Bond and Leiter: Dressing the Same Way in Different Sartorial Languages

James Bond and Felix Leiter are counterparts in British and American intelligence, respectively. Leiter in Goldfinger, played by Cec Linder, dresses as Bond’s equal by wearing the same colours that Bond is known to wear. The same safe colours that are internationally accepted for business dress. A grey suit with a light blue shirt, navy tie and black shoes is as generic as dressing in a suit comes. However, beyond the colours their clothes are an ocean apart.

James Bond dresses in the language of Savile Row while Felix Leiter has an sartorially American Ivy League vocabulary. They dress in the styles of where they come from and the cultures they’re part of, and their clothes give insights into their backgrounds. They dress how they know to and they purchase what’s locally available to them where they live. Neither man would have been intimately familiar with the style the other wears unless they went shopping in the other’s country. Rich Americans did get suits in London, but a CIA agent would not likely have done so.

The most relevant comparisons can be made between Leiter’s clothes in Goldfinger and Bond’s clothes in Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. The first two films are where Bond’s outfits have the most in common with Leiter’s in Goldfinger in terms of colour and two-piece suits. Bond’s outfits in Goldfinger have more contrast with Leiter’s in the same film because Bond switches from blue shirts to white striped shirts and wears a few three-piece suits.

The Suits

Leiter wears two suits in Goldfinger—one in black-and-white sharkskin suit for Miami and another more traditional business suit in charcoal sharkskin for Washington, D.C. and Kentucky. The charcoal suit has a blue cast compared to Bond’s dark grey suit. Both are lightweight worsted wool, which has been a popular suiting in America ever since and is somewhat comfortable for the hot southern locations in Goldfinger.

James Bond of this era wears lightweight worsted wool suits too, in addition to a number of mohair, silk and flannel suits, but what was considered lightweight for English suits was not as lightweight by American standards. Still, Connery’s tailor Anthony Sinclair specialised in lightweight suits at a time when many English tailors were unable to work with lightweight cloths.

Bond wears a few lightweight suits that are similar Leiter’s suits on the surface. In Dr. No he wears a light grey mohair-wool suit and a lightweight black-and-white fine glen check suit. In From Russia with Love he wears a lightweight dark grey sharkskin suit. And in Goldfinger he wears a lightweight worsted black-and-white glen check. Bond would later wear a black-and-white sharkskin suit in Skyfall, which is Bond’s most similar suit of all to Leiter’s suits.

Bond wears a dark grey woollen flannel suit alongside Leiter’s charcoal worsted suit, demonstrating a common difference in English and American suits. Flannel suits were not uncommon in America in the 1960s, but the contrast between Bond’s heavy three-piece suit and Leiter’s lightweight two-piece portrays Bond as a more sophisticated and more traditional character.

While Bond and Leiter often wear suits of similar cloths, the cuts are extremely different. Leiter wears a traditional American natural shoulder sack suit. The shoulders have a natural, curved look due to the type of sleeve head, but they have a pad for a smooth and clean appearance. The sack suit lacks front darts, so it has a fairly straight silhouette with a lean chest and a fuller waist. There are three buttons on the front in a three-roll-two arrangement, and the button stance is high. The middle button is near the sternum and the buttons are spaced far apart so the top button is approximately halfway between the waist button and the lapel buttonhole. The top button is in the middle of the lapel roll, and the lapels have a pronounced roll for a sophisticated look, compared to some sack suits where the lapel folds flat.

The jacket is detailed with traditional American sack details: a single vent and two buttons spaced apart on the cuffs. The hip pockets have a flap with a single jet at the bottom of the pocket opening under the flap. The suit shares many traits with the Brooks Brothers Number One Sack, the quintessential sack suit, and is possibly such a suit.

Bond’s jackets have a Savile Row style with a more defined shoulder line than Leiter’s, yet they don’t have padding. There’s just some wadding in the sleeve heads, which gives the shoulders their characteristic roping at the ends. The roping is not overly pronounced, but it’s one of the main differences that Bond’s suit jackets have with Leiter’s. Another significant difference is in the fullness in the chest. The front darts give shape to the front of the jacket in the fullness at the chest, in slight folds of ‘drape’ at the sides of the chest and in a more suppressed waist. Bond’s jacket is a more modern style with only two buttons on the front, and the button stance on Bond’s jacket—comparing the top button on Bond’s jacket with the middle button on Leiter’s jacket—is much lower, which emphasises the chest.

Connery’s jackets have typical English details, which can vary. The suit jackets have four buttons on the cuffs, the Savile Row standard. Though English tailoring is frequently associated with double vents and slanted hip pockets, these details were not as commonplace on business suits before the late 1960s. Bond’s suit jackets of the era in this comparison can have double vents, a single vent or no vent. They always have straight hip pockets, which are double jetted and sometimes have flaps. Only the country suits and jackets at this time have slanted pockets.

Both Bond’s and Leiter’s jackets both have narrow lapels with a fairly high gorge, following the international trends of the early 1960s. Both jackets have lapel rolls, despite the different numbers of buttons.

Bond’s and Leiter’s suit trousers both have a high rise and turn-ups (except for Bond’s plain-hemmed suit trousers in Goldfinger), but that’s where the similarities end. Leiter’s have a flat front, a full tapered leg and take a belt. Bond’s trousers have double forward pleats and have self support from Daks-style side adjusters with three buttons on each side that attach to hidden elastic in the rear of the waistband. Bond’s trousers have a trimmer leg, despite the pleats, and the leg is contoured for a neat look.

Leiter wears just one of a number of different suit styles that tailors in America made at the time, but the style he wears is the one that best defines American tailoring of the era and has the most contrast with Bond’s suits. Some tailors in America cut in an English-inspired style. Many suits in America, both bespoke and ready-to-wear, had two buttons and darts on the front of the jacket and pleats—forward or reverse—on the trousers. Few English suits in the 1960s, however, had much in common with the America sack style. Anthony Sinclair said that he made checked jackets without a dart on the front, but he never made such a jacket for Connery. Such a jacket would still have been much different from the typical American sack jacket.

The sack suit was generally a ready-to-wear style for the American middle and upper classes. It was easy to fit and allowed the American worker to blend in with others, but it had a relaxed charm that appealed to a variety of people despite its simplicity. Some tailors, like Chipp in New York, made custom sack suits with more refinement than Brooks Brothers and J. Press. Leiter’s suit appears to be a ready-to-wear model, fitting for his government job.

Bond’s suits were bespoke and made in a more intricate manner. But even the middle class in London wore bespoke suits. Menswear writer Alan Flusser told me that he believed Connery’s Bond’s style was middle class. Bond’s bespoke suits were more expensive than a ready-to-wear suit, but they were not unobtainable for someone on his salary.

The Shirts

Leiter wears the quintessential complement to the sack suit: a button-down shirt. This means a shirt with a button-down collar, a sportier collar originally designed for polo with buttons that fasten the points to the front of the shirt. In the American tradition, the button-down collar is soft and designed to roll, giving it a relaxed character that matches the relaxed look of the sack suit. The shirt has one-button rounded cuffs.

Leiter’s shirts may be the classic cotton oxford that button-down shirts are known to be made of, but they’re more likely the finer pinpoint oxford version, which is a better pairing with a worsted wool suit.

Bond’s shirts are a more formal English style. They have a spread collar, which is intended to be worn with collar stays, but Bond often went without them for a more relaxed look and feel. His shirts in the first two films made by Turnbull & Asser have cocktail cuffs, which fold back on themselves like double cuffs but fasten with two buttons. This is an English style of cuff, but it was never a typical cuff. It’s the most unique aspect of Bond’s clothes. While Leiter’s style entirely fits in with how Americans dressed, the cocktail cuff set Bond’s style apart in a subtle but highly original way. Bond switches to double cuffs with cufflinks on his Frank Foster shirts in Goldfinger, which give his shirts an additional level of formality over Leiter’s.

His blue shirts in the first two films are pale blue cotton poplin, possibly made of fine Sea Island cotton. They are bespoke shirts with a neater fit and are far more luxurious than what Leiter wore. Many other details set the shirts apart from each other, and they’re all national differences between classic American and English shirts.

The Accessories

Both Bond and Leiter wear navy silk knitted ties with straight hems in Goldfinger. It’s the area where their styles have the most overlap. The knitted tie is the perfect complement to Leiter’s relaxed look of the sack suit and button-down shirt, while for Bond it goes back to the books where Bond accessorised his suits in a relaxed manner. Bond makes his tie in a small and tight four-in-hand knot, while Leiter’s chunkier knitted tie is made in a much larger half-Windsor knot.

Bond wears a straight-folded white linen handkerchief in his jacket’s breast pocket, a sophisticated but non-essential accessory. Leiter cares less about his clothes than Bond does, so he does not wear a pocket square, but plenty of American wore them in the 1960s. After Goldfinger, Bond would mostly give up the folded pocket square until Quantum of Solace in 2008.

Leiter and Bond both wear narrow-brimmed felt hats because it was the 1960s, but Leiter wears a fedora while Bond wears a sportier English variation known as the trilby. The difference is in the shape of the crown. Leiter’s crown is taller and more cylindrical, while Bond’s crown is shorter and has a tapered shape. Both are blocked with a centre dent, but Bond’s also has a front pinch. Leiter’s hat has a wide contrasting black ribbon while Bond’s hat has a very narrow ribbon that matches his hat. Both hats have a narrow brim that’s turned up at the back.

Leiter’s hat is mid grey, a classic business colour that coordinates with his charcoal suit. Bond’s hat is a dark muted green, which is a sportier colour to wear to horse races rather than a traditional choice for business.

Leiter possibly wears a black three-eyelet derby shoe, which Bond also wears in the first two films. This style was not uncommon in America in the 1960s, but he may be wearing a pair of English shoes because they lack the chunkiness of typical American shoes. Like the knitted tie, these black shoes are another direct area of overlap for the characters who mainly dress in ways that uniquely represent the styles of their respective countries.