James Bond usually has excellent taste in ties. They rarely have bold patterns, and they’re frequently solid with no pattern at all. The colours are usually subdued, frequently in navy, black or grey. Bond sometimes wears red ties, but they’re balanced with the suits he wears with them. His ties are typically versatile and easy to wear with a wide variety of clothes.
Ties are ultimately a matter of personal taste, more so than most other areas of menswear. Many men choose to show their personality through their ties, but Bond usually prefers to not make a statement with his ties and rarely draws attention to himself with his ties. Usually the louder the statement, the worse the tie is. Bond’s least tasteful ties tend to be the ones that make the loudest statement. Here are seven of Bond’s most questionable ties.
001. The Pink Tie
Sean Connery’s short, wide ‘kipper’ tie in Diamonds Are Forever is one of the most distracting ties of the series—a tasteful tie is not distracting. Bond rarely wears light-coloured ties, which can be limiting. Following tradition means that the tie should be darker than the shirt. A tie that is as light as one’s shirt will clash with it, and a tie that is lighter than one’s shirt makes one look like they have a whole in the middle of their body. Bond appropriately wears his pink tie with a cream shirt.
The pink shade of this tie is too vivid for the rest of the pale, muted outfit, making it pop unnecessarily. The colour also doesn’t look good on Connery because it doesn’t provide enough dark-light contrast in the outfit. Connery looks best in a high-contrast outfit or an all-dark outfit. This outfit is overall too warm-toned and too light for his complexion. The tie would have looked better on Connery if paired with a navy suit.
The tie is much too short, with the wide end finishing at the sternum and the narrow end only a few inches below the knot. Sean Connery was a tall man of 6’2″ with a large neck and needed longer ties than the average man. He also preferred to use a full Windsor knot, which despite being inappropriate for Bond per Ian Fleming’s comments in From Russia with Love, takes up additional length that this tie cannot afford. Even without the Windsor knot, this is a child-length tie and not appropriate for Sean Connery or James Bond. The width of tie is not extreme, especially not on a broad man like Connery, but the short length makes it look wider by comparison. The short length places the widest part of the tie visible in the suit jacket’s opening at the chest, emphasising the tie’s width.
002. The Brown Crocodile Tie
Bond is provided a number of poor ties to choose from when his tailor visits him in New Orleans in Live and Let Die. He deems one of the options ‘too frantic’. While the tie he chooses to wear is one of the best from the overall poor lot of flashy early 1970s ties, it’s a still too frantic. It’s a chocolate brown slubby silk tie with shinier thick brown lines running through it haphazardly, curving in all directions. It may have been chosen for its resemblance to crocodile skin, since Bond wears it for the crocodile farm scene. Though the colour is subtle and appropriate for the character, the lines make it overly chaotic. Bond’s ties should look orderly, though this wouldn’t be a bad tie for someone else.
003. The Dark Grey Printed Tie
Another of Bond’s most unusual ties of the series is from Live and Let Die, worn only for two brief moments when boarding the train at the end of the film. This tie has a dark grey ground that nicely matches his silk double-breasted suit, but it is printed with a pattern of large dusty pink ovals that contain a mysterious motif. While this motif prevents the outfit from being too monotone and the pink gives Roger Moore some needed warmth in the outfit, the motif is too loud, especially for the character.
004. The Silver Striped Tie
While most of the ties in The Man with the Golden Gun are tasteful solids, one odd striped tie stands out. The tie has stripes in brown, pink, navy and light blue, offering an appropriately regimental look for the blazer in a non-uniformed naval setting. The problem is that the stripes are on a pale silver ground, which clashes with the cream shirt. The cream shirt provides practically no contrast with the tie’s silver ground, and the tie ends up being nothing more than awkwardly floating stripes, especially because the stripe groupings are spaced to far apart.
While a white shirt would be the only shirt that would be lighter than tie, the pale silver ground would still have little contrast with it. A light blue shirt similar to the colour of the tie’s light blue stripe would have been a better shirt to wear with this tie and blazer, even thought it would be slightly darker than the tie.
005. The Busy Striped Tie
Finishing out the worst decade of Bond’s ties is an unusual striped tie in Moonraker that screams more than any tie should. The tie’s pattern features wide stripes in light olive and magenta, a narrow stripe in purple, and two rows of pink ovals with a magenta pinstripe between them. The tie is too bold and too busy. It also doesn’t coordinate with any other colours in the outfit—it calls for an olive suit and a pink shirt, a combination Roger Moore wore almost a decade earlier in The Man Who Haunted Himself. It’s not a particularly Bondian combination, and the tie follows.
006. The Lemon Yellow Wool Knitted Tie
Bond wears his only all-yellow tie in A View to a Kill. He’s under the guise of James St. James Smythe, and like the Burberry’s checked tie he wears earlier in the film, the yellow wool knitted tie can be excused as a disguise while the rest of the outfit is in character for Bond. Being knitted, tie is a classic Bond tie but in a colour further from classic Bond. Yellow ties, like most pale-coloured ties, are difficult to wear since they don’t provide much contrast with traditional shirts. The lemon yellow shade of this tie clashes with the beige shirt because it is too pale and too cool. It’s also too cool for Roger Moore’s complexion. Yellow is an unflattering colour on many people. Had it been more of a golden or mustard yellow, it wouldn’t be such a bad tie for either Moore or for the rest of the outfit.
A few years earlier in an episode of Remington Steele titled ‘A Good Night’s Steele’, Pierce Brosnan’s character harshly judges a man for owning a yellow tie in a manner Ian Fleming would approve of, despite the character attractively wearing one himself a few episodes earlier. He implies the yellow tie shows a lack of good judgement, and the way Bond wears his yellow tie in A View to a Kill could suggest the same.
007. The Blue and Bronze Squares Tie
Pierce Brosnan’s ties are among the boldest of the Bond series, but they usually have tasteful and sophisticated designs. The geometric squares tie in The World Is Not Enough is bold, but it’s not overpowering. The GoldenEye squares tie is a bit too strong by comparison. The tie cleverly coordinates up the navy and sand colours in the suit, but it uses brighter and bolder versions of these colour and places them into large squares. The combination of a bright mid blue and a bright copper-orange in large squares is overwhelming for Bond. However, this is one of the better ties on this list, but like others it’s not right for Bond.
Do you agree that these are Bond’s worst tie? Would you choose anything different? Leave your thoughts below.
Once I saw the title of article, I thought people expect the pink tie, the busy striped tie, and rest of the list are from Brosnan era. However, I have believed that Brosnan’s ties are not so bad as some say. Enough contrast and simple colour palette wouldn’t make the tie bad so much for the character. I might say, the one with the three-piece suit from The World Is Not Enough is more busy.
Nevertheless, sometimes I do wear ties yellow gold, silver and teal blue. I already know it’s difficult to wear, but carefully I can.
Tbh the only Bond tie that has stuck in the memory for bad reasons, is the pink one you rated worst.
It is horrific, and the only small mercy is that it’s in one of the poorest films of the series, so I don’t have to endure it in a film I would otherwise enjoy.
I actually like the (00)5 tie. I also don’t mind (00)2 as the pattern isn’t evident to me onscreen. I don’t like most of Brosnan’s ties, especially in ‘Goldeneye’; they make him look too much like a banker, so maybe I’d replace these with two from ‘Goldeneye’.
The saving grace of most of Brosnan’s ties is that they look much more subtle when not seen up close. The one he wears during the Hamburg sequences in TND is a good example – in most shots, it just looks like a brown tie with light blue dots that coordinate with his shirt. It’s not until the camera gets really close that you see there’s a lot more going on.
I laughed out loud when I scrolled down to that yellow tie
I don’t disagree with this list at all, but there’s definitely a huge drop off after #1, which is just offensively bad, compared to the rest.
Honestly, I think the only “bad” tie in the series is the pink tie in DAF. There are others I don’t like but those come down to my personal preferences rather than thinking they’re ugly or bad.
I do appreciate some of the Moore’s ties featured here. Two of my least favorite ties are the Burberry checked one (not Bond, and too flashy, since the Burberry checks are so well known, it’s not something a prototypical English gentleman like St John Smythe would wear. He would probably wear a brown or black wool knit instead. Or a Donegal tweed tie could have been cool) and the loud TND tie worn with his grey suit which seemed the loudest tie Brosnan ever wore. He has worn other pretty loud ties but fortunately with a 3-piece, so the look is pretty different. I almost got a Niles Crane vibe from this tie !
“Are you wearing a tie, James, or did you just vomit?”
I would myself have worn that hacking jacket from Moonraker with a black silk tie; not a fan of knitted ties in general.
From a Bondian perspective I somewhat agree with your choice of #7 (blue-bronze squares); however, in actuality it’s not really all that bad. All the other ties are either hideous in their own right or totally wrong for Bond and the outfit.
I think the art-deco tie from The World is Not Enough is less Bondian, and I actually kinda like that tie.
Is that the one worn during the boat chase with the 3 piece?
This is my view too. The Brozz entry is not a bad tie at all and respectable enough within the outfit and the era ir was worn, it’s just not very Bondian. Aside from the pink bib I hate the pale yellow tie. They used to get called ‘urine coloured ties’ on Styleforum some time ago and they’re not flattering on anyone. I remember pizza magnate and hapless presidential candidate Herman Cain wore this colour tie almost exclusively and even on a dark skinned fella like him they looked bad. Even worse on a pale White fella.
Reminds me of a competition a friend of mine used to have with co-workers, called “Bad Tie Friday”, where everyone had to come in wearing a tasteless tie. I suppose with dress down Fridays, this wouldn’t exist anymore. But back to Bond… I like the striped tie Roger wears in Venice in Moonraker, although I guess it is too busy for some tastes. I think it is just rather of its time. The yellow one in View to a Kill is much worse in my opinion. The yellow is really obnoxious. But Sean wins the bad tie competition for sure with his pink kipper.
My brother in law was a schoolteacher at a school which had a uniform. He used to collect up ugly garishly patterned ties from when old relatives had croaked and keep them at school. If any of the lads showed up having ‘forgotten’ their tie, being a mild mannered bloke instead of getting angry and shouting he’d just make them wear one of these hideous paisley ties which magically cured them of their forgetfulness!
Terrific!
I’ve always wondered why the 70s were so garish,tacky and without taste.
A reaction of minimalism of 60s, is probable..but go completely in the opposite direction in so ugly way is something that leaves me amazed.
The pendulum always swings to the extremes. I prefer slim flat front trousers for myself but until recently the trend was for several years skinny with too low a rise showing the ‘turkey triangle’ of shirt above the waistband but below the buttoning point of the jacket. For the last few years the trend has been moving to looser trousers but it won’t stop at modest with pleats it will go all the way over to nipple skimming waistbands, billowing pleats and an extra half yard in the legs. Sadly it was ever thus!
Hah! I had never heard it called a turkey triangle before. Too many “Bond influencers” are guilty of this particular aesthetic problem…
Yes, a few of whom give style advice to others. Even at its most fashionable and thankfully it’s way past that now; I never looked at that triangle of exposed shirt and tie below the jacket button without thinking how awful it looks! It will age as badly as the fit of the tailored clothing in the most recent 3 movies. What a shame as there was some beautiful cloth.
The pink tie deserves a post all to itself. Absolute calamity. Hideous tie made even worse by the Windsor knot.
Did Sean not look in the mirror? Did Guy Hamilton not say anything? What were they thinking? Was it a last minute choice? If not does that mean it was conscious choice by the costume designer? The mind boggles…
A close observation of behind the scenes pics of Guy Hamilton compared to Terence Young or Peter Hunt may give a hint.
And yet, Hamilton also directed “Goldfinger,” which brought us some of Sir Sean’s best looks (plus the terrycloth toweling outfit, but nobody can bat 100). In DAF’s case, it was probably a case of everyone wanting to get the scene over with as quickly as possible and not particularly caring how it looked. After all, by all accounts Connery didn’t want to be there and was openly feuding with Broccoli and Saltzman.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who finds yellow ties unflattering. Whenever I see one my brain goes to Jeff Daniels’ tacky blue suit/yellow tie combination in Something Wild though that was supposed to look goofy.
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Does the tie has a banana pattern ?! Hahah
It’s a crescent moon over a palm tree.
I actually think that shade of yellow is more flattering than Moore’s pale yellow tie and doesn’t look all that bad on him.
I kind of hate all the ties in Moonraker, except the brown one in the pheasant hunting scene. The one in M’s office I would add to this list in place of the yellow one from AVTAK.
The scene in M’s office in which film?
He said Moonraker.
Honestly, I am surprised that more of Brosnan’s ties did not make the list. I have always disliked his larger geometric patterns an find them particularly un-Bondian. If I had to pick one for this list, I would probably go with the grey tie with the large circle pattern from Die Another Day:
https://www.bondsuits.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Charcoal-Pinstripe-Suit-Grey-Tie.jpg
The pattern is more subtle than the Goldeneye tie that made the list, but the large circle are just annoying and distracting without adding anything of value. While it is bolder than it should be, the Goldeneye tie is less objectionable to me because of its smaller scale, which from a distance, at least looks evocative of a lot of classical printed English tie patterns in scale and colours. It also at least combines the blue and brown/gold tones that are so flattering on Brosnan.
I agree. I’ve never much liked that tie for Bond. With that said, I have the exact tie from Turnbull and Asser on a burgundy ground instead of grey and it works well with a cardigan or under a v-neck jumper. I like it well enough casually, just not with a somber business suit.
Despite them being a bit bolder in general, I like a lot of the Brosnan T&A ties. But I agree with you that the grey tie with circles has no redeeming features.
Why does that pink tie get so much hate besides being tied wrong ? After all It’s worn in suburbs of Las Vegas so I hardly imagine more appropriate place for wearing pink tie.
The length of the tie is why it deserves the hate. If you read the blog, I explain how the tie is inherently short and no knot could make it long enough.
I understand that it’s too short, but this is the only valid reason. It would look much worse if tie was too long, but I totally understand that it should fit right.
This is similar to Craig’s too tight suits. They could be really beautiful suits but being too tight they don’t look as good as they would if they were properly fitted. I never liked tight clothes anyway besides maybe a few T-shirts.
This tie being too short was most likely as you mentioned error by costume department, but in universe I like to explain to myself that maybe Connery’s Bond in that situation was wearing short tie as a disguise. Short ties were sometimes worn by gangsters or detectives and sometimes as fashion or making a statement. Though I’m not sure if last picture is actually vintage.
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The only possible reasons the tie is too short is because are that it was a fashionably short tie or purchased in the children’s department. He tied this tie the same way he tied the other ties in the film, which aren’t too short. In the first photo you attached the tie is too short because of his fat neck and because his trousers are sitting much lower than they should be.
There’s really no way to make excuses for this tie. Like in the vintage photos, Connery’s tie is simply an unattractive fashion trend.
If the tie was done in a four in hand would that address the issue with the length?
As I have said, it wouldn’t do enough.
By the way, Matt, apropos of Roger Moore’s tie at (00)4, is it necessary to wear a wide tie when you’re wearing a double-breasted jacket, which will (likely) have wider lapels?
While ties should in general match the width of the lapels, they can be narrower.
I feel the Sulka “tank” tie in Goldeneye would be a better candidate for 7 because it’s a simply terrible combination of colour and pattern.
I appreciate in this article, with exception of the pink DAF tie – which is objectively bad – and perhaps the lemon yellow tie, you note that most of the other ties are not bad ties per se, but rather they are inappropriate ties for Bond. I think this is a distinction some of the commenters may have missed. Personally, I quite like #2 and #3 and would wear them, and could even see my way to endorsing #5 and #7 for the right person (not myself) and in the right ensemble. But I agree that, except for when worn as an element of disguise, all the ties in your list are not quite right for Bond.
ITV is showing DAF. I have never seen it from beginning to end (still haven’t – just a casual fan). My eyes popped out when I saw the pink tie. I googled ‘James Bond pink tie’ and here I am haha
Welcome! It’s quite the infamous tie!
Firstly, I am not a fan of knitted ties, much prefer the point over the straight hemmed end.
Secondly, I completely agree about the colour. The pale yellow is way too cool a colour to work. And I find it gaudy in all honesty. Even the ties worn by Ryanair cabin crew in golden yellow look better which have white stripes with black bordering.
Knitted ties can come with pointed ends.