In 1967’s Casino Royale spoof, Peter Sellers plays a baccarat expert named Evelyn Tremble, who isn’t the nattiest of dressers. But he’s turned into one of the film’s many James Bonds and is put into a midnight blue dinner suit worthy of the character. The dinner jacket has softer shoulders, buttons one, and has fishmouth-shaped cran Necker notched lapels faced in midnight blue satin silk. The only time we see Bond wearing the cran Necker lapel style in the series is in A View to a Kill. It still isn’t the ideal lapel style for a dinner jacket, but everything else is right. The jacket also has jetted pockets and double vents. The flat front trousers have frogmouth pockets with a wide satin silk waistband that extends to the side of the trousers and fastens with two buttons to mimic a cummerbund.
The dinner suit is made by Major Hayward, a tailoring firm made up of Dimi Major and Douglas Hayward based in Fulham, London. Shortly after this film was made, Major and Hayward split into their own firms.
Tremble’s white dress shirt has a pleated front, covered-button placket and rounded double cuffs. The shirt is made by regular Bond-series shirtmaker Frank Foster. Tremble wears a black satin, batwing bow tie and a matching narrow cummerbund. His shoes are short, black ankle boots.
Before Tremble becomes James Bond, he wears a black shawl collar dinner suit. Whilst many would consider the shawl collar to be more refined than the notched lapels on Tremble’s later dinner jacket, the later outfit is more refined over the earlier one. Besides this earlier dinner jacket not being as well fitted, Tremble is wearing a regular white shirt, and his trousers have a belt.
The high gorge reminds me of today’s jackets… even if it’s a 1964 movie !
Sellers is usually listed amongst Hayward’s many illustrious clients, but I’m not sure that this suit came from him.
The notch lapel one seems perfectly fitted for Sellers. Very nice, and as much of its time as the Diamonds black dinner suit, but far more pleasing to 2013 eyes.
This “2012/2013 eyes” idea comes up quite a bit and, with the greatest respect, can one not just decide if a particular item of clothing looks intrinsically good or not, irrespective of era? As I’ve stated before Craig’s most recent suits look lousy to my eye but then so do Dalton’s ones from 1989. Wholly different suit styles but with the common bond (no pun) of bad tailoring. (That they could be referred to as being “tailored” at all is nebulous). Then again, for me, for random example, Brosnan’s 1997 suits and Moore’s 1983 ones look perennially good. To my mind Seller’s suit looks quite mediocre and nondescript. Good tailoring should transcend both passing trends and the passage of time.