of us, the outfit Bond is choosing in the tailor scene for the film is the very one I plan on covering today.

For his brief venture into New Orleans, Moore’s Bond wears a beige sport coat, a tie and trousers, and—most appropriately—a pair of crocodile shoes. The shoes are the most un-Bond-like of the attire, but they certainly have their place, as the scene goes on to show.

The beige sport coat has a complex basketweave pattern, which Matt Spaiser has deduced is likely a linen and silk blend. (For anyone who appreciates good style, check out Matt’s blog The Suits of James Bond. Immediately.) The jacket also has a welted breast pocket and flapped hip pockets, slanted like one typically would see on a hacking jacket.

The single-breasted jacket has swelled-edge notch lapels of a more timeless width than one associates with the 1970s, which roll to two light brown horn buttons. There is also a unique single link-button on each flared cuff.

As a final note, Bond instructs his tailor: “Don’t forget the double vents.” (That would be kind of a big thing for a tailor to forget, wouldn’t it?) As Sir Roger requested on his suit jacket, this jacket does indeed have very long rear vents, giving him a very handy bit of mobility when hopping from croc to croc.

The sport coat is paired with dark brown flat front trousers, providing a pleasant contrast to the pale brown in the beige coat. They rise high on Moore’s waist, and his height slightly offsets the ’70s-flared plain-hemmed bottoms. The two jetted back pockets close with a button. Each front pocket is a slit at the waistline, just below the belt, resembling two large coin pockets rather than more traditional side pockets, providing a cleaner look.

The trousers also have belt loops, transitioning between the side-adjuster trousers of the Connery era in to the Gucci belt-wearing Moore era. The belt itself is thick dark brown leather with a large square brass single-prong buckle in the front.

Apropos his brown belt, Bond also wears a pair of dark burgundy crocodile-skin slip-on loafers with squared bicycle toes. Evidently, Moore thought it would be funny to wear crocodile shoes while stepping over their living genesis. As he described in his 2008 memoir, My Word is My Bond:

My beloved Italian croc-skin shoes probably had a few cousins and aunties in Ross’s farm…

Honestly, I thought it was pretty clever too. Unfortunately, the filmmakers missed an opportunity when Bond comments on the crocodiles as “potential overnight bags” while not even mentioning his shoes! Bond pairs the shoes with thin black dress socks.

Bond wears a unique shirt from London shirtmaker Frank Foster with a subtly scattered tan pattern on an ecru ground. The shirt has a substantial semi-spread collar, though the length of the collar points is nowhere near the infamous disco-era shirt collars, and it has a front placket and two-button turnback cuffs (or “cocktail cuffs”).