Clothes are often made for film productions that are either never used or made as gifts for the stars. Diamonds Are Forever features a staggering seven lounge suits, three sports coats and three dinner jackets. It features the most tailored clothing that Bond wears in any one film, but Sean Connery’s tailor Anthony Sinclair made even more clothes than that for Diamonds Are Forever. Sinclair also made a chocolate brown pinstripe worsted two-piece suit at the same time as he made the rest of the suits, but it didn’t feature in the film. It has a button two jacket with slanted flap pockets, and it most likely has double vents like the rest of the suits in the film have.
The suit was sold at Christie’s in South Kensington on 17 September 1998, and it can be seen in the picture above from the Christie’s catalogue on the right beside the black dinner suit and cream linen suit, both also from Diamonds Are Forever. This brown pinstripe suit sold for £575, which is considerably less than the selling prices of the suits that Sean Connery actually wears in the film.
exist a Link to tha auction, please?
You can find it here: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/diamonds-are-forever-1971-1290115-details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=1290115&sid=11cb11c1-8030-458e-9195-425234bb0f2c
Thanks!
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Matt, it’s impossible to make out the color of the suit from this photograph which Christies used (in fact only the linen suit is clearly discernable as being such) but I do recall you mentioning it previously some time ago in the blog.
For me, a dark brown pinstripe is a very odd choice of suit for Bond and equally unflattering for Connery’s complexion. Such a suit has gangster, Al Capone style connotations in my mind and I cannot imagine when in the movie it might have been used to any great effect (I suppose it could have worked in the context of the oil rig scenes where the blue pinstripe was used instead). I also feel that brown in any shade is not a great choice for a 3 piece suit (Bond or otherwise) as brown as a color lacks the formality that a waistcoat confers. A 2 piece dark brown suit is probably ok although we have never seen Bond wear one (he came close in “Live and Let Die”) but again it wouldn’t do Connery any favors either. No doubt this garment was produced with some scene or other in mind and then the producers also felt it to have been a bad choice and it was jettisoned. I’d be curious to hear the other contributor’s thoughts on this but for me, a brown pinstripe 3 piece suit, for Bond, just seems entirely wrong.
I wish they had a better photo of it since all I have to go off is the catalogue description. I think Connery looked okay in the brown three-piece suit in Thunderball since it was a very cool shade of brown, but it’s good that this suit is only a two-piece compared to the three-piece in Thunderball.
I completely disagree regarding brown as a 3pc. The shade of brown and the fabric would determine whether it’s acceptable. I have a 3pc Brown pinstripe suit that is a fantastic looking suit. I can email a pic of it to Matt if you would like to debate it. The shade of Brown is incredibly dark but I would defend Brown as a something that can be formal depending upon the fabric.
Brown will always be less formal than charcoal and navy, but I think Sean Connery’s suit in Thunderball shows how well it can work in a three-piece.
My mistake re: 3 piece, Matt. I misread the article.
Which suit is which I can’t tell. Sorry!
It’s the one on the right.