Gareth Owen on Roger Moore’s Clothiers Not Mentioned in Bond on Bond

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My From Tailors with Love co-host Peter Brooker interviewed Roger Moore’s former executive assistant and ghostwriter Gareth Owen on Moore’s style. Mr Owen has just released a new book about his time with Roger called Raising an Eyebrow: My Life with Sir Roger Moore, and it is available to purchase on Amazon. I was not able to join Peter on the interview, but I sent him some questions to ask Mr Owen.

I was interested to ask Mr Owen about some of the inconsistencies in Moore’s book Bond on Bond regarding his Bond clothiers, which were discussed on this blog at the time of the book’s release. Frank Foster was not given credit as his Bond shirtmaker, and Angelo Litrico was stated as Moore’s tailor for his late 1970s Bond films with no mention of Angelo Roma. The full interview will be available on the From Tailors with Love podcast this Wednesday, but here is a short excerpt from a much longer interview where Mr Owen discusses some of these omissions.

Peter Brooker: A question about some of the style that’s in “Bond on Style” in Bond on Bond. Matt, being the very particular person, has wanted to ask you on this just in case its an inconsistency. There is a line in the book that mentions that Roger had his shirts done at Washington Tremlett and Turnbull & Asser, but there was no mention of the tailor Frank Foster. Did Roger mention Frank Foster at all, or did he speak about him in any way?

Gareth Owen: I don’t know whether Frank Foster supplied his shirts in the Bond films. Correct me, I don’t know. But I know he certainly had some shirts with Frank Foster in later life. Maybe it was just an omission, maybe it was something he failed to put in. But I don’t know which films he made with Frank Foster shirts. Can you tell me? I don’t know.

PB: Well, I would say probably all of them. Matt will probably tell you a lot more. Frank Foster would say that he did a lot of the shirts for the early Connery films, all the way through. Turnbull & Asser would do some, but he would do some as well. And it feels like he didn’t get a mention for some reason, and not just by Roger. By the whole entire franchise. They’ve not really shined a light.

GO: Sometimes the providers, if you like, of costumes and shirts, some do massive marketing campaigns and shout loud about their involvement, whereas I don’t think Frank Foster ever did. Maybe he just wasn’t as vocal as some of the other tailors and the suppliers. I don’t know.

PB: And also, he [Matt] wants to know about, did Washington Tremlett do any other clothes for Bond other than the [yellow] dressing gown in Live and Let Die.

GO: I honestly don’t know, cause a lot of the time if I asked Roger about costumes, he would sort of just shrug and say, “I honestly don’t know”. Because he would turn up in the morning and they’d say, “right, here you go. Put this on, shoot the scene, there we go, off it goes again”. And he wouldn’t see it. Sometimes there was a mystery to it, simply because he didn’t know. The costume designer would come and say, “I’ve got this for you, would you try it on? Okay, that’s fine. We’ll use it tomorrow”. So there wasn’t always great planning. He didn’t sit down in meetings and discuss Bond style and what he should look like. And I think the director a lot of the time, too, would make a call and say, “I don’t think that’s right for the show” or “it doesn’t work with this set, where else can we go?” So it could have just been a thing that was lying about. Could have been a thing that they’d seen the day before. A lot of it wasn’t planned.

PB: And just lastly, and this will get us out of the weeds once this one’s done, but there’s also a sentence about Angelo Litrico being Roger’s personal tailor in Italy. Matt seems to think it was Angelo Roma and not Angelo Litrico. Does that ring any bells?

GO: Well, he did have two or three different tailors, and I know for one or two films, I think The Sicilian Cross, he was wheeled in there. So he did have a couple of tailors he called upon. And when he was in France in Paris and the South of France, Massimo Dutti also supplied some stuff. So it’s one of those things, sometimes if a film had a deal or had a friendly contact with a tailor, they’d use one of those. But there were certainly two or three that he was always friendly with, and would make a visit to them.

Many thanks to Gareth Owen for kindly putting up with these questions and clearing up why some names were mentioned in Moore’s Bond on Bond book and others weren’t. Much was forgotten in the decades since Moore was Bond.

After confirmation from Frank Foster as well as action listings of the shirts from Moore’s Bond films, we know that Frank Foster made almost all of Roger Moore’s shirts in his Bond films, as well as shirts for many other actors and other Bond actors. This was something Roger failed to tell Mr Owen, either because he forgot or because he didn’t want to mention them.

Mr Owen is correct that Frank Foster was not one to ask for attention by advertising that he worked on the Bond series. Frank Foster has frequently been overlooked in Bond clothing exhibits of the past decade.

Regarding Angelo Roma, Moore mentioned he was wearing suits by “Angelo of Rome” in his DVD commentary for The Man with the Golden Gun. Moore was mistaken, as Cyril Castle made the suits for that film (one was sold at auction), but Angelo would tailor Moore later in the 1970s before Douglas Hayward took over for the Bond suits in For Your Eyes Only.

Mr Owen suggests it is is possible that Moore wore suits by multiple Italian tailors in the late 1970s Bond films as he had multiple tailors. Angelo Roma is the only tailor there is currently physical evidence of, as he made the only suit from the late ’70s Bond films that has sold at auction. Angelo Litrico could also have possibly tailored some of Moore’s clothes for Bond, and his silhouette in the 1970s was not worlds apart from Angelo Roma’s. Massimo Dutti was founded in 1985, so they wouldn’t have provided clothes for any of Moore’s Bond films.

Naturally, most people would not have the clearest memory of what they wore forty years earlier, and Mr Owen only started with Moore in 2001, 16 years after Moore’s final Bond film.

You can listen to the full interview on the From Tailors with Love podcast on Wednesday on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify for many more stories from Gareth Owen about Roger Moore and his clothes. Thank you to Peter Brooker for conducting such a fantastic interview and for allowing me to publish an excerpt on The Suits of James Bond.

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48 COMMENTS

  1. With the greatest respect to Mr. Owen, I don’t think he manages to shed light on very much at all and he can’t really be blamed for this because Roger’s clothing wasn’t reeally his remit. As a result the information is vague. Why Frank Foster has been omitted is a mystery. From my conversations with Frank I never got a sense that there was a fall out of any type (a possible rersaon) so who knows. As for the idea that Roger hadn’t an interest in the clothes he wore and the director had a call on this, well, we all know that nothing would have been further from the truth. Moore had probably the greatest input in to what he wore on screen of all the Bond actors. Maybe Craig but I’ll leave that there….

    • Film shoots can sometimes be like that. Smaller things like ties and casual wear I can definitely see this happening, even to Sir Roger Moore. It’s all a bit of a whirlwind. I’ve had shoots where halfway through filming a scene it was decided a certain costume wasn’t working and had to completely start over.

      Now that said, it doesn’t work so well with suits and shirts because there had to be sizings, fittings, refittings etc. There’s plenty of time there for Roger to give his two cents, and of course get to know the tailor.

      • That all sounds logical. The thing is, with Roger, he used the same tailor, shirtmaker and even leatherwear brand throughout his career. The individual tailor or brand of shoe may have changed ( Castle – Angelo Roma – Hayward or from Gucci to Ferragamo) but these changes seem to habve been personal decisions with the move from Cyril Castle to Angelo Roma for example, coming about because he had moved as a tax exile to Italy and it was easier to engage a quality native tailor. My feeling is he would have had a major say in what he wore on screen or at least, the director, wardrobe etc. would have bowed to his own knowledge and taste and felt it was safe to give him a, more or leass, free rein. With Connery or Dalton, for example, they would have required spoon feeding.

  2. This is an interesting topic. For the Bond actors, I do wonder how much of it is a blur of “here, just put this on” vs. awareness of the brands and tailors. Given Craig’s high level of meddling and recency to the films, I suspect he might fare the best in identifying the various aspects of his wardrobe. That being said, there was an interview with Connery not that long ago where he talks about the time before Dr. No began filming, and he lists off various shops around Mayfair and Jermyn St that Terence Young took him to, so that at least was a memorable experience for him. Brosnan also wore bespoke Gianni Campagna and T&A at his own wedding (and had his groomsmen in Brioni).

    • Tredstone, that is a very interesting piece of information !
      Have you a link regarding Connery’s interview ? And a link or a picture of Brosnan’s wedding ?
      Concerning Frank Foster, maybe being discreet and humble, he expressly asked Moore not to mention him in any way, because he didn’t want any publicity. It’s also a possibility.

    • Nice find, tredstone. A flamboyant waistcoat for morning attire. I was confused for a moment at seeing neckties when “tails” were mentioned in the caption. I then recalled that technically both morning coats and full evening dress coats have tails. Here in the States, however, we mostly associate it with white tie.

      • Actually Jovan, tails were the right word to use because I found some pictures of Brosnan where you can clearly see that he isn’t wearing a suit jacket or morning dress but really a tailcoat, the kind you were for white tie. A tailcoat combined with a 6-button waistcoat and a shirt with a turndown collar and a necktie. It certainly is a strange outfit, and definitely not a classic one for a wedding like black lounge or morning dress. Only Brosnan’s good looks prevent him from looking a bit ridiculous (why not wearing a charcoal, midnight blue or even black lounge suit with such waistcoat and shirt ?).

  3. It seems nearly impossible for Moore, who obviously cared about clothing, to forget who made his many shirts for his 7 most important films, and I assume his personal wardrobe as well during that period. While Roger’s doesn’t exactly have a reputation of being spiteful, the omission of Foster just seems very deliberate.

    As for the overall ignorance as to Frank Foster in the Bond world, that’s just down to it being a small outfit without the ability to project like a T&A.

    • To be fair, T&A didn’t really toot their horn about the Bond connection that much until the past decade or so. I remember when they first launched their e-commerce website around ~2013-ish, they sold the Bond ties with no mention of Bond except a brief description saying (paraphrasing) “As worn by a certain gentleman spy – modesty precludes us from saying more.”

      • Lol Matt you commented before I could append my comment. It wasn’t intended as a rebuttal. You’re right there may have been a legal element, though I think there’s been a big culture shift too at T&A.

    • I should add it wasn’t purely down to any legal/marketing reasons… plenty of stories from Bond fans who would get sneered at asking/talking/shopping about Bond at the Jermyn St store in the early 2000s. Very different from today.

      • I theorize it was partly due to pride from the old guard there, that people should want their brand for its quality, heritage, and not because of famous associations. Then, partly because EON started snubbing them by getting shirts free from Brioni and only using T&A for evening shirts (and not at all starting with QoS). That is my theory at least. I’m glad the culture has changed. Snobbery is not becoming of a business like theirs or anyone else for that matter.

      • That’s a good point – the split with EON is probably a factor too.

        There’s definitely been a changing of the guard at T&A. Even the store manager now at Jermyn St (James Cook) is a bit of a Bond fan, and I think also had a small role as an extra in Die Another Day.

  4. Tredstone, “meddling” seems a good way to describe Craig’s input given that the end result is, imo, uneven. Even him, allegedly, having the casting vote on the choice of theme song is ridiculous and nothing which should concern the leading actor (can you imagine Connery throwing a hissy fit because Tom Jones wasn’t his choice for Thunderball or Roger deliberating because he felt Rita Coolidge wasn’t high profile enough for Octopussy….ludicous) strikes me as an ego which is rampantly out of control and, indeed, a producer who is also misguided.

    • It is really strange, I agree. The producers really have given him the keys to the kingdom to keep him around for another film or two.

      • Absolutely not!
        He should have left after quantum
        Craig is not Bond. Craig is an action hero.

        Bring back the understated British Elegance
        No more eight dollar haircuts
        No more fashion shows

        Pretty please with sugar on top.

  5. Saul, naturally, I agree. I was hoping that Craig would be another in Lazenby or Dalton territory, doing a couple of movies and then sense would prevail. However, box office receipts prevail and like him or loathe him, he has done the business. The other problem is that Ms Broccoli and Mr Wilson appear to think the sun shines not down from the firmament but from a particular part of Craig’s posterior and hav endulged him way beyond what he merits. My fear would be that his successor may be no better or possibly worse. The days of Connery, Moore or even Brosnan aren’t coming back and Bond has been a dead letter for me for many years now.

      • As nobody else on here has made that assertion bar yourself and I myself was unaware of it, makes my comment reasonable and not in the least “bonkers”. The leading man being co-producer of a Bond movie is ego gone mad and totally unnecessary. No previous actor ever had or sought that level of input and the results of Craig’s input is action movies with a pretentious desire to be somehow something more worthy than they need to be. This “Bond throws in the job and goes rogue” theme in every one of his movies!! Thank Christ he’s on his way out the door. If only Broccoli, Wilson and the rest could follow suit too….

      • Though it’s not an official Bond film, Sean Connery had a lot of say over Never Say Never Again beyond being an actor. It didn’t help the film. I believe Connery wanted more say as a producer in the Bond films to continue after Diamonds Are Forever.

      • I think Connery sought to be a co-producer after the first 2 or 3 films were successful. I think he was already griping about it on the set of Thunderball when he conducted that infamous Playboy interview. Cubby and Harry decided they didn’t owe him anything and stuck to their original contract. I agree with Matt though that at least in the case of NSNA it didn’t help the film, and I don’t see it helping in Craig’s case either.

    • For me too, Bond ended with Brosnan. The Craig era seems to have deliberately turned away from any continuity with the previous series, such as qualitative revising of key aspects of Bond (the break in his style of dress is perhaps emblematic of that). But I think box office receipts can be extremely difficult to interpret though. For instance, what alternatives are available when film A opens might be much more competitive than when film B opens. Thunderball did better than Goldfinger but I think many will agree that Goldfinger is a much better film, and it is possible that Thunderball did extremely well precisely because it followed Goldfinger.
      Anyway, from a casual Wikipedia search, it looks like both Brosnan and Craig films tend to gross about triple of whatever their production budget is. So perhaps Craig’s films are business as usual. On the other hand, other action films that arguably better capture the original Bond spirit make similar amounts of money but cost far less. The last mission impossible film, for instance, grossed somewhere approaching Spectre but at half the cost, and the MI series’ revenues seem to have been escalating over the last decade. Likewise, many even half-decent action films have been doing extremely well (e.g. Hobbs and Shaw) lately, probably because there are so few of them and this may be an underserved market. Meanwhile, the 90s seems to me to have been a golden era for action films.
      I wonder though if even if the next Bond is worse and they get sharp Box office signal to change whether it will be too late (it has taken a number of bad Doctor Whos and that series is still tanking without any course-correction). Things like brother Blofeld and so on have done their damage. They may need a re-reboot.

      • I’ve long been an advocate for Henry Cavill, and think he should’ve gotten the role over Craig back when they both auditioned for Casino Royale.

        This Dunhill ad with Cavill is EXCELLENT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKqFMxdN3Pc

        However lately I do wonder if he has the ability to pull off the sardonic humor that’s been missing with the last few movies. I wasn’t impressed with his turn in Man from UNCLE.

        I think the next actor needs to have the range of someone like Jon Hamm (not saying him specifically).

      • Dan, I agree 100% with you about the politically correct nonsense (to be polite) propositions about the next Bond. That being I dislike Cavill a lot and find him to look just like a bodybuilder and nothing else. He certainly doesn’t have Hamm palette and talent.
        I think a young Bond actor that isn’t particularly well known in the movie industry should be the way to go. But of course producers will never let that happen.
        About known actors, I would definitely see Michael Fassbender in the role. Jon Hamm could be great but is probably too old and maybe not enough European. Colin Firth… too old but great !
        Robert Pattinson I think it would work too.

      • From my perspective, problems with the recent films are more than the actor, and perhaps giving Craig too much say is as much symptomatic as it is a cause. Things like a refusal to respect the gun barrel sequence/OO7 theme, Bond quitting and wallowing in self-pity and doubt in every film, Q being a youthful computer nerd, and overly complicated/DarkKnightesque plots that make less sense than they think they are clever… are all part of a wider pattern of deliberately walking away from the previous series. This trend and probably has nothing to do with Craig. I don’t think the question of who is the next Bond is as important as restoring the films towards the origninal series centre of gravity, which *perhaps* the NTTD will attempt (e.g. the Glencheck suit and DB5). I would like to see a Bond who looks and dresses similarly to a young Connery but plays the character with humour like Brosnan. I think they were right to update Bond by giving him a fitter physique so the actor should be believably tough, similar to Jason Statham. Cavill would be good for the role but it may only harm his career atm; he is currently thriving in films that recognize they are about entertainment and not trying to impress a snobbish class of film critics by prioritizing contemporary political messaging. I’m not saying that is exactly where the OO7 franchise is atm but it has felt like that’s where it’s been heading.

      • >> Jon Hamm could be great but is probably too old and maybe not enough European.

        Oh I agree – I just meant his acting range. Bond should definitely not be played by an American. In a way, I think Craig’s inability to deliver any levity limits the direction of the movies… maybe hence the constant “this time, it’s even MORE personal.”

        I agree with everything Roy mentions above. I think they might need to shake up the production team… I know it’s kind of a family affair and they often hire the same writers, stunt people, etc. But its gotten a little stale and underwhelming. The motorcycle chase in the latest M:I movie was absolutely breathtaking and far better than anything I’ve seen in Bond in years. The car chase in Rome in SPECTRE was utterly forgettable (I was bored halfway through watching it).

      • I’ve been saying for ages that the last Bond SHOULD have been Clive Owen. Although he has said that he was never approached, there was a series of short films that were actually BMW ads shown in cinemas in the early 90s in which he played a very Bondian driver and this was probably around the time of BMWs being in the Bond films. He’s a similar age to Craig so it’s too late now. As I now live in America there are likely a bunch of up and coming British actors who might do a good job but haven’t had much exposure over here so I couldn’t guess who the next one might be.
        We all project our own impressions onto the direction we think the films should go. I get sick to death of protesting against those who advocate more humour in the films. IMO almost all attempts at humour fell flat and the films with more intense attempts at being humourous are among the worst. Bond as written by Fleming was a cold bastard assassin and was depicted that way in the first few films. “That’s a Smith and Wesson – and you’ve had your six!” as he blows on the silencer to cool it down after assassinating Professor Dent. That’s how I see Bond, meting out cold justice and instant Karma, not swinging through a jungle on vines doing a Tarzan yell or snowboarding down a mountain as the Beach Boys plays on the soundtrack. Who was the intended audience for that? Some cuts of the Dent killing have Bond emptying his Walther while others have only one shot as more shots were deemed too violent. Some of the ‘one liners’ were put in the script merely to get it past the censors, not to try and make Bond a figure of comedy.

      • Roy, some excellent points made in both your comments. I couldn’t agree more. On virtually everything you say. I think both Craig and the current generation Broccolis have damaged the series and it needs to return to it’s classic roots. A movie every two years too. Delays for no good reason and to produce pretentious, overblown, repetitive tosh.
        Saul, As for the idea of a new Bond, I’d go for Aidan Turner or Chris Hemsworth.

      • Fair point about every two (or maybe three?) years. Obviously I know nothing about the machinations behind the scenes of a film company but something that’s puzzled me is why Bond films so often seem to be at the mercy of various corporate shenanigans. They make such vast amounts of money (often a good chunk of the budget is paid for by product placement) that surely they could be self- financing and then they’d only need to contract each film for distribution.

  6. Angelo Litrico was a trendy tailor,the type of tailor that a man very sensible to the fashion trends as Roger Moore could love.
    So I wouldn’t be surprised if Sir Roger had ordered some suits to Litrico (that was also very popular with the movies peoples).
    The cut was not dissimilar from that of Angelo of Rome at the time.
    Huge belly lapels,structured shoulders, flare trousers.

  7. To be honest with all of you gentlemen:
    From day one i never thought Craig made a good Bond and according to some reports neither did Sir Roger Moore.

    Even now as the dawn looms for Craig I still wrestle with the idea of what Bond has become and where he was headed. However the producers made the right call, because Craig is the people’s Bond, he is accessible to everyone. With the others they all had untouchable factors about them.

    They wanted to go back to the beginning with Dalton and obviously they headed into a different direction. However in the words of Heckler and Koch “In a world of compromise some don’t ” and that to me was Brosnan. With the political unrest and provoking the demons within we needed a seasoned professional, and instead we got someone who at times, was either at the beginning, or was in a parallel world who still left us something to be desired.

    As for who would have been a great Bond, well if i could turn back the hands of time i would have chosen Ralph Fiennes.

    Lets make the next Bond event on the west coast!

  8. I don’t mind Fiennes as M, there’s not a lot to do there, but I think he’s an atrocious actor with that rictus grimace and nasal monotone voice. He’s not exactly blessed with an over abundance of charisma!

  9. I agree 100% with Roy here.
    Some things that were innovative and interesting in Casino Royale -no classic gunbarrel sequence, no Q- have been either forgotten (I can’t stand the new Q) or overdone (the gunbarrel or to be more precise the no gunbarrel sequences).
    But most of the problems came of a maze-like plot that screenwriters seem very proud of.
    I personally think that Craig’s Bond suffers from something that was already the case with Brosnan : poor scripts and plots, cartoonish villains. With the exception of their first movie. Casino Royale and Goldeneye were both excellent to me and they share the same director. Casino Royale is in my top 3, I think the plot and characters are as smart and complex as OHMSS. And the problem with your first Bond movie being that good is : how can you make the others better or at least as good ?
    That’s also why I think Lazenby’s other Bond movies could have been very disappointing. He has done only one, it’s one of the best, maybe we should just be happy about it and that’s it.

    • I think it is an interesting point about the first film. It seems like each actor’s first is qualitatively different in some ways from the subsequent films that (rightly or wrongly) escalate to out-do the previous one. E.g. the trend from FRWL to YOLT and DAF and from Goldeneye to DAD. It seems like they consciously ‘re-set’ this following Moonraker with FYO, which I think was a really good move. I don’t mind Moonraker as much as many people do but I admit if they continued even a smidge along those lines the next one would have been utter disaster. They must have sensed this somehow and showed foresight without having to blindly continuing until the Box Office to wacked them.

  10. I have to agree with David, Dan and the others who have remarked on the decline of the series under Craig. Maybe it’s partly a case of nostalgia for my youth, but I miss the good old days of the 70s and 80s when my cheerful and insouciant Uncle Rog would take me on a globe-trotting adventure for two hours or so.

    • John, you hit the nail on the head! During a difficult period of our lives my daughter and I would huddle in front of the TV and watch classic Bond on the TNT cable channel. Nothing took our minds off our troubles like a 2-hour romp with Uncle Rog! I can’t imagine the recent Bond movies having the same effect.

    • John/Dan, yes. They would benefit from “lightening up” the franchise and concentrating on making solid, escapist and crucially, stand alone Bond movies every couple of years rather than absurd, pretentious, po-faced stuff with spurious links between movies (how many casual Bond fans can even be bothered to recall these links anyway especially given the ridiculous gaps between movies?) but who’s listening. The world is dark enough nowadays. We need heroes like Bond to take us out of this crap rather than miring us further in….

      • David, your last comment really got me thinking – the 70’s were also a dark time in many ways (Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation) but Bond movies were FUN and represented a great escape from an unpleasant daily reality (TSWLM, MR). Now times are dark more due to a spiritual/cultural breakdown than to objective external factors, but one can no longer count on a Bond movie to take us out of our funk because of the obsession with “darkandgritty” movies.

      • Dan, this is a point which you have made before and it is valid. I was only a kid at that time but I know that, if the time machine was up and running, I’d go back to the late-70’s/early-80’s in a heartbeat. As for the rationale behind this “dark and gritty” thing I don’t honestly know. It seems that producers feel that audiences seek a kind of (spurious) sens eof “reality” from thier action movies nowadays which, given the situations presented is arguably more absurd than the knowing, nod and wink stance which the classic Bonds took….

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