James Bond rarely wears hats in warm weather, but they are often a practical necessity. Summer hats can be a highly stylish accessory, but the wrong choice can quickly look more awkward than appealing. Bond’s summer headgear includes stylish straw hats and a utilitarian baseball cap.
The Straw Hat
A classic hat for warm weather, a straw hat provides sun protection while offering breathability through a porous straw weave. While they traditionally have a wide brim to better shield the wearer from the sun, Sean Connery’s examples in Goldfinger and Thunderball have narrow brims that follow the trend of the mid 1960s.
Bond’s dark grey straw hat in Goldfinger protects him from the sun on the golf course and may have given Sean Connery a break from wearing his hairpiece. The trilby-style hat has a high crown with a squared teardrop shape and a gentle front pinch. The wide ribbon at the base of the crown is black with 2 bands of white and red stripes. The narrow brim turns up sharply at the back. The high crown makes this a bold hat, but it’s in proportion with Connery’s 6’2” height. Its grey colour gives it a modern look over the standard natural straw beige and looks more appropriate in dreary England.
Bond’s straw hat Thunderball is the classic natural beige straw in a pork pie style, which has the perfect look for The Bahamas. This hat has a tall, tapered telescopic crown with a wide blue and white checked cotton ribbon at its base. The short brim turns up a little at the back.
Bond wears both of these straw hats for dressing down, but if he wanted to he could dress them up with a sporty summer suit in linen, seersucker or even tropical wool.
As part of his Japanese fisherman disguise in You Only Live Twice, Bond wears a beige straw hat with a high round crown, a front pinch, a wide floppy brim and a black pleated ribbon. The hat effectively makes Bond look unsophisticated and unlike himself.
Sean Connery wore other straw hats while on location on and off the set. There are photos Connery wearing a straw hat with a wide turned-up brim and what could be either a telescopic or flat boater-style crown taken while filming Dr. No in Jamaica. While playing golf in The Bahamas during his time filming Thunderball, Connery was photographed wearing a straw hat with a short turned-down brim.
Straw hats are still stylish today, and they don’t look quite as old-fashioned as a felt hat. However, they still have a traditional appearance and James Bond has moved on from them since the 1960s.
Roger Moore also wears a gondolier’s straw boater in Moonraker as he docks the Bondola.
The Baseball Cap
The baseball cap is an American invention from the 19th century that’s sportier and more utilitarian compared to the straw hat. It’s a far more popular hat today for its affordability and durability. People may stand out in a straw hat, but they blend in wearing a baseball cap, making it an especially effective accessory for a spy. Baseball caps wear warmer than a straw hat, but the cap protects the scalp while the brim shields the sun.
James Bond wears his one and only baseball cap in No Time to Die when boating in Jamaica. It’s from Carhartt and made of navy cotton canvas. It has an adjustable strap at the back. It originally had a Carhartt patch on the front, which the costume department removed. The lack of branding makes the cap more appropriate for Bond so it doesn’t draw attention to itself. Branding on a baseball cap is in an appropriate place for wearable branding, but in any situation it would be inappropriate for Bond.
The baseball cap is ultimately too American for Bond. Carhartt is not the kind of brand Bond would typically wear either. Through this cap Daniel Craig is channeling Steve McQueen, one of his biggest style inspirations, who wears a similar baseball cap in The Thomas Crown Affair. While it’s fitting for an American like McQueen, it’s not quite right for Bond. Considering it’s appropriate for the setting and activity and it looks good on him, it’s the it might just be the best choice for a modern Bond.
They could have found a generic navy blue cotton baseball cap from any maker. Instead, they chose Carhartt and decided to remove the woven brand emblem, which is very difficult to do without damaging the fabric. On the film still provided in this article you can actually see the mark left by the logo. It’s quite visible.
Yes. Its a way of advertising without advertising. Perhaps Don Draper was hired as a consultant for NTTD ?
As someone who lacks hair, a hat is a practical necessity all year around – it’s either too cold, or I need to keep the sun off my head.
Once upon a time, I opted for panamas. But folding issues (I have dyspraxia and hence not particularly dexterous) led me to flat caps (wool in winter, linen in summer) and baseball-type caps.
The latter may be of American origin, but they’re pretty universal now, and more practical than a straw hat. They can be cool-wearing, depending on the material. But if wearing anything even vaguely formal, it’s a flat cap.
David, do you wear a flat cap as well with say a dark worsted navy suit, or do you wear something else ? Just curious.
I tend to wear linen suits, even in cooler weather, but yes, when I wear a wool suit, I still wear a flat cap. I have a number of flat caps, and try to avoid a glaring clash.
I’m not going to lie, that straw hat with the downturned brim looks horrifyingly like a bucket hat, at least to these jaundiced eyes – don’t ask me why, but it gives me 1990s/Noughties flashbacks.
Interesting. I always thought the Goldfinger hat was made of felt or something similar. It’s a good thing it doesn’t have that typical straw look, which I think look pretty out of place anywhere besides the beach/swimming pool.
Craig’s baseball cap doesn’t look flattering at all on him. It makes his forehead completely disappear, and accentuates how angular his face is. But I guess it was one of the many (sartorial ? Not really) whims Craig indulged himself in the movie, continuing with the trend set in Skyfall and especially in Spectre (the beanie was neither Bondian nor flattering either, that plus bringing onscreen many items from fashionable designers such as Cuccinelli, Dior, etc.).
My key objection is that either the baseball cap or the sunglasses might have made Mr Daniel Craig (A man with the face of a Viking chieftain) look a bit more innocuous, but in combination just make him look like a time-travelling cyborg serial killer failing to pass under the radar.
The TERMINATOR look is not the best disguise for a man trying to avoid looking like a Person of Mass Destruction.
No mention of Mr Dalton’s “deleted scene” white bucket hat he wore on Sharky’s boat?
… I genuinely love Mr Dalton’s Bond movies and like him as Bond, but sometimes his outfits make me wonder why.
If any character in human history should never, ever be caught dead wearing a bucket hat, it’s Bond – I mean even the NAME ‘bucket hat’ sounds like something out of a parody.
“It’s ‘bouquet!” — Hyacinth Bucket.
Before it was discovered that Craig’s NTTD cap was Carhartt, I bought an identical version from Barbour which the same brand as the jacket being worn in the photo. Not sure why Suttirat wouldn’t have used that cap instead. I bought it not only because it’s a Bond brand but more especially because it’s also waxed cotton like the Beacon Commander jacket I also own. I’ve worn the two together to stay dry as the jacket has no hood and the navy and green pair well together.
Surprised they never put some outlandish summer headwear on Roger in the ’70s…
The two hats in Moonraker are both a bit of a joke, but the 70s was the era of hair, not hats.
I just was looking at an early script of ‘Thunderball’
https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/thunderball-1965.pdf?v=1729115049
CAMERA MOVES WITH LEITER, HOLDS AT SHOP, lettered: PINDER’s . LEITER glances around, goes in.
.249 EXT[erior} STRAW MARKET. BOND
He has just bought a hat. He puts it on.